> people have just used "trains" to mean "good transit" and "buses" to mean "bad transit." If that's the case, then marketing better buses as something like tra

> people have just used "trains" to mean "good transit" and "buses" to mean "bad transit." If that's the case, then marketing better buses as something like trains (or, at least, something other than buses) should weaken this automatic association. > But such efforts will fall flat without meaningful investments in well-designed service: dedicated lanes, reliable peak and off-peak service, off-board fare payments, comfortable stations or enhanced shelters, or reconfigured routes, to start the list. A pretty picture alone isn't enough. I wish the author had taken this further. It's not a "myth" that people like trains over buses, it's true and for really good reasons. Buses / BRT are "bad transit", and Light Rail (or trains / subways / etc) are "good transit" the vast majority of the time it's actually deployed today. That's not "perception", it's truth. You can use marketing to hide that, but the fact will still remain. This is intentional -- BRT intentionally comes full of big compromises that Light Rail typically doesn't have. These compromises are what makes BRT cheaper than Light Rail in the first place. Transit authorities want to have their cake and eat it too. They don't want to pay for good service, but they want to pretend BRT is "like Light Rail" to make people think they've gotten good service -- that a route hasn't been shortchanged. It doesn't work that way -- claming BRT is "like Light Rail" is like slapping wheels onto a tent and saying its "like a RV". The article is right to promote actual investments in transit. But if your going through the investment of making BRT as good as Light Rail (such as 100% dedicated grade-separated routes that can't be impacted by traffic) then your going to incur most of the costs of real Light Rail anyway, so you might as well make the service real Light Rail and get the full benefits of that investment (such as faster transit, smoother rides, much larger carrying capacity, less local air pollution, etc)