The list of things that go wrong perfectly matches a lot of what SMART got wrong, including a failed operations plan and insufficient service levels.

And, Alon Levy...whom I've followed for years. Yes, he could do an article this length entirely on the costs, the waste, and the flawed decision making and contracting processes that drive our exorbitant US project costs, and Alon Levy has done just that. But, this is also a pretty good synopsis of many of the stupid reasons, the stupid reasoning, and political dysfunction that helps to explain why our costs are so high.

And, in the end his point about getting what we pay for is spot on.

I was asked to do a "quick and dirty" analysis on how much we spend compared to our transit trip share in the early 2000's, for my management. I looked at it from the perspective of the percentage of the US GDP "budget" share that we spend on surface transportation (cars, highways, parking lots, insurance, gas, track, trains, buses, bus drivers, bikes, bike lanes, Amtrak, etc...). We spent something like 850 billion total in the year we looked at (97 IIRC?) and about 27 billion, or just over 3% of that total was for the transit component. And, low and behold, go figure... that as a result transit and intercity rail carry about 3% of total trips....

The train hating trolls and nimby's won't like it, too much reading and too many big words and too much math, it's the same with the average politician, too. But, for folks who want to really know what's wrong, and a good explanation of what SMART got wrong, and why...? Or, for folks who maybe want to know how to fix some of these things, it's a great article.