The city of Guangzhou, China, officially opened the 22.5-kilometer Guangzhou bus rapid transit system, known as GBRT, on February 21, after a ten-day test run over the Chinese New Year holiday period. The GBRT is a system of firsts: it is the first BRT to directly connect to a metro system, the first BRT system in China to include bike parking in its station design, it has the world's highest number of passenger boardings at BRT stations, highest BRT bus frequency, and longest BRT stations. Station operation is impressive, and its ridership levels are second only to Bogotá's Transmilenio. Passenger interest in the system is high-all day at Tangxia and other stations people line the pedestrian bridges
can view the system in operation here. Passenger ridership now exceeds 25,000 passengers per hour in a single direction, at the highest demand point in the rush hour; more than triple any other BRT system in Asia. Daily passenger ridership is currently more than 800,000 boardings per day, which is more than any of Guangzhou's 5 metro lines, and is expected to exceed 1 million passenger trips per day by the end of 2010. More than 70,000 passenger boardings take place each day at a single station (Gangding).
