^I was actually able to make a correct guess as to which "primary study" was referenced by the article before I even clicked on it. I've seen that Steve Lafleur study pop up in all sports if weird and wonderful places in it's over two years of existence. That thing has nine lives, I swear.
A starting point would be to Google the Frontier Center for Public Policy.
There is actually some good discussion on SSP from when the study was first published in March of 2011. It starts at this post and continues for a few pages:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...40#post5221740
Basically, several of Lafleur's conclusions come from flawed analysis and spurious data. One of the main downfalls is that he analyzes costs in absence of a direct comparison with any alternative. For example, he doesn't compare the capital costs of LRT against the capital costs for the road and busway (where he is trying to make a case for BRTs as a replacement) infrastructure that would be required to satiate the equivalent demand. As another example, at one point in his study, he takes the rate of a parking stall downtown and uses it as an assumption for the rate of a parking stall at a suburban Park and Ride (Crowfoot I believe) to benefit his argument.