Unsurprisingly, since they are almost the only choice, the City picked Parsons Brinckerhoff for its $9.7 million transit study. Parsons had earlier handled both the 1992 rail study and also the study for the now defunct BRT program.
Parsons Brinckerhoff hopes to produce a preliminary list of alternatives by November this year and detailed estimates of costs and ridership in April 2006.
Interestingly, Parsons Brinckerhoff wrote in the MIS/Draft EIS of the Bus/Rapid Transit(BRT) program of August 2000 that, The light rail transit alternative was dropped because subsequent analyses revealed that Bus/Rapid Transit using electric-powered vehicles could accomplish virtually all of the objectives of light rail transit at substantially less cost.
Bear in mind that HOT lanes are a BRT variant.