re: CATS board, Metro Council to weigh in on proposed $50 million express bus routes in BR

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To fairly answer that question, you'd need to know how many workers would use the line to ride to work at LSU and Downtown and then back.

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That's my question. There are almost certainly a large number of LSU support staff that live in NBR. My question is why do we need a new bus line if they're able to make it to work already? It's not as if LSU is having trouble hiring because people can't make it to campus.

This is pretty amusing.

Tiger Trails (LSU’s student fee covered and free to the public bus service) already has a route that runs from 3rd/north into campus, and a night route that also runs past government st to campus until between 1-3am

They average around 100 to 150 passengers a day, between them, on a system that runs 10 to 14k passengers a day during the semester.

CATS also uses Tiger Trails passenger counts of LSU students/faculty/staff and free riders to pad their numbers, ultimately for federal money. Roughly 50% of their passenger count is from a private contractor. 2

Finally, the electric buses are closer to 800k, each. They’re stating what they’ll pay out of pocket vs government money.

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the transit line is estimated to cost somewhere between $40 million and $50 million.

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Ignoring the merits of the project itself temporarily, how the hell does it cost $50 million to set up a bus route?

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I don't understand either. Even with the cost of a few new buses (not sure why their existing buses are incompatible with these routes) and a couple of sheltered stops, it should be a fraction of that.

Maybe try googling what bus rapid transit actually is. This wouldn’t be simply setting up a new bus route.

I have no idea about the merits, but the cost doesn’t seem crazy to me.