> Low-income people who use public transit ride the bus, which costs half as much per passenger mile Where are you seeing that? From your link: > Bus systems

> Low-income people who use public transit ride the bus, which costs half as much per passenger mile Where are you seeing that? From your link: > Bus systems have the lowest cost per vehicle revenue mile and revenue hour, $3.1 and $45, respectively, but the highest cost per thousand passenger mile, $616.4. Regardless, the issues you point out are largely the same ones that rail proponents are looking to solve. For many, the ubiquity of road-based transport is the problem, and in any case what really matters is the cost of new development, not the existing volume. Metro rail design and engineering in the United States compared to other countries is historically pretty subpar in a way that road development is not so it makes some sense to push for the low-hanging fruit here, population density issues notwithstanding. Your comment about poor people not being able to live near rail stations is interesting because metro light rail typically cuts through urban inner cities that are not affluent to begin with. So rail has a strong gentrifying effect. If you're right about buses being the practically superior transit system, maybe the best thing we can do politically is figure out where all the perceived value of rail is coming from and how to translate that to the bus system.