[ssiguy]

The advantages of LRT over buses is greatly diminishing with the advent of articulated battery buses. They are much quieter, smoother, faster accelerating, more reliable, are cheaper to run, and have much lower maintenance costs than their diesel counterparts. Unlike LRT they also don't require separate maintenance facilities, track and overhead wire replacement/repair, are more reliable when a accident along the rail route occurs, can be interlined including with commuter buses, are much more easily expandable, and don't have the overhead wire visual pollution of LRT catenary.

Rail based transit will always offer a smoother and quieter ride but battery buses help reduce the difference and especially with BRT due to having their own ROW which is very well maintained. It's often not the bus that's uncomfortable but rather the roads they travel on. This is why travelling on highways is always more comfortable than only regular urban streets even when using the same type of bus.

If spending a King's Ransome on transit expansion {especially for more mid-size cities} is it better to build just one line serving a limited number of passengers and destinations or using that same amount to serve huge quadrants of the city and tens of thousands more people and hundreds of more destinations? LRT can be great and is often the best choice but so is BRT, it all depends on the situation which has huge variables. However, cities shouldn't be spending a fortune on LRT just for the penis envy idea of "look Mom we have LRT too!". One only has to look to the US to see how such a mentality can work out. When this happens, the transit expansion proposals are being presented by politicians for the developers who bribe them and not on the needs of the travelling public.