@aristeon i read the first part of the article. It seems he is saying that the high fixed costs of the streetcar are unlikely to be recouped. A bus uses the existing road system. Railroads make sense in high densely populated environments. Maybe omaha (a lot more sparsely populated than tokyo, beijing, delhi, or paris) cannot support a streetcar.

@parasbhargava trams are for medium-low density areas, and they're cheaper than busses. You need one driver per 300-400 and more passengers vs 200 passengers for an articulated bus. Buffett doesn't take public transport, so he doesn't understand the needs of passengers. He just wants the bare minimum, and the bare minimum doesn't make more people shift from cars to public transport.

@aristeon the upfront fixed cost seems to be 300 million dollars. Operating costs are on top of this and may well be about the same as busses. An Electric bus costs 800k. And omaha has a population of 500k for the city and 800k for metro. Today The city has 135 busses. You could more than triple the number of busses for the fixed cost alone. Omahs bus ridership peaked at 5 rides per city resident in 2008 and has been declining ever since. The tram does not seem to make economic sense.

@parasbhargava plenty of medium size cities, for example Frankfurt and Dresden, have trams. The purpose of trams is to offer higher capacity than busses, which means you can have much higher frequency and capacity by employing the same number of drivers as a bus network. That in turns incentives people to ditch their cars. It's absolutely worth the investment.

@aristeon its not the population but rather density. Dresden and frankfurt have double the pop density of omaha. Your point on bad bus networks is a good one. Omaha could triple busseS for 300 million dollars. The tram is one line. Omaha, on a per capita basis has 5 pct the rides that nyc has (mostly due to density)