Orphan Road

"Bus Rapid Transit" (BRT) was never a solution, and it's even less so in the current era of peak oil. This point could be debated endlessly on the technical merits, if you ignore the proven long-term economy of rail transit compared with buses, or you could simply look at the implementation.

In Curitabo they're building rail transit, admitting they should have done it years ago. In Miami, people who ride the rail to the end of the line and then get on the BRT agree that it stinks. In Honolulu the BRT turned out to be too big for the streets. Pittsburgh has had buses running in dedicated right-of-way for decades, but nobody cites Pittsburgh as a great success story. In Boston BRT is turning out to be more expensive than upgrading existing rail lines. In Oakland the effort to build BRT is bankrupting the transit system.

There's a place for buses. There are places for express buses. But BRT is, basically, just wrong- too big for the little tasks, and too small for the big tasks.

To be sure, we haven't heard the end of this. There will always be some damn fool who thinks installing the rails is the most expensive part of building transit, or that what we need now is the ability to discontinue service without abandoning a costly investment in infrastructure. But in the real world, stick a fork in it- it's done.