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Over and over every time the legislature is in session we hear the same arguments when rail transit funding comes up: Buses are so much more flexible and useful than trains, so therefore let's not fund the train, buses are better, we should fund the buses instead.
As soon as the rail transit bills are defeated the same public servants cut the bus transit, yet again.
A bus system is unlikely to be well funded. Why? Because buses are uncomfortable, expensive in time, badly scheduled, expensive fares, exploited by advertising and have a myriad of usability problems from managers that have no interest in making a working public transit system and as a result buses are not used by any except by those with no choice. People with no choice do not vote and do not matter in our political system. This is the hard political calculus and its result is that bus money gets cut.
Rails are much more comfortable, usually better usability, better schedules and used by more people, people with power and people that vote. A rail using population will push for more resources much more effectively than the people stuck without choice on the bus. And this is why those with an agenda to privatize public resources and remove public infrastructure dislike trains, a train riding public will push for public resources. The bus riding public is comparatively mute, powerless, easily ripped off and exploited. Train riders are mean bastards that might kick you out of public office and/or send you to jail, kind of like people that drop with freeway bridges into the Mississippi River, they get cranky and tend to do something about it.
If you were a typical venal, scheming, kickback grabbing, 40% elected, Mccain buttkissing Republican Governor would you fund a rail system? No, you would not. Instead you would say, "Let's put more money into the bus system that can flexibly change routes", and then cut the bus system budget as soon as the train bill is dead. And you would cut transit even after an over-ride of your veto with the old line item veto trick and put in incompetent managers to make sure the transit system does not deliver.
The transit 1/4 cent metro-wide tax does not pay for the transit system, probably not half. But as the artificial transit crisis of collapsing bridges brought on by lack of road maintenance sucks up the general fund and the bonding debt for road building sucks up future revenue there will be more cuts to transit and the bus system. Out state representatives will now cut Metro Transit allocations from the general fund because they already passed the 1/4 cent.
The pipe dreams of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) are just that, no buses will run, those are just road projects. The rail will be stalled and delayed and the transit tax will barely support a truncated bus system. Hooray, just like all the "transit money" from the last transit state constitutional amendment, there are only cuts ahead, road construction and more billionaire controlled public funded stadiums.