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Originally Posted by Andy6
I just took the 58 Dakota Express bus from Osborne village home to St. Vital. I honestly don't see how a streetcar or subway would improve on that, except in terms of frequency. I would think that by far the optimal way to spend any transit money that might be available would be on things like a few dedicated busways and better frequency (and also better connections and waiting areas), not on rail-based systems that are wildly expensive and nowhere near as flexible as buses.
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It is in the inflexibility that you get benefits, as it provides a signal to the market that high quality transit service will be in place at a particular point for a long period of time.
This is why that Portland, Oregon with one of the best bus systems on the continent, sees a majority of new development (intensification) around either the streetcar or LRT lines.
The one thing BRT doesn't have going for it is our cultures bia's towards rail, that is either imparted to infants/toddlers in rail centric children's entertainment, or is a natural disposition due to some fluke of evolutionary biology.
Note a couple points up that I advocated for spending the current money on:
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100 intersections with transit skip lanes in all four directions for that much (while adding signal priority to many others), and it would improve flow and speed dramatically.
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