You've obviously thought about this a lot and these are obviously far from trivial optimization problems to select between. The problem with the 2,000 person tr

You've obviously thought about this a lot and these are obviously far from trivial optimization problems to select between. The problem with the 2,000 person train calculation is that the train is already full by the time it hits downtown, by virtue of the nature of the route it travels which was defined in 1960. It's not able to pick up anywhere near 2,000 people at the downtown stops during rush hour, so that 78 passenger bus with a route designed to start where and when it is needed ends up being far more competitive with the nominally more load carrying train than the simple calculation suggests.