Also I can confirm that Philly's combination of light and heavy rail will get you from many places in the city and suburbs to downtown faster than driving. Buses do an adequate job of last mile in the suburbs but even several miles outside the city there's still a good fraction of the population within a half mile of a rail stop. My point is that this system exists because rail lines were built through the middle of nowhere by the steel industry 100+ years ago. The tracks, rail cars, stations, and signals have all been replaced but the right-of-way remained. The author focused too much on the method of transit and not the long-term strategic benefits of a city owning a dedicated transit route to allow for future growth.
edit: added 2nd paragraph responding to parent comment
No, those are trolleys. Explicitly not light rail. You can't compare a trolley seriously to the trains we're calling "light rail" in LA and other cities.
'The basic concepts of light rail were put forward by H. Dean Quinby in 1962 in an article in Traffic Quarterly called "Major Urban Corridor Facilities: A New Concept". Quinby distinguished this new concept in rail transportation from historic streetcar or tram systems as:
having the capacity to carry more passengers appearing like a train, with more than one car connected together'
Note that first and second qualifier for light rail, which a one-car trolley with capacity identical to a bus absolutely does not fit. Light rail has a specific meaning, and it's different from trolley/tram by design. If SEPTA or others are calling the trolleys light rail, they are misusing the term.
Additionally, as a counterexample to the issues in the article - the trolleys are taken more by the working poor than the more affluent in Philly.