David P. Morgan once opined in the pages of TRAINS many years ago that rail transit is not always appropriate for every situation. A bus operation might be a better fit when trying to get a completely new operation off the ground. There is only a finite amount of dollars available and it isn’t unreasonable to try to get the most bang for the buck, even if it means a rubber-tire operation rather than rail.
I agree. Construction of the LAC Metro Orange Line BRT used a former railroad ROW. The only nearby high frequency transit corridor is insanely congested Ventura Blvd, so in retrospect the Orange Line success may have been natural.
Fortunately, the design of this BRT line does not seem to have precluded eventual conversion to rail; time will tell.
If Los Angeles county is a guide, BRT may be a strategy to pacify politician ‘luddites’. Extension of the Purple Line subway was (and still is) being opposed by hysterical NIMBYs due to potential methane issues. The Orange Line legislation prevented rail transit except for ‘deep subway’ but that restriction has been recently repealed.
I suspect that for a very significant percentage of communities that could benefit from reduced-time point-to-point travel, BRT is by far the preferable alternative. That is particularly true for services that largely or wholly involve morning and evening commuting service, as opposed to distributed ‘rapid transit’ that is supposed to run on frequent headway and provide lower spot air pollution.
Most of the arguments GM brought up in the Fifties regarding advantages of coaches over ‘classical’ interurbans also apply in some measure to BRTs. In particular the very substantial stranded cost of new (or made-as-new) rail equipment that is only gainful a few hours or trips per day cannot usually be spread over other routes or services, including charter service, as can be very simply achieved with even fairly large coaches.
At least some of the additional advantage of rail in personnel cost can be expected to be reduced or even eliminated as autonomous operation, or semi-autonomous ‘slaving’, becomes commonplace.
One thing I have been expecting to see … admittedly for a much longer time, and with the prospect of considerable additional ‘waiting’ … is the use of hybrid buses that are true dual-mode: capable of running on external power from some combination of contact and induction charging, with engines that can run continuously at best efficiency and throttle up and down independent of applied load, to reduce harmful emissions to an absolute minimum. This combined with the ability of autonomous assistance to handle large vehicles with greater moment-to-moment safety makes the remaining advantages of de