On the evening of 2 June 2015 at Guomao BRT station the Yichang Party Secretary Huang Chuping announced that the Yichang BRT, funded by an Asian Development Bank (ADB) loan and planned and designed by ITDP & GMEDRI, will start trial operation on 15 July 2015. He said Yichang BRT will be a demonstration project; a first-class BRT system in China which will meet international standards. The Yichang government strongly supports the BRT system. The Party Secretary, Yichang Mayor, Yichang Vice Mayor and senior officials from the Construction Commission, Yichang Urban Investment Company, Yichang Urban Administration Bureau, Yichang Communications Commission, Yichang Bus Company, Yichang Xiling District, Yichang Wujiagang District and other related government departments were all in attendance. The civil engineering work will be completed by the end of June, including road, station, footbridge, and tunnel construction. The Party Secretary also mentioned that the Yichang BRT is not only a transit corridor. The Yichang BRT corridor will be a landmark and attractive urban corridor with attention given to urban development along the corridor including facades, station access, parking management and shopfronts. Yichang is the first BRT corridor of Hubei province, and after the first corridor Yichang will soon have second and third corridors.

With funding initially from the ADB, Climateworks Foundation and Grantham Foundation and more recently from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Oak Foundation, ITDP has been working on the Yichang BRT corridor design, station area development, construction supervision and related policies since the system started planning in 2012. ITDP has provided technical support on BRT implementation, BRT station architecture, BRT operational design, BRT corridor urban development, BRT signage, bike lanes, bollards and pedestrian refuge islands, BRT vehicles, station area development, bike sharing, NMT improvements, parking reforms, and other areas. ITDP regularly joined weekly BRT meetings in which we raised problems found at the site and provided recommendations for addressing them, and ITDP regularly went to the construction sites with the Yichang PMO and Construction Commission, pointing out problems and suggesting solutions.