Does Light Rail Pay for Itself?

"As pointed out on page 353 of The Vanishing Automobile, a major flaw in this reasoning is that light-rail operating costs are not comparable to bus operating costs. New light-rail lines "skim the cream" of transit riders because they tend to be built in the busiest transit corridors. Since costs per passenger mile depend heavily on ridership, the cost of any transit running in a busy corridor is likely to be less than the cost of a bus roaming through low-density suburbs.

...If transit agencies truly want to save money on operating costs, the data point to a much better way than spending hundreds of millions or billions on rail transit. Several transit agencies that have light rail also contract out some of their bus services to private operators."