Transit Shows Promise", the US FTA provided funding for the construction of HRT and LRT at that time, but very constrained of BRT. The FTA "rather focuses on obtaining and sharing information on projects being pursued by local transit agencies". In spite of this different funding capital costs of BRT systems were lower in many US communities than those of LRT systems and performance often similar. The GAO stated, BRT systems were generally more flexible compared to LRT and faster.„While transit officials noted a public bias toward Light Rail, research has found that riders have no preference for rail over bus when service characteristics are equal.“ Comparison with heavy rail Fjellstrom/Wright distributed a map of the mid-term goal to expand Bogota's BRT system TransMilenio „so that 85% of the city's 7 million inhabitants live within 500m distance to a TransMileneo line. Such an expansion program would be unrealistic for a rail-based MRT-system.“ (Bogota's mayor 2001): Comparison with conventional bus services Conventional scheduled bus services use general traffic lanes, which can be slow due to traffic congestion, and the speed of bus services is further reduced by long dwell times. In 2013, the New York City authorities noted that buses on 34th Street, which carried 33,000 bus riders a day on local and express routes, traveled at , only slightly faster than walking pace. Even despite the implementation of Select Bus Service (New York City's version of a bus rapid transit system), dedicated bus lanes, and traffic cameras on the 34th Street corridor, buses on the corridor were still found to travel at an average of 4.5 mph. In the 1960s, Reuben Smeed predicted that the average speed of traffic in central London would be without other disincentives such as road pricing, based on the theory that this was the minimum speed that people will tolerate. When the London congestion charge was introduced in 2003, the average traffic speed was indeed which was the highest speed since the 1970s. By way of contrast, typical speeds of BRT systems range from . Cost The capital costs of implementing BRT are lower than for light rail: a study by the United States General Accounting Office from 2000 found that the average capital cost per mile for busways was $13.5 million while light rail average costs were $34.8 million. However, the total investment varies considerably due to factors such as cost of the roadway,