Urban Transport in the OIC Megacities
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new car parks integrated with BRT terminals can become a source of revenue for the municipality that
can be reinvested in the public transport system (Duarte and Rojas, 2012).
Comparison with other cities: Bogota and Ahmedabad
Although Curitiba is not a megacity, its public transport and land-use practices have been considered
a leading example for bigger sized cities across the world. Comparison with other cities, shows the
importance of integrated urban and transport development.
Bogota: Bogota, the capital of Colombia is city of 9.5 million inhabitants. Bogota introduced its BRT
system, Transmilenio, in the late 1990s. The system has a capacity of 45,000 passengers per direction
per hour. The BRT lines were placed in mostly economically stagnant zones in order to enhance
affordable transport for the poor. However, the introduction of the first phase of system was not
accompanied by proactive station area planning. Neither the city nor the neighbourhood districts
prepared plans for the areas around the stations to coordinate private development, change zoning
(including increasing permissible densities), introduced complementary improvements such as
pedestrian environment or to attract private investments. Learning from their mistakes, the city of
Bogota started implementing coordinated improvements along new Transmilenio corridors, aiming
to capture the value of improvements for future public transport investments (Cervero, 2013).
Ahmedabad: Ahmedabad is India’s fifth largest city with a population of 5.5 million and one of the
fastest growing cities in the world. In 2009 Ahmedabad opened the first and largest BRT system in
India, called Janmarg. Janmarg lines were selected to serve the fastest growing areas in the city but,
similar to Bogota, little attention was given to the physical integration of bus stops with the
surrounding areas. Ahmedabad’s planning authorities are trying to maintain uniform densities across
the city, regardless of the proximity of the development to public transport corridors. This approach
is shifting growth to the periphery and will eventually lead to bigger areas to be served by public
transport, and auto-oriented development (Cervero, 2013).