For more than a decade, the proponents of rail transit in Los Angeles and elsewhere have widely promulgated a set of stock arguments in favor of construction of rail transit. Although rail transit can provide advantages in some circumstances, the proponents of rail often mislead decision makers and the public by claiming nonexistent advantages for rail investments. This campaign has helped convince officials and the electorate that rail transit is a necessary component of a contemporary urban transportation system.

Left unchallenged, these arguments have gradually bored their way into conventional wisdom. However, a close examination reveals that the rhetoric of rail tends to involve sweeping assertions, uneconomic thinking, and assumptions that range from difficult to impossible to verify. We have come to think of this collection of arguments as a mythology. This paper addresses these ten myths, as follows:

Bus corridors consist of parallel bus lines collectively providing higher capacity than rail lines. Light rail lines cannot deliver more than a small fraction of the carrying capacity provided by dedicated bus rights-of-way. Only the most heavily utilized heavy rail trunks are competitive with busways, and then only at significantly higher costs.

Funds requested for rail must often be spent on rail systems, but local authorities may seek funds for a variety of purposes and have considerable discretion in how local transportation funds are spent.

Our counterarguments are often grounded in the Los Angeles experience. However, these myths tend to be advanced anywhere rail advocates congregate to pursue their special interests. Thus, we also rely on national data and explain our Los Angeles conclusions in as broad a context as possible.

There is an eleventh myth we have not addressed. We cannot. No one can, and this provides the myth with a nearly divine status among rail advocates. The eleventh myth is \u201cRail will ultimately perform as required, but only if the rail system is constructed in its entirety.\u201d Thus, no matter how dismally existing rail systems might perform, proponents have an argument for building more. We cannot disprove this argument conclusively because it is grounded in blind faith, and we cannot afford to build rail systems large enough to test it. However, we can draw informed conclusions from the best evidence available. Larger urban rail systems are not better rail systems; they are more expensive failures.