I think this article conflates two different concepts. One is the physical mode (bus vs light rain vs heavier track/subway), and the other the purpose (rapid tr

I think this article conflates two different concepts. One is the physical mode (bus vs light rain vs heavier track/subway), and the other the purpose (rapid transit vs not). You can use buses to implement some form of rapid transit (the article's references to Brampton and Mississauga for example are both implementing Bus Rapid Transit systems). In these systems, you have buses running effectively the same role as LRT, except on a dedicated road surface instead of rails. BRTs are great, but cannot scale up as much as LRTs. There may be a reasonable argument that some of the cities with lower performing LRTs maybe should have implemented BRTs as a better investment. However, I think that BRTs more or less cause all the same issues that the author is worried about LRTs about. Fundamentally, this is about the relative investment that a city should make into building concentrated high capacity lines vs spreading low capacity coverage over area. Light Rail vs Buses is a red herring.