[Doady]

The bus systems in San Antonio and Austin have better transit ridership per capita and better transit mode share than Dallas, and Dallas has the largest light rail system in the country. Rail is not the answer when ridership is too low, rail is only the answer when ridership too high.

Don't think that rail will succeed where buses fail. Dallas made that mistake, and it's only last year that they finally made major expansion of their bus services that their ridership suddenly skyrocketed. Their ridership is on pace for 14% growth in 2019, 30% growth to bus ridership specifically. It's only when then stopped focusing on rail and stopped ignoring buses that they finally achieved significant ridership growth. When ridership is too low, buses are the key, not rail. When ridership is too high, that's when you start to think about rail.

Austin's ridership grew by 6% in 2019. What exactly is the problem here? They seem to be very well already without rail and I think they need to continue whatever they are doing now.

Seattle and Las Vegas, these are the cities that should be the role models for transit for the smaller systems across the US, not Dallas. The pro-rail/anti-bus mentality only leads to the decline of transit.

Light rail and subway lines need riders. You need to build up the ridership in the corridors. You need to know where the riders are to know where the rail corridors should be. You need to build a complete bus network so that the rail lines don't exist in isolation. Austin seems committed to doing that, but they need to finish doing that before they take the next step.