Buses are one of those solutions that look great on paper. Proponents of buses point to flexibility of routing, lack of new infrastructure installation, cost, etc. It's very difficult to argue with any of their points.

And yet, bus transit is invariably a dismal experience, simply the worst. I think it's because a bus gives you the worst of both worlds — the stop and go headaches of personal automobiles, and the forced interaction with strangers on trains. (This isn't a real problem on a train, however, because one can usually simply walk away from an unwanted interaction.)

This interpretation assumes that buses don't have their own right-of-way. Give buses their own lane, and suddenly they start looking like very cheap, quick-to-implement light-rail substitutes...

No, they still have terrible capacity. Does nobody do basic math anymore?

And having bus lanes, which can still be blocked, does not make them cheap light-rail. You also need to upgrade all lights at intersections to allow the bus to override the current signal.

Great suggestion! Add light timing to the list.

I'm not sure I understand the "terrible capacity" argument. An articulated bus can seat 50-60 people without standing passengers. Are you suggesting that a light rail train holds more? This seems like a solvable problem - just run buses at twice the frequency, no? The point is the right-of-way prevents them from getting stuck in traffic without having to lay expensive off-grade track.

Until some bum sits on the rails lines just on the other side of where it crosses the surface road throwing god-knows-what about at 4:30pm as they have taken to recently at the Bundy crossing. This causes massive gridlock and has made the westside much worse in terms of traffic since the light-rail went in.