Streetsblog New York City

Okay, so no mention of the fact that bids have gone out to dig up the oldest busway (north-south) and put in a subway with a greenway on top? You didn't even have to link to my post.

What's wrong with this picture? New York City is less advanced in its thinking about transportation policy and infrastructure than towns in Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador. If the self-proclaimed greatest city on Earth can't get its act together but these cities can, what hope is there?

and as a spread out city of 16 million we are already far ahead of Curitiba in the sprawl department.

Jass, I've been reading the chatter about subways in Curitiba and I'm aware it's been going on for a while, but the fact that this time they've actually put the project out to bid makes me think it's more likely to happen. The fact that they're putting in a new BRT line beforehand doesn't say much about the subway project. It makes more sense to install a busway than a subway on an untested corridor where the development is not as dense.

What was news to me when I read the article was that they're not planning to construct the subway on a parallel right-of-way to one of the BRT lines and leave the BRT there. They're planning to replace the BRT line with a subway and turn the BRT right-of-way into the cycle track that Caroline rightly observes should have been part of the project all along.

The fact that the system includes all those different buses is valuable, but it's not just "naysayers" that leave them out. BRT boosters like Walter Hook also seem to forget to mention them.

Like many commenters on Streetsblog, I am for buses and for bus improvements. I'd be happy to see a whole slew of these Curitiba-style bus improvements. Just stop calling them "BRT," or even worse, "a surface subway," or any of the other bait-and-switch tactics, and I think we'll all be happy.

There is no BRT. There is only good or bad bus service. Sometimes (apparently including your neighborhood in Boston), good bus service can be better than bad streetcar service, but generally to get good bus service you have to pay as much as you would to get good rail service.

Well, yes, rail rapid transit is not a valid reason for differentiating things. The real questions are: given a particular mobility goal, how much does it cost to build a rail solution that meets that goal, and how much to build a bus solution that meets the same goal? And how much to maintain each system?