www.voteben2012.com http Cost and advantages of bus rapid transit A study by the United States General Accounting Office concluded that bus rapid transit presents an attractive option for mass transit and has several advantages over rail systems. Those advantages include lower capital cost for construction and a lower operating cost and also higher speeds. In comparing the capital cost of constructing a heavy rail system versus a bus system, the numbers are really astonishing: the Honolulu rail would cost as much as $300 million per mile, whereas you can improve a lane for buses on arterial streets for $1 million per mile, or you could build a new lane for buses -- the busw ay would cost about $14 million per mile, again compared to the Honolulu rail system at $300 million per mile. So it's just a huge difference. Advocates for rail like to claim that the operating costs for rail is less than that for bus rapid transit, but this is not true either. When you factor in all of the numbers, it turns out that the BRT (bus rapid transit) systems are less expensive to operate than light rail. This is partly due to their greater ridership and their greater flexibility: the buses don't have to be running all day empty the way trains will be in the nonpeak hours. Studies comparing the operating costs of rail versus bus rapid transit have been conducted in Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, San Diego and San Jose and in all cases they found on average the bus rapid transit <b>...</b>