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Old Posted Jan 19, 2021, 10:09 PM
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goat314 goat314 is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: St. Louis - Tampa
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ssiguy View Post
These truly useless little streetcar routes employed all over the place are stellar examples of poor transit decisions brought forward by ribbon cutting salivating politicians, developers, and rail companies. The needs of the transit users are usually secondary at best.

BRT is a far superior option for the vast majority of US cities and can serve many more neighbourhoods and destination for the same amount of money as LRT. Austin's recent announcement of a massive transit expansion relying mostly on new rail is a classic example of bad urban planning. Austin has very low ridership and hence expensive rail is not needed but rather frequent bus service with priority lanes etc...........BRT.

For people who say that people won't take the bus, that is a false narrative. The reality is that the people who wound't take a bus won't take any form of transit. Get the ridership first and then expand when the particular routes become over crowded, not the other way around.
I disagree with this. American culture is very different from Canadian culture when it comes to public services. Americans generally do not like transit, especially buses. Busses in particular are viewed as transportation for poor people. Trains are almost always seen as the most desired form of transit and people will at least ride trains to the airport or sporting events. Trains are also more likely to be used by tourists or infrequent transit users. There are also huge racial and socioeconomic issues that have made having adequate public transit systems an issue in America. In St. Louis, you should see how packed the trains are to go downtown for a MLB or NHL game. These are people that would never ride a bus in the city.
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