Quote - First do buses well

NZ in Tranzit - "Quoted fare"

"We realized early in this discussion that a well-performing basic bus system is the essential backbone of any successful transit system around the country or around the world," he said. "To focus on the higher-capacity, more exciting things, like rail, without paying attention to a bus system, we'd be doomed for failure."
- Mike McAnelly, Jacobs Engineering - planning new regional public transport system for Tulsa 



Note; I like the thinking! But they have a long way to go!  

 Tulsa Transit, serving a city the size of Christchurch (with metropop area twice the population again),  only carries 2.5 million passengers per year - not untypical of the USA for smaller cities, especially those in South eastern states. Ironically the actual farebox recovery in the USA is very small, with taxes typically paying around 80% of the cost of each passenger boarding compared to between 40-70% in Canada, Australia or NZ (CANZ) in cities over 200,000.