[Cirrus]

Again, I don't disagree. Just saying that if upzoning is your goal (and I agree it is one), rail is a very effective political cover. You can even blame the feds and say they won't give you a New Starts grant unless you upzone (which is indirectly sort of true).

Settling for BRT is a self-fulfilling prophesy. It won't provide the political cover to upzone enough, and it'll get watered down. We should absolutely still do it because it's miles better than transit service now, but *if* you actually wanted to have the fight to try and upzone Colfax to handle 30-story buildings, dangling a subway line as the carrot would be a much more powerful incentive than dangling a BRT line, especially a half-hearted one.

Settling for BRT is an admission that we're not really going to change anything structural. We'll try to do what we're already doing a little better. There's a place for that. I'm not complaining about that, nor disagreeing with that as a valuable, progressive, and achievable strategy. It's smart given the realities of politics and transit funding. But *if* you want the revolution, rail is a tool to make it happen and half-hearted BRT is not.