“...what takes you from downtown to your final destination?”
Bus shuttles in their own lane works nicely, traffic lights coordinated to their approach and passing.
I support rapid bus transport over LRT’s. With Rapid bus trasport, you can still create the same routes that you would with an LRT, but the standards are the same as roads so it’s less costly to build.
Same objective met, but much cheaper to do.
On the plus side, because you have the route pre-built, it acts as a good intermediary to an actual LRT or subway, if the city eventually decides to go that route.