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Originally Posted by Beedok
Doesn't disprove anything. Calgary shows there are other options, but not that they're the best options.
Bogata is functional as a city of 8 million with buses only, it's straining as it's well past the size where it needs a metro and is in a developping nation where funding is lower and transit usage is higher, but it hasn't completely broken down. A well designed BRT system for Calgary would probably serve the city at least as well or switching to a more robust over all bus network.
Plus the C-Train is basically a light commuter rail outside the core, as the city was built and designed around it (effectively the ideal scenario for rail transit). You can't plop that into an existing urban framework as would be needed for Hamilton, London, etc. Instead all they can really get is a glorified streetcar, which provides marginal capacity benefits while burning up political capital amongst suburban councillors and voters. Bus lanes allow for a way cheaper improvement while being far less alienating to non-transit users (the majority of voters and therefore who councillors have to appease).
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Firstly I agree that building streetcars doesn't offer enough of a benefit over buses for the cost to justify building, generally. But you can't make a blanket statement that it can only ever be a choice between buses and a full metro.
LRT rarely means streetcars, it means usually C-Train, Edmonton's LRT or Eglinton LRT - these are proper mass transit systems that provide far higher service quality than buses, look at how Ottawa's system strains with its capacity limitations. I strongly disagree that our current LRTs could be serviced equally well by bus lines, and the only way this would approach being true you would have to spend similar amounts on infrastructure. How do you suggest Calgary builds a bus line with equal service quality to our future Green Line? Bus tunnels?
The advantage LRT has is it can provide most of the benefit of a full metro while being flexible enough to make compromises in less important areas that can bring down the cost significantly. I would prefer we didn't have financial limitations and didn't have to make these compromises, but they do exist.