Raise the Hammer

A passenger boarding station means an enclosed area that you must pay to enter, and then from that enclosed boarding area you board the vehicle without payment. This creates faster boarding and improves the throughput of the vehicle.

Think about a subway station - you enter the station, pay at the gate, and then wait at the platform. When the train arrives, the passengers file in without fumbling for change or dealing with any representative of the transit organization.

An articulated bus will usually have 3 sets of doors, but you can only enter from the front door because this is where you pay. In a BRT, passengers enter through all 3 doors.

With longer spans (800m), traffic light control, and fast pickup/dropoffs (thanks to the stations), a BRT can move faster than car traffic (unlike glacial city buses).

Now the mechanical details:

Notice train stations often have a single central platform. This reduces the amount of space the platform needs - a necessary plan for Hamilton's 4-lane King Street (King may end up getting reduced to 1 lane when it's passing a platform, I'm not sure what the plan is)*. So the idea is you'd have the normal sidewalk, then a Rapid Transit lane, then the enclosed platform, and then another Rapid Transit lane, then the auto traffic lane(s). Assume the platform is an enclosed space about 3 meters wide with a pay gate at one end and sliding doors on the side to board the vehicles. Riders must cross the first Rapid Transit lane (a crosswalk often exists at the front of the platform so riders may cross in front of the stopped vehicle), pay to enter the platform, then await the vehicle. Notice that I just say "vehicle" - it works the same for LRT vs BRT.

An interesting ramification is that the vehicle is unloading/loading into the middle instead of the side, which means that right-side-door vehicles must travel on the left side of the platform, or else we must use left-side-door vehicles.

*aside, this is why they should build the thing on Main. 5 lanes cut down to 3 lanes during open spans and 2 lanes at transit platforms seems much more palatable than 4 going down to 2 and 1. Convert king 2-way and then we've got symmetry - 3 lanes of 1-way Cannon coupled to 2-3 lanes of 1-way Main, and then we go James North style along the whole freaking length of King Street. But the plan is King LRT and I'll take it.