The thing which bothers me about all this is that while you can make a lot
of theoretical arguments about the performance of high-quality bus routes
(using large, modern vehicles, fitted out with good furniture, exclusively
using prioritised bus lanes and busways, with relatively infrequent and
posh-looking stops and well-trained drivers - basically, a bus that looks
like a tram; what Clive calls Rapid Transit on Rubber Tyres), nobody's
really tried it, so there isn't any hard data.

There is one in Ottawa, with a dedicated busway from the city centre
to the out-of-town railway station (and beyond, but I didn't venture
further). The buses are trying to be trams, but the dedicated roads
are wider than a tramway would be. They run on normal roads in the
centre.

There's one in the UK as well - in Runcorn. Sadly, it was never
allowed to develop into what it could have been, with off-bus
ticketing, high-quality vehicles and more railway-station-like stops,
and is now more like a traditional bus service that happens to use a
large proportion of dedicated "track".

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
To e-mail use neil at the above domain