Shift London

[danbrotherston]

BRT can be great, or bad. Ride on the streetcar on King in Toronto, and it's easy to see that the same is true of other technologies, too.

The complaints about the tunnel were the cost, and (I suspect more so) the disruption of the construction. Plenty of people felt it should have been made costlier and more disruptive so it could also accommodate cars, though.

Yes, the system will be compromised, but not because it's BRT. This particular issue with the Richmond Street tunnel likely would have played out very similarly if council had opted for LRT, too.

I have to disagree.  It is far easier to argue that buses can and should run in mixed traffic than LRT trains.  We see this in the actual implementation of both BRT and LRT systems across the country.  I don't agree with the Toronto example, those streetcar lines pre-date modern transit.  Look at pretty much every modern LRT system installed in North America in the last 30 years.  Compare that with the bus routes labeled "BRT".

You're right, that BRT *could* be good, and I think it could even be good without a tunnel, provided we were willing to take the space from single occupant cars and put it towards the BRT, but apparently that just doesn't happen.  Of course, this is the goal of the BRT 'advocates'.  Basically reduce and diminish until there is nothing left, then point at that and claim transit doesn't work.