[exit2lef]

It has become somewhat common to criticize DART as an example of rail gone wrong. Jeff Speck did it in Walkable City, Christof Spieler did it in Trains, Buses, People, and now it has occurred in this thread. I don't have enough experience with the system to have a strong opinion, but even if I were convinced that DART's approach to light rail is wrong, that doesn't even come close to negating every light rail implementation in every city.

In the list of cities previously cited with transit ridership gains, it's not entirely correct to say they are all bus-based. Several, like Pittsburgh and Seattle, mix light rail and buses. I've seen officials from Seattle boast about how their approach has been focused primarily on buses, but usually that claim has come from personnel affiliated with King County Metro, who understandably talk about what's under their direct control. Seattle's popular and growing light rail is under the jurisdiction of a different regional agency, Sound Transit.

I don't have a strong opinion about Las Vegas, but it seems to me that what has been called a "rail obsession" is more often just a realistic acknowledgment that buses aren't trains and can't do everything trains can do, no matter how much they are gussied-up with BRT features, many of which can easily be undone when "BRT creep" sets in. Sometimes, a bus is still just a bus in the passengers' minds, no matter how much planners want them to see it differently.