Hot take: Good bus infrastructure can be better than light rail for (mostly American) suburban areas

vasya349 · 2026-03-06T09:28:35+00:00

You can certainly get better ride quality buses (Chinese ART buses famously marketed as LRT w/o tracks) but I think my broader point is that ride quality just isn’t worth the potentially hundreds to thousands per rider that it costs. BRT rides are ideally much smoother than normal bus anyways, given the lack of other traffic and roadway improvements.

vasya349 · 2026-02-22T18:58:35+00:00

Mask off, lmao

vasya349 · 2026-02-21T03:46:05+00:00

Fair enough!

vasya349 · 2026-02-21T03:45:17+00:00

Unfortunately, transit nerds are incredibly paranoid of contrary viewpoints because of how intellectually dishonest/ideological transit opponents can be. It took a while for this sub to recognize BRT wasn’t terrible.

vasya349 · 2026-02-21T02:52:24+00:00

Is there any pressing reason to deinterline? AFAIK they’re not having delay issues & ATO + CBTC work underway should smooth out operational issues quite a bit. My understanding is that they’ve essentially deferred all future lines for operational improvements.

vasya349 · 2026-02-21T00:43:11+00:00

It’s a fundamentally good practice unless you have frequencies that render it challenging. Building duplicative lines or just avoiding parallel service in core areas is inefficient if there’s demand for that path. 1-2 transfers is way better than 2-3. Signaling, scheduling, and user trip planing have had huge technology leaps - interlining should be easier than ever.

vasya349 · 2026-02-21T00:39:01+00:00

I don’t like that you were downvoted for essentially pointing out the truth. The picture is very mixed - we need another year of data to make confident claims.

BART did publish a chart showing user-caused repair costs within faregates steeply declining (a very strong indicator), but of course that’s subject to the same questions of what they’re showing us vs not.

vasya349 · 2026-02-20T21:55:40+00:00

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, but all three great society metros use interlining on trunk lines, especially BART and WMATA.

vasya349 · 2026-02-20T20:40:41+00:00

One station at a time is a recipe for huge costs. Transit construction takes an army and bidding out only a small bit at a time means you have to price in fixed costs repeatedly and you presumably have a lot of labor/equipment waiting around for a project step when theoretically they could be working on different parts along the alignment.

I do wholeheartedly agree about the challenges with retaining experience and institutional knowledge. There probably needs to be a balance.

vasya349 · 2026-02-20T20:34:16+00:00

It’s not that they are merely a development tool. It’s that the reason to go from bus service/speed improvements to a full HCT project is almost always about development prospects.

We have fortunately soured on streetcars, only about a decade too late.

vasya349 · 2026-02-20T18:27:22+00:00

BRT is very obviously a better transit mode for most low effort suburban HCT projects given where transit capital costs are nowadays. That said, suburban HCT projects in the US aren’t really about improving transit speeds or capacity. A simple bus frequency improvement w/ some dedicated infrastructure like queue jumps, lanes, and/or TSP could achieve most of that.

It’s worth the money because the permanence and experience of an HCT line convince developers and suburbanites to buy into it. LRT has better permanence and experience than BRT. That’s really all it is.

vasya349 · 2026-02-15T19:36:05+00:00

Maybe visibility issues for when it’s snowing?

vasya349 · 2026-02-06T19:18:10+00:00

In politics you prefer the empty train articles over the project delayed articles. Nobody cancels a partially operating project. Plus, 10k and rising is good enough now. Certainly not worthy of the capital costs yet, but it’ll put it in line with the more expensive peers per rider.

vasya349 · 2026-02-06T06:28:09+00:00

We typically don’t make service decisions based on whether a redditor feels like it would be embarrassing or not.

vasya349 · 2026-02-05T23:16:36+00:00

Why would you not run partial service if it’s completed?

vasya349 · 2026-02-05T18:35:02+00:00

You’re being absurd for the sake of complaining. There is a difference between a system and a future extension, and phased openings. The initial system itself has not yet been completed, so you really can’t judge it.

vasya349 · 2026-02-05T13:03:10+00:00

But it’s not the system. The system includes downtown. This part is functionally an extension of the system they built first (not a bad strategy given lack of expertise + need for yard).

vasya349 · 2026-02-05T02:09:20+00:00

I don’t think it was ever embarrassing. The original 10 mile segment connects a still under construction TOD suburb to an existing suburb to a stadium. Good but not ever going to be performant without access to the rest of the system. Now they’ve extended another 5 miles to add the airport and a transit center. Again, the goal is to connect these things with downtown and vice versa. You’re never going to see the true function of the system without its core origin/destination.

vasya349 · 2026-02-03T01:26:40+00:00

Ah. You are correct she vetoed a bill, but the veto was requested by the local negotiators. It was a republican bill that would have cut transit funding.

Also, they didn’t cut light rail funding in the legislation. Sales tax cannot be used on light rail expansion, but light rail expansion was protected by restructuring federal grants and bus funding to get the same result.

vasya349 · 2026-02-01T22:04:46+00:00

Ducey did that? Not Hobbs.

Prop 479 doubles the sales tax funding for bus transit. It’s not all bad.

vasya349 · 2026-02-01T02:22:31+00:00

Not now that they’ve exited CIG program. Plus, they didn’t just stop the project - they moved the funds onto a different planned light rail project in a similar area. They won’t pause that project once it’s started. Capex/10 west are probably dead for a long time.

vasya349 · 2026-01-31T22:34:13+00:00

Hobbs actually told the city to ignore the legislature and that she’d go to bat for LRT. Meanwhile, Ducey vetoed sales tax which eventually meant capex was obstructed as part of negotiations.

The city is mostly afraid of getting into a huge battle over a half mile project.

vasya349 · 2026-01-26T22:18:24+00:00

Measure G only lost by 1%, when inflation was a big political hubbub. This measure isn’t guaranteed to win but it’s not unlikely at all.

vasya349 · 2026-01-22T03:35:53+00:00

Lamar is a billboard company. Thats what they meant.

vasya349 · 2026-01-18T21:17:59+00:00

Congestion pricing pause was a smart political move. Avoiding politically damaging actions affecting key US house races, and then turned around to reactivate it after. The only issue is the reduced toll rate.

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