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[quote user="gardendance"] [quote user="Sam1"] Interestingly, the HOV lanes in Dallas, which are operated by Dallas Area Rapid Transit, carry twice the number of people as ride the light rail trains.  [/quote] What are the miles and cost of Dallas's HOV lanes vs the miles and cost of light rail? [/quote] Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) operates 45 miles of light rail.  It serves 35 stations with a total of 115 vehicles.  In FY08 it accounted for 19.4 million passenger trips.  The average week day ridership was 65,800, compared to an average of 29,400 on Saturday and 19,100 on Sunday.  The average subsidy per passenger was $3.01 per trip. DART and TXDOT operate 75 miles of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Lanes in the Metroplex.  They carried 48.1 million commuter trips in FY08 or nearly 2.5 times the number of people carried on the light rail system.  The average subsidy per passenger was $.18.  Yep, that's right:  18 cents verses $3.01 for the light rail. I don't have the capital costs of building the light rail lines vs. the HOV lanes, and I don't have the time now to dig them out.  But the subsidies tell the story.  It cost considerably less to build the HOV lanes than to build the light rail infrastructure.  The major reason is because the light rail system was built from scratch, although along abandoned rail lines for the most part, whilst the HOV lanes were developed on existing highways by using part of the center strip and making the other lanes a tad narrower.  The advantage of highways is that they are shared access ways, which means the total cost is spread across multiple users, whereas a rail system tends to hoist a single user that has to eat all the costs. At the end of the day, no matter how we shape the argument for light rail or public transit, most Americans prefer to commute in their cars.  They can set the temperature to their liking, listen to the radio, chose their traveling companions, and avoid many of the undesirable incidents experienced on public transit.  I rode public transit for most of my working life.  I still ride it to the University of Texas, where I participate in a continuing education program for seniors.  Of the 1,500 people who participate in the program, maybe 10 use public transit.  They drive for the reasons stated above. In FY06, according to the Department of Transportation, only 4.3 per cent of Americans used public transit to get to and from work.  Clearly, the percentages were higher in major metropolitan areas, e.g. Chicago, New York, San Francisco, etc., but for the most part Americans prefer to get to work in the family buggy.  And they will continue to do so until the cost of driving (gasoline, congestion, etc.) becomes prohibitive, which is unlikely to happen anytime soon.   And the flu threat is put to rest.
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