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Bus conversion that allows it to ride the rails?

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   Here in bucolic Victoria BC we are engaged in an ongoing debate about what kind of rapid transit system we need for this city of 350,000.    One of our enormous assets, and already in place though dreadfully under-used, is an existing railway track that runs from our Western  communities (where most of our rush hour traffic originates) right into the heart of downtown Victoria.  This line is now (and almost unbelievedly so) used only to allow one self propelled passenger rail car to leave from downtown Victoria in the a.m., and make its way up Vancouver Island to Comox/Courtenay, a small city a couple of hundred kilometers north of us, before returning to Victoria in the afternoon.  This is just for tourists, since it runs contrary to rush hour motor vehicle traffic, and in any case has no significant capacity.    At one point early on in this debate, a letter to the editor talked about the possibility of using transit buses which are also able to drive onto railway tracks, by lowering their steel wheels (or raising their rubber ones) depending on whether they were riding the rails or a paved roadway.     This system would operate as follows:  For the morning rush hour, these buses would start out in the western communities by getting onto the railway line (before or after loading up with passengers) and then riding the rails directly into the city, thereby reducing what is now an hour's drive by highway into probably a 20 or 25 minute railroad trip.  Upon arriving in downtown Victoria, they would disgorge their passengers, and then drive OFF the rails and onto the regular road system, where they would then drive back out to the western communities via the regular highway system, before re-mounting the rails and taking another load of commuters into downtown Victoria again.      The beauty of this process is that because our rush hour traffic is overwhelmingly west-to-east in the morning (and vice versa in the afternoon) these buses would be able to ride back out to the western communities against the rush hour traffic (meaning with no east-west rush traffic to slow them down) so they could make the outbound (return) trip on the regular road/highway in about half an hour.  This removes the need to build a second railway line parallel to the existing line (to accomodate a normal light rail system), since none of these outgoing buses would have to pass ingoing buses in order to get back out to the suburbs for another inbound ride.     The cost implications of building a second railway line are huge.  The existing line's right of way is fairly narrow, not to mention that if a second line were built it would also require building new, duplicate overhead crossings at several points.  As noted above, just using a single rail line to get commuter traffic into the city, and then using the existing road system to get them back out for another run, eliminates the need for this second (and highly expensive) railbed.    So... my questions to all you rapid transit buffs are:<ol><li>Is there such a thing as a bus that can also operate on rail lines?</li><li>If so, are they being used in the manner I have described above, anywhere in the world that you know of?, and ... </li><li>Any idea how much it would cost to buy one of these buses, or failing that, to convert a regular (probably deisel) commuter/passenger bus into a hybrid that can ride the rails as well? </li></ol> I look forward to hearing from you, or to answer further questions about our situation here in Victoria, if any.  Thanks
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