Like beauty, bus rapid transit is in the eye of the beholder. Elements of BRT can be found all over the Bay Area, and some have existed for decades; 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 accounts the region’s first full 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 left-side boarding, a standard feature of trains that is rarely seen on buses. One thing it lacks, unfortunately, is physical separation from traffic.

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. The typeface is Frutiger Condensed.

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