We got the first to replace our 10-year-old, gas-powered Subaru, and after only two years of driving, the E.V. has created fewer emissions over its lifetime than if we had kept the old car. It will take our second E.V. only four years to create fewer emissions over its lifetime than the 2005 hybrid Prius it replaced. That’s counting the production of the batteries and the emissions from charging the E.V.s, and the emissions payback time will only continue to drop as more emissions-free wind and solar power comes onto the grid and battery technology improves.
The author of course did not look at having one less car, and substituting an ebike or mass transit for part of their driving, which would have lowered emissions by a larger amount.
Trollybusses are indeed an excellent filler in transit quality between a bus and a light rail solution. An ideal metropolitan mass transit solution has tiers. The first tier is “Walkable 15 minute neighborhoods,” the second is “A bus to get you to the trollybus,” the third is “A trollybus to get you to the light rail system,” and the fourth is “A light rail system to get you to the next town over.” And obviously, you don’t have to hit every tier in the mass transit scheme to get from your current location to your final destination, but the mix of types of transit helps each type of transit support eachother, allowing transit users to get from place to place quickly and cheaply. My argument is mainly “you start with a bus” because the implementation cost is low. It’s a bridge solution that helps you get from your current level of mass transit to your ideal goals, and one that you’ll likely want to make use of even when your ideal transit solution is implemented, as it has a degree of flexibility that no other solution offers.
The other thing is buses can even make sense in exurbs and even rural areas. I grew up in a rural area in Appalachia that implemented a county level bus system that taxpayers immediately argued was going to be a waste of money, but when it was implemented, the buses out in the most remote portions of the county saw the most usage as it allowed elderly passengers, and very poor passengers, to go visit their relatives in town, as well as anyone with a broken down car to make a trip to AutoZone to get the part they needed to get their car back on the road again. A lot of the time, it’s not just about making it possible for people to get to city services, it’s also about getting city services out to the people.