Some good observations here, maybe especially the point that without a good bus network light rail can become luxury transport. But speaking as someone who som

Some good observations here, maybe especially the point that without a good bus network light rail can become luxury transport. But speaking as someone who sometimes uses rail in Los Angeles of all places (and in fact has used public transport almost exclusively for the last month), a couple of counterpoints seem worthwhile: * In a sprawl-y traffic dense city like Los Angeles -- or even in a less dense area like Utah's Wasatch Front where traffic density in a few corridors heavily outweighs capacity at peak travel times -- rail as a backbone isn't just a nicer bus, it's a more efficient bus, and probably more efficient than a bus can be short of something like LA's Metro Silver Line which utilizes the 110 to provide express service. If you want an efficient system, rail backbones might not be the only tool in your box, but they should be one of them. * The light rail systems I'm most familiar with (LA Metro and Utah TRAX & Frontrunner) definitely get used, and especially heavily used at commute times. The last few weeks when I've used the Metro I've seen the Expo and Gold line cars packed to the point of no more standing room during rush hour, and people have to wait for the next car. That's past capacity usage in a city most people don't naturally associate with public transportation. * Additionally, while I can't claim any unusual ability to discern socioeconomic status on sight, informal observations about the level of diversity I've seen on my rides suggests it's not majority middle/upper class riders. And on the LA lines that have seen falling usage (Green and Blue), the research IIRC seems to say the riders who went elsewhere got cars, suggesting they were low-income and rode for economic reasons beforehand. * The unstudied rail supporter insistent of its virtues and indifferent to other forms of public transport is NOT one that I frequently encounter. I may be wrong, my observation sample may be biased in several ways, but I would expect that if you polled a sample of rail supporters on the question of whether high-quality bus service is equally important, a majority of them would say yes. If you picked self-identifying new urbanists (presumably the people the author spends some of his own credibility on caricaturing as scare-quoted “forward-thinking” brunch people) I expect that percentage would be even higher and you'd find them more than ready to share their own ideas on last-mile problems and cost-per-passenger-mile of rail-vs-bus plus bonus topics like whether/how ride-hailing apps, electric scooters, and bicycles should fit into all this.