“A new independent study, issued by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy rates Los Angeles, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Eugene and Pittsburgh as the nation’s leading cities for bus-based transportation because of their high-quality bus rapid transit systems (BRT). BRT combines the flexibility of buses with the speed and priority of light rail, but at a fraction of the cost of rail. The study rates three new BRT systems currently in planning in the San Francisco Bay Area, Montgomery County, Maryland and Chicago as the best prospects to achieve an even higher “gold-standard” BRT, something that does not currently exist in the United States.”