雅思阅读 184: Bus Rapid Transit — Latin America's Transit Experiment（快速公交：拉美的交通实验）

改编自 Lincoln Institute of Land Policy（2018年7月）。雅思阅读 Section 3 难度，约 1050 词。 素材来源：https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/articles/mass-movements-mixed-results

Reading Passage

A. In the space of a single generation, Latin America has become the world's most influential laboratory for urban mass transit. Bus rapid transit (BRT) lines now run through the heart of 54 cities across the region, while aerial cable cars carry commuters up steep hillside neighbourhoods in more than half a dozen others. The region has collected nine of the sixteen annual Sustainable Transport Awards given by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, and think tanks in Washington and Brussels routinely send delegations south to study what works. Even wealthy cities that already run extensive subways, such as Bogotá, Santiago and Mexico City, have turned to buses to fill the gaps rail cannot reach. Yet beneath the awards and the admiration lies a more complicated picture. The same systems that carry millions of passengers every day have also produced overcrowding, riots, corruption and a growing backlash from the very riders they were meant to serve. The question is no longer whether Latin America can move people — it can — but whether its transit innovation can also reduce the extreme inequality that shapes every city on the continent.

B. Two forces explain why BRT took root in Latin America rather than in Europe or North America. The first is rapid urbanisation: roughly 80 per cent of the region's population now lives in cities, a higher share than in almost any other part of the world. The second is inequality. Eight of the twenty least equal countries on Earth, as measured by the Gini index, are Latin American. During the post-war boom, millions of peasants and indigenous families migrated from the countryside to the cities, but they were not housed in central neighbourhoods. Instead they were shunted to the urban periphery or onto steep hillsides unsuitable for formal construction. New arrivals did not find jobs close to home; they found domestic work, cleaning and cooking jobs in wealthy districts a long bus ride away. The result was a familiar pattern: seas of low-income housing surrounding islands of affluence, with millions of domestic workers, cleaners and cooks forced to commute long distances from peripheral homes to central jobs. The demand for cheap, high-capacity transit was not a policy choice but a demographic fact, and governments that ignored it found themselves bypassed by an army of private van operators running unregulated, dangerous routes to neighbourhoods the city would not serve.

C. The first city to solve this puzzle at scale was Curitiba, in southern Brazil. Although the concept of dedicated bus lanes is credited to British planner Peter Midgley, who experimented with them in French and Belgian cities in the late 1960s, it was Curitiba that assembled the full BRT package. A 20-kilometre line opened in 1974 featuring not just a reserved carriageway but enclosed stations, pre-boarding fare payment and all-door boarding — the same features that make subways fast. The city's mayor, architect Jaime Lerner, had federal funding for a metro, but he calculated that the same money would buy a far longer bus system. By zoning taller buildings near stations and designing stops that resembled subway entrances, Curitiba delivered most of the benefits of rail at a fraction of the cost. The key insight was that passengers did not care whether they rode on rails or rubber tyres; they cared whether the vehicle arrived quickly, stopped frequently and was comfortable. The model was immediately copied across the continent, adapted to different cities at a pace that rail construction could never match.

D. Bogotá's TransMilenio, launched in 2000 under Mayor Enrique Peñalosa, became the most ambitious copy. The city of eight million has never built a metro, and Peñalosa — like Lerner before him — chose to invest in buses instead. TransMilenio grew to 210 kilometres of routes carrying more than two million passengers daily, a volume that rivals many underground networks. For a time it was celebrated as a triumph. But the system's approval rating has since collapsed from 90 per cent to around 20 per cent. The core complaint is overcrowding. TransMilenio was designed for six passengers per square metre — already three times the Swedish standard — yet at peak hours it routinely carries eight or nine, so tightly packed that riders sometimes cannot disembark at their stop. Finding a bus with room to board can take 45 minutes. The system has also suffered from corruption in contracting, delays in expanding to feeder routes, and a failure to replace its ageing diesel fleet with clean electric vehicles.

E. The consequences of that overcrowding have rippled through the city. Frustrated riders have abandoned TransMilenio for private cars and taxis, pushing Bogotá to the sixth-worst traffic congestion ranking on the planet. After six decades of debate, the city has finally approved a 30-kilometre metro line, powered by hydroelectricity, partly because BRT has been slow to replace its diesel buses with clean electric ones. Even long-time BRT advocates now concede that buses alone cannot carry the city's growing demand at acceptable comfort levels. The Latin American experiment has not failed — BRT remains the cheapest way to move millions of people — but it has revealed a limit. A busway can imitate a metro's speed, but not its capacity. As the region's cities grow, the challenge is to combine the cost advantages of buses with the volume that only rail can provide, rather than pretending that one technology can substitute for the other. The lesson of Curitiba and Bogotá is not that BRT was a mistake, but that it was never the end of transit planning — it was the beginning of a more complicated conversation about what buses do well, and where they reach their ceiling. Cities that confuse a busway for a metro eventually rediscover the difference.

Questions 1-4

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B, C, D and E from the list of headings below.

List of Headings i. Why BRT emerged first in Latin America ii. The world's fastest subway system iii. How Curitiba built the first full BRT package iv. Bogotá's success — and its uncomfortable reversal v. The limits of bus-only transit and the return of rail vi. Why Latin America has high birth rates vii. The history of aerial cable cars in Europe

1. Paragraph B: ____
2. Paragraph C: ____
3. Paragraph D: ____
4. Paragraph E: ____

Questions 5-8

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

5. Why did BRT develop in Latin America rather than in Europe? A. Latin American cities had more money for rail. B. Rapid urbanisation and inequality created demand at low cost. C. Europeans refused to copy Curitiba. D. Latin America has fewer cars than Europe.

6. What was Jaime Lerner's key insight in Curitiba? A. A metro is always cheaper than a bus system. B. The same money could buy a longer bus system than a short metro line. C. Buses should mix with cars on ordinary streets. D. Fare payment should happen on board the bus.

7. What is the main reason for TransMilenio's falling approval rating? A. The tickets are too expensive. B. The stations are too far apart. C. Severe overcrowding during peak hours. D. The buses are too colourful.

8. Why is Bogotá finally building a metro? A. BRT has failed completely and is being dismantled. B. BRT cannot carry enough passengers at acceptable comfort levels. C. The city wants to replace buses with helicopters. D. The government banned all bus travel.

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer?

Write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. Roughly 80 per cent of Latin America's population lives in cities.
10. The first BRT line in Curitiba opened in 2000.
11. TransMilenio was designed for six passengers per square metre.
12. Bogotá currently has the worst traffic congestion in the world.
13. Curitiba's BRT system has been copied by cities in Africa.

Questions 14-15

Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

Curitiba's 1974 line combined a reserved carriageway with enclosed stations, pre-boarding payment and (14) __________ boarding, features normally associated with (15) __________ systems.

答案与解析

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