Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Case Studies on Transport Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cstp A comparison of LRT with an imaginary BRT system in performance: Bursa example Mehmet Rizelioğlu ⁎ , Turan Arslan Bursa Uludag University, Department of Civil Engineering, Bursa 16059, Turkey ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Transit systems LRT BRT PTV VISSIM Level of service ABSTRACT The increasing usage of private vehicles causes serious environmental, social and economic problems necessi- tating efficient transit systems for big cities all over the world. Appropriate transit systems require consideration of a variety of service quality criteria. Among them, speed, comfort, economy and safety are the most important ones. Considering characteristics and demand of existing light rail transit system (LRT) of Bursa, Turkey, bus rapid transit (BRT) system, comparatively as a cheaper alternative, is investigated in this study to realize how it would have provided competitive service quality in terms of comfort, capacity and operational cost. First, the existing LRT is evaluated with the current demand. Then, as if it were replaced with an imaginary BRT system, how the BRT system would have responded to the existing demand in terms of capacity and comfort are ex- amined. All models are developed in PTV VISSIM simulation environment. The results are compared and im- portant finding are outlined. 1. Introduction The growing population in urban areas has also expanded the role of transportation systems to meet people's mobility needs. As the use of private vehicle increases on existing roads with limited capacity, sig- nificant traffic problems with the associated negative environmental, social and economic impacts hit especially hard in metropolitan cities. The need for efficient transit systems that attract large numbers of private car users to public transport is inevitable in order to alleviate negative effects resulted from those problems. Decision on selecting appropriate public transportation systems, however, requires con- sideration of a variety of important criteria. Among them, speed, comfort, economy, safety and the image that it provides are the most important ones (Rizelioğlu and Arslan, 2016). Speed, comfort and safety are related to the level of service quality. Therefore, improving level of service quality is crucial to increase the use of public transport system (Allen Jr and DiCesare, 1976; Hensher et al., 2003; Prioni and Hensher, 2000; Saïd, 2002). Policies aiming for increasing transit system usage should promote its image, but at the same time, transit systems need to become more market-oriented and competitive that requires an improvement in service quality (Beirão and Sarsfield Cabral, 2007; Lai and Chen, 2011; Machado-León et al., 2016). De- pending on cases, each transit system has its own advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, planning such a system necessitates the ex- isting system to be well evaluated in order to adequately response fu- ture demand expectations. Long-range transportation related projects such as rail transit systems usually require huge capital investments, therefore they, in general, consume a lion share of the public budget. Thus, right and appropriate decisions made for implementing transit systems that satisfies present and future needs are essential for achieving sustainable development as well as for achieving efficient use of limited public resources. In this sense, proper modeling of public transportation systems that reflect the real cases is very imperative for obtaining desired results. 2. Literature review A lot of work has been done about the public transport system. However, traffic simulation programs are mostly used for urban transportation and intersection designs, and studies for public trans- portation have been limited. Raj et al. (2013) evaluated rapid bus transportation in Delhi, India's center, using a quantitative performance approach using micro-simulation techniques. They worked on 6 main intersections in this corridor, 5.8 km long. With the developed model, they assessed the performance of the BRT corridor by taking into con- sideration the parameters, such as travel time and speed. Cai et al. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cstp.2019.01.007 Received 25 June 2018; Accepted 15 January 2019 Abbreviations: LRT, Light rail transit; BRT, Bus rapid transit; LOS, Level of service; TCQSM, Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual; TCRP, Transit Cooperative Research Program ⁎ Corresponding author at: Faculty of Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, 16059 Bursa, Turkey. E-mail address: rizelioglu@uludag.edu.tr (M. Rizelioğlu). Case Studies on Transport Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 2213-624X/ © 2019 World Conference on Transport Research Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Rizelioglu, M., Case Studies on Transport Policy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cstp.2019.01.007