With more of the world’s population living in urban areas than ever before, and the largest agglomerations now home to more than 10 million people, cities today face urgent and complex development challenges. In managing growth and providing services, planners and politicians increasingly seek to balance economic priorities with sustainable development that meets social needs and mitigates environmental impacts. This report examines efforts by major cities across Latin America and Asia to apply such approaches to public transport.

Urban transportation systems significantly affect cities’ quality of life and, through associated air pollution and greenhouse gases, the wider regional and global environments. These impacts can be mitigated by sustainable transport policies which promote cleaner, more efficient public transport systems in order to reduce congestion, minimize travel times, reduce GHG emissions and local air pollutants, decrease road traffic injuries and deaths and improve public health.

Sustainable urban transport can have measurable positive impacts and externalities, but in order to realize its full potential to transform cities, a transport project must be planned, implemented and operated effectively. This is far from an easy task, involving a myriad political, financial, technical, institutional and communication challenges.

In order to shed light on these challenges, Modernizing Public Transportation: Lessons Learned from Major Bus Improvements in Latin America and Asia, presents a comparative analysis of the performance of 13 modernized bus systems in cities including Bogotá, São Paulo, and Santiago, Jakarta and Beijing. The result is an illuminating snapshot of the state of practice of bus transport in Latin America and Asia, highlighting both common hurdles and problems encountered, and positive lessons learned, from recent efforts to make getting around mega-cities more efficient and environmentally-friendly.