The chapter presents the results of historical accident data on BRT L1 that have occurred in Mexico City from 2015-2020. Some of the key findings were the following: 1) A total of 1,769 accidents have occurred in the period of analysis (2015-2020); the most critical years in terms of the frequency of accident occurrence have been 2016 (27%) and 2019 (21.2%), and as expected, the least critical year was 2020 (7.1%). 2) The most critical seasons of the year have been the following: spring (27.1%) and summer (26.5%); the less critical seasons were winter (23.2%) and autumn (23.1%). 3) The results also highlighted that accident occurrence decreases sharply at the weekends (15.8%). The main conclusion of the analysis is that 64% of accidents occurred during peak hours causing traffic congestion and negative effects on health and to the environment. More research is needed to incorporate data from 2014 to 2020 for the case of the other six existing BRT lines. Further, some relevant statistical significance tests on the data are needed.
TopIntroduction
Urban mobility may be regarded as one of the major concerns of megacities worldwide. This problem becomes apparent in megacities in the so-called developing countries due to the human development growth in recent decades (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2020). That is, metropolises with several millions of inhabitants need to travel to work, to school and to commute to their daily activities. Public transport systems become a key component of the urban mobility process. This was recognised, for example, by the city of Curitiba’s key-decision makers in Brazil, where the first Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system was implemented in 1974 (Krecl et al., 2019).
It is believed that since then, several cities worldwide have adopted BRT transport systems. According to the Global BRT Data (2021), the system has been implemented in 177 cities world-wide; further, the system is under expansion in 44 cities, and 126 of them are planning or implementing the system over 40 countries. Ingvardson and Nielsen (2018), among others, argue that BRT systems own their success due to the short time taken for its implementation when compared to the rail-based mode of transport; therefore, a full network of BRT systems can be cheaper.
Regarding the impact of urban development and transport on road safety, it is believed that 1.35 million people are being killed, more than half of all road accident deaths are among pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists; further, it is thought 93% of the world’s fatalities occur in developing countries. The cost of road traffic crashes in most countries represents 3% of their gross domestic product (World Health Organization [WHO], 2020). Moreover, the increase of traffic congestion is driven by the population growth, and the increase of car use on streets and highways where capacity growth has not kept pace with growth in vehicle miles of travel (WHO, 2020; Lu et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2020).
A vast amount of research reports have been published in the literature on several aspects of BRT systems; e.g., the BRT system from a social perspective (Malik et al., 2021; Yamawaki et al., 2020; Kepaptsoglou et al., 2020), on the economics of BRT systems (McGreevy, 2021; Erdogan & Kaya, 2020; Zhang & Yen, 2020; Abbasi et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2020; Proboste et al., 2020), research also has been conducted from a technical performance perspective (McGreevy, 2021; Rizelioglu & Arslan, 2020; Ishaq & Cats, 2020), the issue on the BRT’s environmental impact has also been investigated by several authors (Abbasi et al., 2020; Khare et al., 2021; Bel & Holst, 2018).
However, in general, research on BRT related accidents is scarce; for example, Safirti et al., (2020) reported the influence of “latent safety variables” (e.g., awareness, motivation, safety climate, etc.) on the performance of BRT’s drivers. Similarly, Silva (2015) reported that when implementing educational programmes for drivers and users in accident prevention, the author reported a reduction in fatal crashes (12%) and property damage (23%). Erdogan and Kaya (2020), on the other hand, analyzed failures of BRT systems aiming at improving the maintenance of such systems so that to guarantee their operational reliability; further, the authors argue that by eliminating the identified risks arising from BRT failures, the harmful effects of accidents would be minimized.