Bogota’s Bus Rapid Transit System Eyed By U.S. Urban Planners

[CentralCoaster]

3. I'm skeptical of Bus Rapid Transit, don't believe it encourages smart growth at all.

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Stateside, it seems to always be favored by rail-haters as a better solution, but more of an excuse to widen highways and perpetuate bad motor vehicle-based planning and sprawl.

In contrast, rail transit is an expression of permanence and commitment to plan, garnering greater confidence in investors that a decade or two out people will still be using that line and not some new highway interchange to do their shopping.

In California's Bay Area exurbs there's a lot of resistance to investment in rail transit, as there is elsewhere.

BRT is not an alternative; it's a perpetuation of the problem of committing resources to lanes of highway instead of to ribbons of rail with far greater efficiency.

www.coastalrail.org