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Originally Posted by Cirrus
You cannot draw nationwide trends from a single city. Dallas has a stupid light rail system but the fact that Dallas built a commuter rail system out of light rail trains doesn't mean light rail is inherently bad.
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I never said light rail is inherently bad. I said focusing on light rail at the expense of bus is inherently bad. My point is Dallas has the worst bus service of the Texas cities, it gets 7 million less bus riders annually than San Antonio despite having 3 times the population, and hence it the worst overall transit ridership. You keep focusing on rail, my point is about the bus.
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Originally Posted by Cirrus
They're growing because they have very low ridership to begin with so even slight increases show up as big percentage growth. Except Seattle, which has a lot of ridership but which is also investing more in light rail right now than any US city except maybe LA.
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Even a "slight increase" would be flying in the face of what been going in the rest of the country. But Hartford, Champaign, Lansing, Pittburgh, Houston, Austin have comparable ridership to the cities previously listed. They are all average or above average compared to the rest of the US.
Code:
Seattle 224,745,200 +1.06%
Houston 89,686,400 +1.00%
Pittsburgh 64,831,200 +1.88%
Austin 29,859,200 +0.24%
Hartford 26,495,200 +0.69%
Champaign 11,784,100 +2.00%
Lansing 10,623,400 +4.00%
Do you really believe Seattle didn't have high ridership before it built rail? It's growth is just a new thing? Light rail is still a very tiny part of its overall network. It focus entirely on the light rail aspect of the system is just ridiculous.
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It may well be correct that Las Vegas was right to build BRT. That doesn't mean LRT is bad.
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No, I will say it again for the third time: Las Vegas should have built LRT. It would have been right to build LRT. Just like Seattle was right to build LRT. And Portland was right to build LRT.
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The fact that Las Vegas is experiencing a growth period right now doesn't negate the fact that, say, Portland has experienced growth periods based on rail during other times. The fact that Las Vegas is growing faster right now doesn't negate the fact that Portland has 50% more ridership.
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And it doesn't negate the fact that Las Vegas has 100-200% more ridership St. Louis, Charlotte, and Sacamento.
Again, the majority of Portland's ridership is on buses, not rail. It has one of the busiest bus systems in the US.
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Talk about specifics. Don't insist upon rules that are not real.
Now I'll add an opinion: I think anti-rail advocates claiming specific issues are inherent rules was the primary thing that set back BRT in the US for at least 20 years. I think your line of arguing is precisely responsible for BRT not catching on in the 90s. Instead of talking about the rock-solid topic of where and how BRT is appropriate, the BRT advocacy world tied itself in knots making questionable argument about how bad light rail must be. It was only once the anti-rail rhetoric cooled down that cities could honestly look at BRT without starting a war. So when I suggest you should talk about specifics and not insist on rules that aren't real, it's partly because I want BRT to succeed.
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Is that what I'm doing? Anti-rail advocacy? BRT advocacy? It seems to me you are the one making generalizations and not focusing on specifics. I give you hard statistics and you just ignore them and make generalizations. I say not to focus on BRT vs. LRT, and you keep going on about BRT vs. LRT.
BRT vs. LRT doesn't matter. Stop attributing ridership growth to rail construction. LRT doesn't increase ridership. BRT doesn't increase ridership. Seattle had high transit ridership before it built LRT. Ottawa had massive transit ridership before it built BRT. The high ridership comes first, LRT and BRT comes second.
Las Vegas should build LRT because the ridership is almost as high as Portland. Las Vegas should build LRT because it is one of the highest ridership and fastest growing systems in the USA. LRT should be built to address high transit ridership, not low ridership. LRT is for dealing with ridership growth, not ridership decline.