Every year the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) presents its Sustainable Transport Award, choosing one global city that is doing good things on greener travel. This year the award went to Dakar, capital city of Senegal.
The centrepiece of the city’s sustainable transport strategy is a bus rapid transit system, a technology that I have written about a few times before. As a recap, BRT systems succeed by treating buses like trains. Passengers go to stations, buy their tickets in advance and board from a platform. Buses run on dedicated bus lanes separate from the rest of traffic. It makes the bus quicker and easier than a private car, and at a fraction of the cost of building a metro system. After being developed and refined in Bogota, Columbia, BRT caught on in South America and is now spreading around the world.
Senegal has put a lot of thought into sustainable transport, starting with a research project into everything that was wrong with travel in Dakar. The list of problems included air and noise pollution, traffic congestion and safety concerns. These issues had an economic cost that was estimated at $1.4 billion a year, which amounted to 6% of GDP. If a better urban transit system could solve a number of those problems at once, it would be a really good investment.
Dakar’s BRT has certainly sped up travel times, cutting the journey into the town centre by more than half. The network of 23 stations and 18 kilometres of bus lanes has also brought affordable transit to more people. 57% of the city’s population had access to public transport before the project, and that has risen to 69%. This has real economic benefits, with 180,000 more people now able to get into the city centre and apply for jobs there.
To maximise the co-benefits, Dakar’s BRT is all electric, running 121 electric buses that recharge overnight. That’s a big reduction in carbon emissions, noise and air pollution. The bus stations are solar powered. Walking and cycling infrastructure has been upgraded along the routes, making sure they work together and support active transport.
It’s also inclusive. Boarding from a platform eliminates the step up into the vehicle, making public transport more accessible to children, the elderly, mothers with babies and those with disabilities. Measures have been put in place to make women safer on the buses, including better street lighting and hiring more women to work on the BRT. 35% of jobs will go to women, and the network launched with one female bus driver – a rarity in Dakar formerly, and hopefully the first of many.
Dakar’s BRT is a really nice example of how sustainable transport can improve so many things at once. Ignore the sceptics that say the green agenda is all about taking things away. Done well, we can create solutions with multiple benefits.
Here’s a little video if you want to see what it looks like:
The Earthbound Report 
@earthbound.report Excellent innovations for sustainability efforts. Major North American cities can take a real lesson from this but cars are still king on this continent
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