Which of these two images do you prefer?

If the results of an Australian study are right, you probably picked the light rail. But why?

According to an article on the Atlantic's City Lab, it probably only has to do with perception. Trains are sleek and modern, buses are not. (This despite the fact that trains once crisscrossed virtually every modern city before they were replaced with buses.) About 55 percent of respondents to the University of Australia Business School study preferred light rail. Another 18 percent chose an older picture of light rail. Just 17 percent of respondents chose the bus - or more correctly bus rapid transit service, or BRT. Even less chose an image of an older bus.

Many cities are beginning to see the benefits of BRT, including, potentially, Spokane. BRT vehicles travel in their own lane and are free from traffic jams and traffic lights. For city and transit officials, however, the biggest benefit of BRT compared to light rail is price. It's much cheaper to run a bus than laying track for a train, and performance doesn't suffer. New routes proposed in Spokane Transit Authority's Moving Forward plan are like BRT (though not fully BRT), including the Central City Line, and service to Eastern Washington University, Liberty Lake and along the Division and Monroe corridors.

Still, the pollsters were perplexed about the results. However, as they dug down into the data, they realized that perceptions toward the bus changed for the better the more recent someone had a ridden a bus.

"In other words, people might indeed have an initial tendency to dislike the bus, but once they get on board and find it's not so bad, those feelings start to change," the article said.

Or, in other other words, if STA wants (or needs) more people to vote for the April 28 ballot measure funding the Moving Forward plan, they need to get more people on the bus.