Like beauty, bus rapid transit is in the eye of the beholder. Elements of BRT can be found all over the Bay Area: San Francisco’s Market Street, with its center bus lanes, prepaid boarding and frequent service, is arguably one of the busiest busways in North America. AC Transit’s Tempo, however, is by most standards the region’s most rapid BRT line — center transit lanes span East Oakland, while much of the rest is more conventional side-running bus lanes. It features stations with level platforms and buses with doors on both sides, a standard feature of trains that is rarely seen on buses. One thing it lacks, unfortunately, is physical separation from traffic, which has been the source of some controversy.

Notes on Design

While Tempo’s bus wraps are busy to a fault, the official map is so minimalist, it looks like it could’ve been designed in PowerPoint (newer strip maps on buses and at stations are slightly more detailed, and multilingual — something this map could use). The brand, however, nicely lends itself to white and black versions. Note that some station names have been changed in Eastlake, where AC Transit’s official names are based on westbound locations; these names split the difference between east- and westbound stops. The typeface is Frutiger Condensed.

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