What's the alternative to light rail?

To substantially reduce road traffic, you need to offer people an alternative that is cheaper and/or faster and/or more convenient.

Since most of the cost of a car is sunk costs (you have to pay your insurance & depreciation on your car whether you use it to commute or not), if there's free parking at work the car is going to be the cheapest option for most people.

So either you have to substantially increase the cost of driving (aka tolls), or you have to give them an option that's faster and/or more convenient. A bus using the same roads as cars can never be faster or more convenient.

Bus rapid transit (buses on dedicated roadways) may be an option, but a good BRT (aka one without traffic lights) isn't substantially cheaper than LRT.

> It isn't flexible

That part may be a feature. A bus stop next to your apartment building might be gone next week, but a light rail station is staying put and developers can more confidently build "transit-oriented" neighborhoods (denser, less parking, etc.).

> For some odd reason politicians and many people are hung up on light rail and it has the worst cost structure of all mass transit options.

For many people, Light Rail (or trains / subways) are the only decent mass transit they have ever experienced in the US.

Every single major and minor city has a bus system. Most of them are nearly useless, often intentionally so by design. It's natural for people to demand something useful, and light rail is nearly universally more useful than busing (including BRT) in any given market.

> It isn't flexible and its cost per mile is staggering let alone the cost of maintenance.

Those are benefits of light rail, not drawbacks. The higher costs and inflexibility of light rail represents an authentic long-term commitment to good useful transit in that area.

To replicate that value with a Bus system requires you to build grade separated, dedicated right of way. Which is where 90% of Light Rail's cost comes from. So if your going to spend that money, you might as well put in real Light Rail and get all of the benefit.

> Every single major and minor city has a bus system. Most of them are nearly useless, often intentionally so by design.

European here. Why would someone intentionally design a useless bus system?

In a lot of US cities, (particularly the mid-size and smaller cities that don't have Trains/Subways/Light Rail) busing isn't treated as transportation, it's treated like a welfare program, similar to Food Stamps / EBT or Section 8 / subsidized housing.

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/10/9118199/public-transportation-s...

This is compounded by the fact that in most of these types of cities, most of the jobs and/or the "best" jobs (highest paying, most stable, best health insurance benefits, etc) are located in the suburbs, where transit is least available. Often these places can "opt-out" of transit altogether.

http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/stephen-hender... (subheading: "Designed for failure")

Are you really saying that given the choice between a train system that costs X and an identical one that costs 2X, the 2X one is better?

No, I'm saying there is no such thing as "two identical systems where one costs X, and the other costs 2X".

The "X cost system" is worse than the "2X system". That's why it's cheaper.

The "X" system is slower or carries less passengers or runs less often or goes to less places, or gets stuck in traffic, or is less reliable, or changes it's routes.

--

It's like comparing a WalMart Netbook to a MacBook Pro and saying "they're both 'identical' computers, why are we spending 2X on the MacBook Pro?".

We spend the extra cash because they aren't identical, the 2X one is better.

You said the cost itself was a benefit. What you're describing here is when the extra cost allows for other features which are benefits.

With your notebook computer analogy, the extra cost of a MacBook Pro is not a benefit. The benefits are all the various things that are better about it, with the extra cost being worth it to have those benefits. The only way you'd say the extra cost of a MacBook Pro was itself a benefit would be if you wanted to show off how rich you are or something equally silly.

The context of calling the cost a benefit was in picking between reasonable and competitively-priced options. You're not arguing against the point that it's a commitment to better transit, you're trying to pull a cheap gotcha.

I'm not trying to pull a gotcha anything. I'm legitimately trying to understand the point that was being made. The point looked to me to be that spending more money is by itself a benefit because it represents a greater commitment. I then verified that I was understanding correctly, and was told that this was not in fact what was intended.

No, the comment is saying that front-loading a large cost is good, because once you make that right of way you'll have good service that's much safer from budget issues.

What's the solution, if not more trains or more frequent train service? Take a commute to the South Bay from my neighborhood: a little over 50 miles on three interstate highways (I-580, I-680, I-880), which takes 2+ hours during rush hours, due entirely to road congestion. How do you fix this? Bike lanes?

Increase cost of "sprawl" and car ownership - increase price of parking, add tolls, increase property tax for "sprawl". Decrease price of more dense, transit oriented (ie development where walking or taking the bus is just as convenient as driving a car) - get rid of parking minimums, make FHA loans available on condos, add bike lanes, add transit.

So, essentially, make my life and home even more expensive, pushing me further and further out into a cheaper area, making my (still car-centric) commute even longer?

I'd love it if you could wave a magic wand and simply "make" bikeable-to-work housing in the Bay Area more affordable, but good luck with that.

Yes, exactly, increase cost of sprawl.

BUT also decrease cost of density... pretty hard considering the momentum behind sprawl. Sprawl looks less attractive when it's more expensive. Density looks more attractive when it's cheaper.

I'd love it if I could wave a magic wand too. This is going to be a generation long effort. But it's taken a generation long effort to build car land.