Whilst light rail schemes may still prove the best form of mass transit for some major urban flows, there are many other corridors which might not provide sufficient passenger levels to support their relatively high costs. But these corridors still need high quality public transport to support wider economic and social aims, including regeneration. Often they will benefit from cheaper forms of transit provision based on technologies which significantly upgrade buses to provide much greater quality, speed and reliability. Even in more dispersed areas, with lower densities of traffic, these approaches can greatly enhance the image of bus services.

This conference will examine carefully the issues and principles involved and identify the contexts in which such systems may best be developed. These will be illustrted by several case studies and reviews of current systems both in the UK and around the world. It will include coverage of systems from those countries where development has already proceeded successfully, including Australia, France, Ireland and South America.

Speakers: Brian Cox, Independent Transport Consultant; Colin Eastman, Transport Policy Advisere, Coventry City Council; Barbara Bedford, Project Director-ftr, & Commercial Director-Yorkshire, First; Kevin Gardner, Head of Bus Priority Team, TfL; Barry Gyte, Director, GCI & Project Manager, South East Busways; Dr Bob Tebb, Operations Technical Manager UK Bus Division, FirstGroup; Raymond Hue, Chairman and Managing Director, TCAR (a Connex Group Company); Anne Devine, Senior Engineer - Quality Bus Network, Dublin City Council; Bill Tyson, Chairman & Managing Director - Transport Management Group - GMPTE; Mark Nodder, Vice President, Wrightbus; Carmen Hass-Klau, Professor of European Public Transport Systems, University of Wuppertal, Germany; Oscar Sbert Lozano, Chairman of the UITP Bus Committee, Director of Engineering and New Technologies of Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona SA (TMB), Barcelona.

Chairman: John Carr, Visiting Senior Lecturer, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds