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this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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traingang
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The answer: Not if they have to share the road with cars.
Busses are the least pleasant, slowest, least reliable form of public transit. When people say they don’t like taking public transit, busses are why. Give me rails or give me death. BRT is the bare minimum. But if you have BRT, the main question is “Why isn’t this on rails”
Trains are very limited, they cannot serve all purposes, especially building off a car centric place like the US
Why?
The only advantage buses have over trains is their flexibility, owing to their ability to literally go off the rails.
The predictable and unchanging routes of a suburban commute call for rail service rather than bus service. And besides, any American transit project that proposes suburbanites take the bus will be dead on arrival, given the social stigma against riding the bus.
buses generally suck so much here most people think the only reason to ride them is if you are too poor to afford a car, so really it's just the usual classism.
not true in all cities though, but most
And this is a double edged sword, I’d argue it’s more of a negative than a positive. The inability of trains to go off route means they’re a more stable and reliable system. The physical infrastructure of rails is a sign of commitment by the city to having quality transit.
If you’re gonna open a business or buy a house, would you rather be on a light rail line or a bus route? Obviously it’s the light rail. A bus route could change at any time, or busses could be reallocated to higher demand lines. Rails show that there will be reliable transit to this area for the foreseeable future, which attracts both people who want to live nearby and businesses that want customers the transit will bring.
Not to mention all the other reasons rail is better, like busses being louder, rougher, more cramped, and coming with a social stigma that terrifies the White Suburbanite.
before the car lobby ruined everything we had a bunch of local trams and trolleys.
Trains are kind of expensive if you live in and are trying to get around a small to medium sized town that is underfunded by your government. BRT is fast to implement and cheaper (although yes, a lot easier to get rid of if the party in charge of your country is obsessed with austerity).
Cause we already have all the bus infrastructure (roads). Stops are pretty easy to build. I'm not talking about theoretical benefits.
You are still going to have to reconfigure highways for bus lanes and build bus terminals for a bus service that is even remotely competitive with driving. And then, you are going to have to get over the social stigma against riding buses, which is going to take a generation to fully remove.
Also roads need to be fully rebuilt about every 10 years so on the time scale these things take to change anyway we’ll have to rebuild it all anyway