Birmingham’s $44 million bus rapid transit project is expected to break ground in May, with construction starting in the early summer, a transit official told a special joint meeting Monday of two city council committees.

Project manager Howard Richards said bus rapid transit is in the design stage and that the first groundbreaking is expected to occur “sometime around the week of May 6” downtown. Subsequent groundbreakings for other parts of the project would follow, he said.

“We are in design -- all elements of the BRT (bus rapid transit) is now in design, including the two end stations, terminals, the inline stations, the roadway -- is underway,” he told a joint meeting of the council’s Committee of the Whole and Transportation Committee. “We’re designing the electronic systems as well, including the revised traffic signals.” That includes new traffic signals at five intersections along the 10-mile bus rapid transit corridor, which will run from Woodlawn to Five Points West.

The buses will come equipped with technology to prolong green lights at intersections to help rapid transit and emergency vehicles proceed on their routes.

The 10-mile corridor will begin at 1st Avenue North and 18th Street downtown. It will then go down 5th Avenue South at the intersection of 8th Street South before going southwest along 6th Avenue South to the Amtrak and CSX railroad corridor. From there, the route continues southward to the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive along the eastern boundary of Elmwood Cemetery, traveling north to the intersection with Lomb Avenue. The route then goes west to its end at the Birmingham CrossPlex.

At a separate briefing Friday before the transit authority, Richards noted that the branding for the project, which will be known as Birmingham Xpress, has been completed.

“Using our name reflects the pride we have in our city,” Richards said. “The ‘X’ represents the crossroads of our transformation into a metropolitan area with a modern transit system.”