[llamaorama]

I think what the article really means to say is that putting too many resources in a handful of high-capacity transit routes in decentralized places where transit isn't really useful to begin with does not a good backbone for a city make, just like how highways and suburbs of the 1950's put concentrated cities and downtowns out of business.

I used to, and still am, a fan of light rail and like so many guys I think trains are sort of cool. But with some rational thinking, its not all that.

I'm not a planner or know a lot about this subject, but if I had to come up with an idea for a transit upgrade to a sprawling city, I would begin with strategically located bus-only roadways that bypass bottlenecks along corridors where multiple routes converge and form trunks. Then, I would look at routes which either were too sparsely utilized or too crowded and decide on alternatives.

For a crowded line, light rail running on whatever ROW type circumstances called for would be alright. A Metro or Subway would probably never be needed outside of super-dense cities or if the planned route ended up being all grade-separated and something like Vancouver Skytrain made sense just because you could safely automate it and save money on operation costs.

For routes where the average vehicle was carrying a sub-optimal number of riders I would switch to mini-buses or jitney vans. Of course I dislike, aesthetically speaking, those "short bus" vehicles, and would prefer if one was designed that looked like and was boarded in the manner of a urban bus, with a flat front and tall windows. Anyways, these would use HOV/HOT lanes on highways and serve places like office parks, and be instituted or curtailed based on demand and seasonal factors.