I recently spent a day in Bogoto, the birth place of BRT, and I find it funny how the BRTs are too crowded and overrun to effectively substitute for a robust rail system, and too "real estate needy" to effectively co-habitat with the auto. Bogoto leaned the hard way and are now in the process of engineering a replacement Metro. Sure, maybe there are routes that run parallel to the circumference of a urban core that have asphalt to spare but they are rare.

BOB2 Wrote:
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> Even Mouse is, like the proverbial "broken clock",
> right twice a day... And, this is a good one.
>
> I've done a couple of dozen analysis of the
> purported benefits of "bus only" lanes, and find
> no travel time, operational, or safety benefits.
> This is including a project I did of actually
> putting interns on hundreds of busses, at a dozen
> or so locations with high bus traffic, and/or
> proposed for Bus only lanes, to do good old
> fashioned "time and motion" studies and document
> delay by type location, and then looked at the
> conditions that a busway would purportedly create,
> and compared the two.
>
> The public erupted in Eagle Rock last night, where
> MTA has proposed taking lanes on Colorado for a
> "road diet" to create and exclusive busway. This
> "road diet" is also being proposed by the City of
> Pasadena and MTA on Colorado through already
> "gridlocked" downtown. I have studied both, and
> they produce no operating or travel time savings,
> and would create up an average of 3 minutes travel
> time delay for each auto user, increasing fuel
> consumption and greenhouse gases, and costing
> travelers somewhere near $3 million dollars a year
> in additional travel time cost....
>
> Let's see....? Umh? No benefit to buses or bus
> riders, and significant negative environmental
> impact, and more cost to those "evil" auto
> users....?
>
> Ah? I get it... Can you say "Complete Streets"
> we must "punish the evil auto" whackjob "math
> free", traffic engineering?
>
> In honesty, actually did some work some work on
> one of these "turkeys" a few years back. I did a
> ride along and analysis of this Pasadena to
> Burbank proposal a few years back, and it is
> another political "turkey" route proposed by
> Ara.....
>
> There are lots of trips along this corridor, with
> a high skilled and high value of time workforce
> (studios, medical, etc.). Unfortunately the
> corridor is geographically large, with diffused
> concentrations of origins and destinations
> (especially job concentrations), making efficient
> routing and scheduling, of a "single" BRT
> corridor, that would be competitive with auto
> travel times, to meet the travel needs of that
> user demographic, completely impossible.
>
> But hey, don't let bit of a reality check, that
> stand between an egotistical politician and your
> wallet....
>
> "We are professionals, do not try this at home!"
>
> Now, Mouse, this is "train" board, so go find
> something awful to tell us about SMART....