Locale León, Guanajuato Number of lines 5 Daily ridership 3,500,000 | Transit type Bus rapid transit Number of stations 65 Began operation September 28, 2003 | |
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Optibus is a bus rapid transit (BRT) system operating in León, Guanajuato, Mexico. Locally it is known also as "La Oruga" (the caterpillar), due to its use of articulated buses. Most of the Optibus route uses city streets, but with dedicated bus lanes and high-level platform stations. The system was inaugurated on September 27, 2003. León was the first city in Mexico to implement a BRT system. In some respects it is similar to other Latin American BRT systems such as the Mexico City Metrobús, the Guadalajara Macrobus, the Bogotá Transmilenio, the Guatemala City Transmetro, and the Monterrey Transmetro.
León is one of the few cities in Mexico that has a modern, municipally operated bus transit system and utilizes prepaid farecards (known as Pagobus), as opposed to the traditional Mexican pesero system of individual bus owner-operators collecting cash fares. The prepaid farecard system was put in place about four years before the Optibus system.