The best transit system is one that is simple and easy to use.
A light rail design is cool, however very expensive.
The things that people like about this type of public transportation
(light rail).
Is that they run on a short loop and travel in one direction (simple).
This could easily be replicated using say two bus routes. One that runs
north along Monroe, from say as south as wealthy street to north as Boardwalk condos,
than continue clockwise and east to GVSU (life-science)on Michigan street, then south to
civic theater/heritage hill to St Marys then west to Grandville av.
Then you do a similar route going south on Monroe to
Wealthy,west to John Ball back to GVSU (Devos-ctr) to stock bridge area back across the river to Board walk then south onto Monroe again.
Two clockwise loops running simultaneously with say 3 or 4 buses on each route.
Then you paint the north bound buses red and the south bound buses blue to easily reconise the two routes.
Now you have red buses running north and clockwise at 5 min. intervals,and blue buses running south and clockwise doing the same.
With blue and red bus stop signs thought the city.
The two routes would parallel each other along Monroe but in opposite directions for easy transfers.
And if you really wanted to get carried away you could paint dashed colored lines (red-blue) at the curbs to mark the route.
Now something like this would be so easy to follow and understand that
my grandmother who has never been on a bus would be able to figure it out or
say a traveler/conventioner who has no clue.
Or me!