[llamaorama]

Is what we are arguing about really models of transit investment?

Usually buses are used to form a comprehensive network while light rail is a way of focusing on corridors. Of course it is possible for BRT to focus service on corridors and for LRT to act like local transit but those things don't seem as common.

I think the reason why the approach of focusing efforts on major corridors was chosen to revitalize mass transit by planners is because it would help stimulate TOD and benefit neighborhoods. Also my understanding is that in the 70s and early 80s a lot of cities had active pushes to build rapid transit as an alternative to freeways by a generation who still remembered streetcars. That would shift the paradigm away from suburbanization and highways. Trains would attract choice riders which was an important component of this. When LRT systems were planned and built I don't think anyone intended for them to come at the expense of buses. What I think is now driving the decline in LRT ridership in a lot of cities has to do with the competition for those same choice riders and TOD dwellers by ridesharing services. That doesn't mean ridership will decline forever, but it takes the edge off the power that light rail would have had to transform neighborhoods and reorient things towards core cities and urbanism.

In the same time frame, the population and densities of working class neighborhoods in the 'middle ring' beyond downtown and desirable central locations has continued to decrease in a lot of American cities. In stable or growing inner cities, gentrification means more people who are likely to own a car. In other words, there are fewer potential bus riders living in places traditionally well served by bus routes than their used to be. Instead of it being a conspiracy I think transit agencies were just doing what they could during lean times like the most recent recession to cut back on service to shrinking neighborhoods.

The reason why buses are doing well in some cities might have more to do with either numbers(a small increase of a very small number looks large when expressed as a percentage) or it has to do with specific geographic and demographic factors. Houston is growing still, and it has some peculiar urban geography that is especially well suited to medium-capacity bus service. It has dense immigrant hoods in 1970s suburbia much like Toronto does and putting bus routes on major corridors picks up way more ridership than one would expect in that environment. But that is ephemeral I think, household sizes and immigrant flows change and buildings are torn down and replaced with less dense development.

Like it or not, most of Dallas-Fort Worth isn't really conducive to transit. Instead of building the DART rail system they could have spent billions to create 10 min frequency bus routes in Garland and Irving. But that would probably just result in a lot of empty buses driving around because a car is still superior in comfort for getting around those kinds of places and all but the poorest people(who don't live in those areas) can generally afford one. DART is doing as much as it possibly can, which is to concentrate transit on areas where it can work. For what its worth, knowing people from Dallas many are proud of the DART rail and will tell you they rode it when they took classes at the community college downtown and like riding it to NBA games or concerts, etc. It's useful and the taxpayers who paid for it seem to appreciate it, and that's all that really matters at the end of the day.