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[quote user="John WR"] Well, yes, Sam.  BRT does have a variety of flavors.  Yes, you can put up special bus shelters and paint buses special colors and given them traffic controls so the lights will stay green for them.  But if they run on city streets they will have to share the streets with traffic.  When the streets are gridlocked the buses, which are a lot bigger than cars, will be gridlocked too.   Even special bus lanes will get backed up with a lot of other buses going on other routes.  But what you will not have is rapid transit.  Anyone who says that this is rapid transit is trying to fool all of the people all of the time.   Of course you can build dedicated bus ways and have true bus rapid transit.  But I still ask where the big cost savings is if you have dedicated busways and have to buy the land and pave the streets just for the busways. John [/quote] The point that I have apparently not been able to get across is that there are numerous places in the United States where BRT can operate on existing roadways, with some technological improvements, and not be mired in gridlock. The proposed route in Austin, TX, is not encumbered by gridlock. RBT is the best solution according to the professional transport planners. The cost of the proposed RBT in Austin is $1.3 million per mile. The cost to build a light rail system is $48 to $50 million a mile. One does not even need to do the math to understand that the BRT is a much better alternative than laying a light rail line along Lamar Blvd. in Austin.  Or Preston Road in Dallas.  There is no way that the operating cost spread between the light rail and the BRT will recapture the capital cost differentials. The math does not work. This year I have traveled to San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Jacksonville, Miami, Key West, and New Orleans. Plus numerous trips to Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso and Brownsville. In most of the locations that I have visited, I have sampled the public transport. I am too cheap, erh frugal, to pay for a taxi. Here is something that I have learned from my travels. The United States is a very large country. And it is a very diverse country with diverse transport needs. What is a good public transport solution in Texas may not be a good solution in New Jersey and vice versa. A person living in Texas who thinks that he knows what is best for Chicago has a fool for a guide. And the same thing applies to people outside of Texas who believe that they know what would work best in Texas or anywhere else outside of where they live and work.
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