[J. Will]

Many of the newer LRT lines do absolutely pitiful ridership numbers. One of the newer ones out west for example is only doing 19,000-20,000 boardings on a 14-mile line. You can talk about it "not serving dense areas outside downtown blah blah blah", but that is an anemic number even for a system that were to serve NO dense areas at all (ie., not even serve the downtown).

I'm all for LRT, but it needs to be part and parcel of an overall development/transportation plan, so you don't end up with 14 mile lines carrying 19,000 people. It was known several years before the line opened where the line and it's stops were going to be. The powers-that-be should have rezoned for and encouraged high density development around every station, and re-routed the non-freeway bus routes to serve LRT stations instead of continuing to run downtown. They then could have had high frequency service right from the start instead of 5+ years down the line.

When massive amounts of money are spent on systems that do anemic per mile ridership numbers, it just gives the anti-transit folks ammunition to further their argument.