4 ms·

Your general points are reasonable, but the arguments you're making are absurd. > the opportunity cost paid by riders waiting for the construction There is ab

Your general points are reasonable, but the arguments you're making are absurd. > the opportunity cost paid by riders waiting for the construction There is absolutely no reason that a city can't deploy a BRT system in the short-term while building the light rail. This is in fact a common strategy. > a light rail option that doesn't have right of way is far worse (economically speaking) and will be far less popular than a bus fleet that does. I agree that right-of-way is important, you are attacking a straw man. > electric buses, powered by stored-energy batteries, become arguably "good enough". But that's less an energy-efficiency concern Energy efficiency will always be a concern, regardless of the method of generation. But! It's significantly easier today to deploy light rail powered by renewable sources than a comparable bus system. Today the gold standard for buses is CNG, which, while much less polluting than gasoline, is still a non-renewable resource.

asdff 7y ago
LADOT is rolling out electric buses already to test them on certain routes at least. Personally I think light rail is a stop gap measure. Light rail in LA is slow and crowded and you can only make stations so long which limits how many cars you can have on a train. Running it at grade doesn't help either and limits the minimum headway that the system can achieve. Heavy rail is a better option. It's faster and transports more people at once than any BRT or LRT, and is costlier of course. But as they say, the fool pays twice.
otterley 7y ago
The gold standard for buses today is electric: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/how-china-charged-into-the-electric-bus-revolution/559571/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/how-china-cha... I still don't see the point in having light rail, if bus thoroughfares with right-of-way are good enough for customers.

asdff 7y ago

LADOT is rolling out electric buses already to test them on certain routes at least. Personally I think light rail is a stop gap measure. Light rail in LA is slow and crowded and you can only make stations so long which limits how many cars you can have on a train. Running it at grade doesn't help either and limits the minimum headway that the system can achieve. Heavy rail is a better option. It's faster and transports more people at once than any BRT or LRT, and is costlier of course. But as they say, the fool pays twice.

otterley 7y ago

The gold standard for buses today is electric: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/how-china-charged-into-the-electric-bus-revolution/559571/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/how-china-cha... I still don't see the point in having light rail, if bus thoroughfares with right-of-way are good enough for customers.