WASHINGTON, D.C. – The International Congress on Sustainable Transport organized by EMBARQ – the World Resources Institute’s Center for Transport and the Environment – and the Center for Sustainable Transport in Mexico (CTS), will become the first Latin American forum for international experts to analyze the experience and potential of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects in the Americas.

“The Congress will allow the BRT community to begin to develop information on BRT systems, including their basic features, indicators of performance, economic and financial information, as well as indicators of impacts of the BRT system on the city, society and the environment,” says Dr. Nancy Kete, director of EMBARQ. “Ultimately planners need to better understand how key design elements affect cost and performance, thus supporting better decision making both for the design of new systems and for the improvement of existing ones.”

Dr. Kete will be speaking at the congress on early-stage design and planning of BRT and other transport and air quality projects.

A primary topic of discussion will be the challenges and lessons learned from the implementation of Mexico City’s first BRT system, Metrobus, launched earlier this summer. The system consists of 80 articulated buses operating on exclusive bus lanes, carrying close to 250,000 daily passengers along a 20 kilometer route.

In May 2002, EMBARQ signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Mexico City government to create the CTS, and jointly address the integrated problems of local congestion, pollution, and traffic accidents in the city. Metrobus quickly became a primary project for the partnership.

Bus Rapid Transit brings various tangible benefits to its cities. In Curitiba and Bogotá, known as BRT pioneers, the systems have dramatically reduced congestion, improved air quality, commute time, comfort and safety for the public transport users. If various cities follow these examples, BRT could have a significant global impact on climate, poverty, and quality of life in cities.

To deliver an optimal system with all these benefits, several barriers must be overcome. “The work that takes place behind the scenes of a BRT project, including the negotiations with concessions, creation of new managing entities, and financing the early stages of the project tend to be the hardest challenges,” says Luis Gutierrez, Director of EMBARQ’s Latin American Program and speaker at the congress. “Only by sharing these experiences and learning from others will BRT scale-up to become a significant part of urban transport,” says Gutierrez.

The international congress, co-organized by WRI and CTS will be hosted at the World Trade Center in Mexico City the 12th and 13th of September and in Leon, home of Mexico’s first BRT, on the 14th.

Invited speakers include Jaime Lerner, former mayor of Curitiba and BRT pioneer, Edgar Enrique Sandoval, former TransMilenio manager, and Mexican Nobel Laureate, Mario Molina.

The World Resources Institute (www.wri.org) is an environmental think tank that goes beyond research to create practical ways to protect the Earth and improve people’s lives.