Was light rail a step backward for public transport? Electric buses are cheaper, more flexible than Canberra light rail

Burley Griffin’s 1911 award-winning design for Canberra envisaged mass transit in the form of electric trams. At the time, the major capital cities in Australia had electric trams to bring workers into the CBD from the suburbs. But in 1926, as the national capital prepared to host Parliament, the first public bus services began operating in Canberra. Buses provided cheap, reliable, flexible, and fast public transport that didn’t require the expensive and inflexible infrastructure needed to operate trams. The bus was a modern technological innovation that soon made the tram obsolete in most of the other capital cities.