Strategic Thinking for Sustainability: A Review of 10 Strategies for Sustainable Mobility by Bus for Cities

The sustainable mobility of the future comes about through sustainable ways of transport, such as walking, cycling, or collective transport. This includes the bus, the underground, and trains in big cities. This article reviews bus-related policies and initiatives worldwide. It also analyses ten cities looking at medium and long-term strategies for the urban bus service. The main ideas are: the forecasts for the use of the urban bus system indicate a significant increase in demand, therefore, there is a need for expanding the offered services; efforts to change the fleets towards Compressed Natural Gas and Electric vehicles; support of technological innovation for communication and accessibility; improving commercial speed and frequencies by infrastructure improvements, operation optimisation and technology; and, the link between these strategies and the air quality of cities. The transition towards a sustainable transport will happen based on the belief that the bus service is no longer the transport of the past or the present, but of the future.