While the profile of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has been raised owing to many success cases, substantial barriers to its planning and implementation persist. This article compared two contrasting efforts to implement BRT systems in cities with greatly different circumstances: Brisbane, Australia, and Lima, Peru. It found that barriers to the creation of citywide BRT systems in Lima and Brisbane are not the same, given the contextual differences, the different sizes, and the different level of development of the two cities. However, there is potential for these two cities, as well as others that are considering BRT, to learn from each other's pitfalls. The circumstances in these two case studies are certainly not unique. The findings apply to a number of cities in similar geo-political and economic contexts.