The Case for LRT
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- Опубликовано: 7 мар 2021
- Reece can seem quite... pessimistic about LRTs sometimes, but in this video, he argues for them instead. Enjoy!
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Hi, my name's Reece. I'm a passionate Creator, Transportation Planner, and Software Developer, interested in rapid transportation all around my home base of Toronto, Canada, as well as the whole world!
depending on how you look at it, LRT is either a glorified tram or a nerfed metro.
Toronto already had the "improved" larger streetcars - some running in their own ROW. Thus, the glorified tram was not needed in Toronto. What Toronto was missing was medium capacity rapid transit. We had that for the SRT. Instead of introducing a new transit vehicle that matches too closely with streetcar - instead of filling in the gap we actually had.
I love taking the tram... here in the Netherlands!
A tram/ light rail is essentially a glorified bus on steel wheels.
Nerfed Metro in my book. Below light Metro category
I think we need to see LRT as LRT. Not as “metro-lite” or “super-streetcar”
I think LRT's are good for medium size, medium density cities. They are pretty much the "medium" solution, when you need something more than buses but can't justify the expense of a metro. And they are quite a flexible transit technology. Surface running section getting too slow and congested due to conflict with traffic and pedestrians? Build a bypass tunnel. Vehicles getting too crowded? Upgrade to longer vehicles (assuming you built platforms long enough in the first place). With enough investment you can turn an LRT system into something nearly as good as a metro.
That said, I do see cases where cities that really should be considering a metro from the outset going for LRT because it's cheaper, even though they will end up paying more 10-20 years down the line when growth means that the LRT is no longer adequate and requires extensive upgrades, or a parallel metro system needs to be built. I also see LRT being considered to replace already well utilised regional rail routes in some cases for the sake of convergence and a cheap way to grow the network, which can result in those regional journeys being longer and less comfortable if extra stops are added and tracks are diverted.
All in all, LRT is a good transit technology when used appropriately. It's just in some cases it isn't being used appropriately.
P.S. I feel your pain with slow LRT systems. When I lived out in Weaste, Manchester for 6 months, it was much quicker to cycle to the city centre than take the Metrolink. Though admittedly some of the other lines are significantly faster, especially if you live further out.
The Calgary C train is pretty cool. Winnipeg should get something like that and make it as grade separated as possible.
Won't happen until New Flyer starts making trains, haha!
@@AustinSersen Yeah I just saw Winnipegs new rapid transit plan. Its going to take them 24 years to build new BRT. Pathetic
Winnipeg will never see rail transit.
@@zinakan *24 years* for a glorified road. Just WTF
@@peskypigeonx Basically. :(
@@peskypigeonx that North America (except Mexico) for ya
ION is a good system with some issues but the best thing I can say about it is that the region is learning from their mistakes as the planned Cambridge extension of Ion has less stops, way more grade separated sections, less sharp curves, and is about the same kilometre distance as the first phase of Ion but will be way quicker compared to the the original part.
Yeah the plan looks very good so hopefully it will be faster.
That’s great to hear. I’ve been pretty blown away by high number of stations per km on some of Ontario’s LRT projects. Finch West is an example, with 18 stops in 11 km, but the Eglington East and (dead) Jane LRT are particularly egregious.
I think it's important to understand that ION isn't slow because of urban sections in the middle of the street. It slows down because it has bends and isn't straight.
ION has bends for two reasons,urban geography and political compromise, and those political compromises are often about the political geography.
The split track sections through Downtown Kitchener, which ended up with one-way stations, were done because it was not politically possible to completely close off that section of King Street to cars which would have been necessary to be able to fit two tracks down the road. Similar for Uptown Waterloo. This is true, even though King Street has not been a practical traffic artery for more than two decades.
Ironically, the rail corridors that Reece like because the trams can go faster, are another one of the political compromises, but this time for cost. The region already owned the rail spur to the north, and could build on it cheaply, and paying for that relatively short length on the southern one was also cheaper. (They also cause ION to diverge from what is known as the Central Transit Corridor, the area of busiest transportation in Waterloo Region where two-thirds of all daily trips either start or end. That divergence in the north is mitigated by the universities being somewhat offset to the side of the CTC, but in the south if it means we get stations like Block Line and Mill which will end up being two of the least utilized stations.)
Without these compromises, ION would never have been built. It would have been far too expensive for most people to accept and funding from senior levels of government was limited, or there would have been far too much opposition to a different route, beyond just the expected vocal minority of NIMBYs.
Light rail should specifically mean not fully grade separated but not in mixed traffic.
I agree with this
If it’s in traffic it’s a tram or a streetcar
I live in The Hague where we have both LRT and regular trams/streetcars. I think they work great because they're well separated from other traffic and pretty quick but it only works because we have very good bike lanes that relieve some of the pressure. If we were even a little less bike-friendly or larger, we'd definitely need a metro/subway.
Problem with speed in curves also depends on vehicle. In the front, there should be a bogie that can turn . Not to be welded to body of the vehicle. This can speed up trains(trams) in curves a lot.
There's a case for every mode of transit, so thanks for this! Also, awesome shirt :)
Thanks!
True, but we don't be choosing the wrong mode of public transport that's too big or too small. Using the wrong mode of public transport means that providing too much capacity is too expensive to operate while proving too little capacity is prone to chronic overcrowding.
I live in Portland where we have 5 light rail lines and 3 street car lines, and the light rail definitely pulls its weight. The street cars are kind of blah because they get stuck in traffic and at lights and it's clunky. We certainly wouldn't need a proper subway/metro though.
I definitely think Portland needs a subway tunnel (or elevated guidway for that matter) through downtown for the LRT. Downtown is the biggest bottleneck and incredibly slow to get through.
I agree that the streetcars aren't particularly useful.
Simple tram priority can help A LOT - a great example is Zurich. Simply put - even on shared infrastructure trams are given priority! (they also have huge and heavy coupling bars front and back and the drivers do not take prisoners!
I go to Portland a lot. I think the reason the LRT works is that it's mostly seperated from traffic when it's speeding through more sparsely populated areas, and is cheaply added to the city center. However, I'm not a big fan of the Highway Oriented Transit stations on the Blue, Green, and Red lines. It would be a great idea for Portland to cap the highway there and build some TOD.
The Portland Streetcar needs separate rights of way and signal priority just like MAX has. And MAX needs elevated guide ways and tunnels like a light metro
Light rail which is mostly separated from traffic would be the way to go, with points on contacts only at crossings with the road. I've seen examples of this in the Gold Coast and Canberra in Australia. They even get traffic light priority, with the lights preparing to turn green when the LRV approaches the intersection so that it isn't delayed.
Of course it can't beat trains for capacity and speed but would be suitable for smaller cities, or for bigger cities already with a metro network but needing some supplementary transit.
One advantage I've seen over trains is that you can pack a lot more frequency into a line. Some of Melbourne's lines didn't have enough capacity to justify running trains often enough, so they replaced them with light rail to run more often. Where a regular metro can at fit a headway of 2 minutes, a light rail transit can effectively put one after another with a gap no different to that of regular road vehicles.
Great video and wonderful points!
Super interesting video! I was just on the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail in NJ yesterday, and I think it's the perfect definition of a light rail-- in the city areas, it uses a dedicated right-of-way while still running at grade in the streets with frequent stops, and then as soon as it leaves the city, it gets up to high speeds with less frequent stops. If you're a moderate-size city that wants to have a frequently stopping service in the core with a more stretched-out service in the suburbs, light rail can be really great!
I mean, look at Baltimore! They have a Subway, but it gets little usage because their light rail is so much better; in the suburbs, it stops infrequently with really high speeds, and then in Downtown, it can bring you just as close to your destination as a bus could.
That's not to say that light rail is always the best solution, metro systems could be better in some cities and others might want to opt for a simple BRT, but if you need an all-in-one solution so that building a streetcar AND some sort of regional or metro network isn't necessary, light rail is a great tool.
To be fair, Bmore for a city of its size could use a proper metro system, instead of a poorly maintained subway + a couple of mediocre LRT lines with outdated rolling stock. It still amazes me to this day that many long time Bmore residents still don’t know that they have a subway...
@@guldukat2453 you're completely right, my point is more that Downtown Baltimore is so dense that the fact that the light rail can stop more frequently in Downtown while going miles between stops farther north and south is a major benefit. But yes, Baltimore needs a better Metro, something I've been crayonista'ing for years.
@@BIRDIECHANNEL this is a bit of an odd take. Pre-pandemic, the metro exceed light rail ridership despite the light rail being twice as long.
The at-grade section downtown is, to put it lightly, reviled by transit enthusiasts and opponents alike.
It’s a dense, gridded section with most high capacity car & bus routes passing perpendicular to its path, so TSP isn’t really an option.
The issue is that otherwise fast light rail becomes a slow, mixed traffic steetcar in the *middle*, before the stadiums and airport segments.
So people don’t even know the light rail goes to the airport because their experience on game days is so grating.
By “their” I mean suburbanites.
Because the light rail serves almost none of the dense urban parts of the city, due its placement at the bottom of the Jones Falls Valley
one of the biggest service stoppers for the Metrolink here in Manchester is cars blocking the route, whether it be a parked car/van blocking the track so trams can't pass, or cars crashing into trams, or cars thinking they can travel on tram lines that were flat then drop off and cars get trapped on the lines and it requires specialist equipment to remove them, all grinds the system to a hault, or a line depending where on the system it happens. It's one reason they built a second city crossing, if one route is blocked at least some trams can continue to operate and others can be re-routed and connected by bus over a short distance
in southeast asia, the term LRT is so widely used but it can mean a whole bunch of different things. most often, it refers to a system similar to vancouver skytrain or DLR with fully automated operation, or semi automated operation. in the philippines, there's an LRT line the runs full-size heavy rail 3.2m wide trains. or in the case of singapore, it's a low capacity people mover system running feeder services. all have full grade separation. weirdly enough, it doesn't refer to any low-floor tram/streetcar systems as there aren't any in SEA.
In Chinese metro systems, a lot of lines that uses Type C rolling stock are considered an LRT, while an equivalent line in North America or Europe may be considered heavy rail. I don't have exact specifications of type C stock, but here are the specs for type A and type B stock in China, so just imagine something less in terms of length and width, but still 8 doors per train car.
Type A: 22 m length for non-cab cars, 3 m width, 10 doors per train car. Normally configured in 6 or 8 car sets.
Type B: 19 m length for non-cab cars, 2.8 m width, 8 doors per train car. Normally configured in 6 car sets, but Beijing uses 8 car sets on some lines.
@@skypesos so by this logic, Beijing Subway lines 1 and 2 used to be "LRT" since until the 2000's they use short 3-door Subway trains?
@@anindrapratama Idk, only thought of this after seeing shanghai metro line 6 being called an LRT (Qing gui in chinese) when it clearly looks like heavy rail in pictures and videos, with completely grade separated elevated and underground sections. Only found out why after seeing that it uses 4 car type C rolling stock and the line has been exceeding its design capacity since day 1 (sort of like Ottawa’s O-train). Though in the late 90s, China only had a very small fraction of the metros infrastructure that they have today, so there was no need to differentiate rolling stock by types.
Trains in the Philippines are named from the company that runs it, NOT the system type (example in Japan they have JR and Toei Transport) LRT 2 Manila is Heavy Rail Metro line, but run by LRTA So confusing 😐😐
Mexican and Manila LRT take out many seats and add another door set to LRT trains, fixing seat+door shortcomings present on North American LRT
(Ik low-floor LRT can't fix the doors problem)
I related with your point of having been a bigger advocate of light rail in the past but becoming more critical now. I've had a similar journey. I have watched a lot of watering down on systems that have knee-capped their efficaciousness. Meanwhile, the investment made in them could have gone to upgrading existing lines, or even better, bulking up bus service that would have had a much wider impact. When transit dollars are allocated so unwillingly and in such miserly amounts, those trade offs become a legitimate point of conflict, even if, ideally, both bus and rail expansion together would make major differences. I don't like having to chose like that, but such is life sometimes. I definitely appreciate your nuanced argument and showing how light rail plays out differently in various places to different results. It can be hard to explain all this to people who otherwise don't really understand any of this stuff.
I think a distinction needs to be drawn between low-floored light rail systems and high-floored "light metro" systems. Light metros often are much more like metros, just scaled back to save money, sacrificing performance and capacity in the process. Low-floored light rail is often used to bridge the gap between existing street running trams and grade separated segments with one vehicle. Totally different categories imo.
I think in general, transit terms are too confusing.
Heavy Rail = Rapid Transit, but Rapid Transit can be LRT
LRT = Light Rail, but Light Rail can be "Light Metro"
Slow/Low floor LRT = Streetcar/Tram, but fast/High floor LRT can be "Light Metro"
Don't mind me, just watching from Wichita, Kansas wishing my town never got rid of trollies
I love our dallas LRT a lot, our city isn't dense enough for a metro, but the LRT is decent enough.
LRTs as they are done in America and the Canadian America (Alberta) are great. What, America does something about transit that I like? I know crazy. Basically there the LRT lines run as fully grade separated lines using their own corridors, whether thats along side existing freight lines, an old abandoned interurban corridor, hydro corridor, repurposing a street into an LRT route or whatever. They usually have crossing gates and everything and take priority over cars. The way that Toronto wanted to do Transit City is more a "streetcar on steroids" and loses many of the benefits of true LRT this way. Albeit most american LRTs do share the road when going into the heart of downtown, but this is usually for a very small section of the route.
My city have 2 "LRT" systems currently, one is a short 6-station line and the other is a Regional rapid transit line with 2 branches under construction
Jakarta?
@@sarthsingh3271 yes
As a European, I'm just sitting here mildly confused. Boom gates? Interlining? A Bombardier Flexity being called a train? What is going on :D
On a more serious note, nice video, I like the emphasis you're putting on efficiency, which is sort of taken for granted here in Europe. NA has a lot to learn about building transportation systems, but here and there I'm seeing progress being made :)
Haha, we do some things well. I should make a video on that
Boom gates should be mandatory for any level crossings with roads, i have been terrified as a driver when i realized that the frieght train crossing has no gates and the sign says "increased traffic" and not "exempt".
Boomgates are for cars not trains despite the fact trains benefit, its just most frieght trains can't stop quickly and i assume most transit trains similarly can't stop quickly from speed.
@@jasonreed7522 But in this specific context, it's unusual to see boom gates since light rail vehicles have much better breaking than freight trains.
As always great video ! I would like to suggest that maybe you should explain some of the technical terminology that transit experts use? I don’t always know what they mean !
Examples?
You should make a video about the west coast express and how it could be better.
I really wish the North Shore Transit plan for Staten Island was more akin to a light metro or S-Bahn system instead of BRT. (Of course, the BRT option was chosen for being the cheapest, particularly since it wouldn't require a foray into rolling stock logistics.)
I would refer Calgary’s Light Rail as “Light Metro”
Do wish the "Transit 🚇 City" plan for Toronto had been built?
No
Exactly, a higher order opportunity now exists to offer full grade separation. I hope the Ontario Line will be a catalyst and example of future transit projects in TO.
@@RMTransit Aside from the Eglinton Line is there any part of Transit 🚇 City that Would be Useful for Toronto?
I wish the Don Mills line had been built I don't trust Ford and Co. They will find a way to F up the Ontario line
@KISHANTH JEYAMOORTHY Transit 🚇 City was a Plan David Miller came up with and he managed to get ALL 3 LEVELS of government to fund a LRT Network in Toronto. When Rob Ford became Mayor he threw out the plan
@KISHANTH JEYAMOORTHY Transit City was a plan to build a ton of LRT lines across the city. Unfortuantely its major issues were that it placed LRT lines along corridors that it frankly shouldn't have. Some examples of stupid lines that were thankfully never built include the Sheppard East LRT which would force everyone to transfer to the Sheppard Subway at Don MIlls, and would poorly serve interborough travel and the new developments along sheppard, The Don Mills LRT which would require everyone to take a linear transfer to the DRL making that subway line a horrible relief line for Line 1, the Scarborough LRT which took the existing Scarborough RT and would've downgraded it to low floor LRT bringing all of the with LRT with it.
Could you do an analysis of the RTC's (Reseau de transport de la capitale) plans for a tram/LRT system in Quebec City ?
What do you think of the Purple Line in the DC area?
Personally, I love it because we had no circumferential route. While LRT is too slow to go the whole route, they predicted that most people would not do that, so it's feasible. Further, it's very easy to extend, with proposals already being made for prolongation to Largo, MD.
In a previous video you mentioned your issues with Boston’s new Green Line rolling stock. Would be interested in a video about that and/or the MBTA as a whole
Maybe some day, I guess I’m not sure what I’d talk about
LRT from a regional standpoint is an alright and cost effective solution to link various medium density regional hubs to various low density secondary hubs such as the now under construction Parramatta Light Rail in the Greater Western Sydney Region in NSW.
Ion is a perfect case of right-sizing transit infra. The only slowness I would complain about is some turns in the city centres. If they extend it all the way to Cambridge, I’ll question its usefulness. Going end-to-end will be pretty much infeasible in that case. An express bus service from Cambridge to Kitchener then to Waterloo (with an integrated fare) would be most welcome.
Or GO train service
There already is an express bus service from Cambridge to Kitchener to Waterloo. Grand River Transit, the public transit authority for all three cities, operates several express bus routes, three of which go from Kitchener to Cambridge. In the BeforeTimes™, I took transit from Downtown Kitchener to Cambridge for work every day, and with the projected timings of Stage 2 ION, I expect that (when finally built) it will drop about 10 minutes off my ride to work even though it will take a signficant detour through Preston.
Maybe?
Streetcar/Tram - primarily street running.
Urban rail tier 3 - street running through city center with dedicated mixed grade ROW outside of city center.
Urban rail tier 2 - grade separated through city center with dedicated mixed grade ROW outside of city center.
Urban rail tier 1 - grade separated through city center with dedicated mixed grade ROW outside of city center and limited median or center lane running segments.
Light metro - no street running segments, no median running segments, no center lane running segments, and limited gated grade crossings but less capacity than a full metro.
Can you please do a video on TriMet in Portland Oregon
This made me a bit more hopeful about the CTrain. I’ve heard a lot of arguments against LRT and I’ve come to understand that Calgary Transit leaves a lot to be desired at the moment. At least now I feel a bit more at ease knowing that some good things already exist.
if i will translate the german wort for tram or light Rail it will say Street-train or Citytrain
and S - Bahn = Fasttrain
I was confused about what lightrail was
Your video about the different transportation modes didn't help me
And now I see this video which talks about LRT but all images shown are what we call TRAM in Barcelona, I'M CONFUUSEEEDD!!!!!
Tight corners is one of the main issues on Manchester Metrolink. Some routes the trams barely get over 10-15mph *cough*Eccles/Mediacity*cough*
There's a super tight curve just outside of Oldham which slows the tram to about 5mph and it just grinds and shakes around this corner...doesn't sound healthy.
Remember most of these trams are double sets (4-car trains), so it can take quite a bit of time to clear these tight curves...
LRT's be very expensive over glorified streetcars
Me Excited for the Crosstown to be done
Light rail (mostly) has its own Lanes, streetcars usually don't. Also light rail is often partly grade separated, streetcars are not.
Light tail vehicles also often have high platforms (outside of North America), streetcars usually don't
@@Humulator yeah there are always exceptions, both ways. I just described what is typical
a benefit of lrt compared to bus is that it's much easier to take a bike onto a tram as opposed to the unpleasant experience of hauling a bike onto a bus rack, especially if you have a heavy electric bike
NET in Nottingham seems quite similar to the Waterloo region trams
Yeah it is quite similar indeed!
@@RMTransit when used correctly, I think this type of light rail is quite effective
I lived in Waterloo before Ion existed, and they had a good brt before. Might be why the cost was a little lower.
The point at which the confusion started was when Toronto announced Transit City and also built the St. Clair ROW. Both were branded as LRT despite being very different technologies. The confusion mostly tends to be with people who watch Toronto Transit.
Up until that point it was well understood that Light Rail was a catch all term used to describe everything from street cars to Calgary's C-Train.
But LRT specifically was reserved for Light Rapid Transit which describes Calgary C-Train and similar systems. Phrase aLRT was sometimes used to describe the Millennium and Expo lines in Vancouver (but not the Canada Line).
This also goes to how Toronto politicians think. They fear voter backlash on transit and don't trust voters to understand importance of transit. By Toronto politicians using LRT as a catch all term to describe every single transit project that ran on rails but was not a subway, the word has lost all meaning in Toronto.
Irony is the confusion about the word LRT directly led to the backlash against Transit City.
This call could have been done much better.
Streetcar on its own Right of Way properly describes what is running on Queen Street, St. Clair, Spadina and the Harbourfront.
Light Rapid Transit describe Transit City and Calgary C-Train.
They key distinctions are:
1. LRT will also use phantographs. While Streetcars can use trolley poles and phantographs.
2. LRT will use double cantery wiring (same as high speed rail) while street cars always use single trolly wiring.
3. LRT will have complete use of its right of way. Emergency vehicles and buses do not operate on Calgary's LRT, except in the downtown transit mall.
4. LRT is fast, average running speeds are between 75-110 km/hr. Whereas streetcars typically run around 50 km/hr.
5. LRT has high level of traffic priority. Either with boon arms (like in suburban Calgary) or with special signaling which limits how often the train faces a red light (like in downtown Calgary).
6. LRT acts and behaves like a subway. It will stop at every stop, have set amount of time it will wait and then proceed. While Streetcars will only stop when requested or when people are waiting.
DLR is the best LRT, no questioned asked, also i like the colour
goodnight tri-state area
DLR is not light rail, it is light metro. There is a difference.
Manchester Metrolink uses the flexibility of LRT better. DLR does nothing with the fact that its LRT beyond the lower price tag allowing it to be built in that post-industrial wasteland in the first place - its very debatable whether the DLR even is LRT nowadays.
@@heidyalvarado6017 it's very confusing tho. in kuala lumpur there's an LRT line that's identical to vancouver skytrain but with platform screen doors. in singapore, the three LRT lines there are rubber-tyred people mover systems running feeder services.
@@sihollett I don't think it uses it that well compared to say, Stuttgart. Too many tight corners and street running, and the vehicles are too small. The ex heavy rail alignments are pretty zippy, and the new Trafford line seems to be built to a better standard, but some sections are far too slow and congested and there are more stations than necessary especially in the city centre. The system needs longer vehicles and smoother alignments away from traffic going forward (if that means tunnels, so be it).
I know people like the Metrolink, but from my experience of the Eccles line which I used for a while, it's not as good as it should be, not for a city the size of Manchester. Let's just say I'm glad they haven't converted the Hadfield/Glossop heavy rail line yet. I doubt it would improve the service, and would probably make it slower.
I feel like Calgary should’ve put the high floor underground downtown and low floor at street level but they’re doing the opposite for some reason
Yeah it’s very odd!
Low floor wasn't an option when Calgary started building LRT in the 70s. They decided to save cost by going on the surface downtown, while Edmonton decided to tunnel. This is one of the reasons why Calgary's system is much more extensive today than Edmonton's. But we'll have caught up with Calgary when the Valley Line west is done and I like that we'll end up with the high floor tunnelled and low floor running on the surface in the core.
@@highwaysbyways4281 yeah, I was thinking of that cause while we in Edmonton don’t have that big of a system, we have better options for running multiple lines through downtown and we got those costs out of the way. Low floor was technically an option, but not in the capacity that they likely wanted
@@jeffsey500 true I guess I was thinking about streetcars but those weren’t low floor back then lol
Calgary downtown has a high water table. Buildings downtown used to flood frequently. When it was built a subway would have flooded. 2013 flood shows that it's still an issue
If we in Calgary converted all our LRT to low floor LRV, then the stations downtown could've been converted to low floor and have up to six car stations I'm guessing. So, hopefully the western route ridership doesn't grow too too much because when the red line is put under 8th ave in downtown, 7th ave might have trouble handling all the ridership in the long run since the blue line in the NE end of the city is going to be extended a good four stations passed Saddletowne and connecting to the airport.
In LA, it's very simple. LRT is tram, HRT is subway, MRT is monorail (Sepulveda Pass Project), and BRT is bus (duh). We'll forever capitalize on these terms.
That’s not very simple though
@@RMTransit In Los Angeles, it is
I don’t really agree, I struggle to call high floor vehicles a tram anyways, the whole problem as I break it down in other videos is that there is no consistent operating mode
@@RMTransit It doesn't matter if it is high floor or low floor. If it is maneuverable for tight turns with or without street running involved, it's a light rail. It's about the turn radius and equipment such as turn signals and accessories for reviewing that determines the classification of light rail. You're basically telling me that SF Muni Metro and SacRT is not light rail. They operate high floor vehicles too. The only difference is that they have steps for curbside boarding.
No, the point I am making is that light rail is a bad term because nobody knows what it may be referring to.
Want a channel like this to give their opinions on Sacramento RT LRT. I like it, but it gets very little coverage.
I'm fine with LRT if it's the right type used in the right place. I think that European style Tramways on majority right of way works well to connect passenger rail and metro systems. They also work as a great rapid transit stopgap to serve dense communities that Metro or suburban rail cannot reach. That said, the Tramway has its limits, and at a certain point, you're just wasting time and money that you could have put into a proper grade separated Metro. What's rediculous is that US cities like LA have spent billions on building what are escentially 50km long tram lines, when 50km is already stretching it for a Metro line, and an RER is probably faster and cheaper to build. A tram line should only be maybe 20-30km long at most, because you'll want that journey to be only 1 hour long at most. Another issue is that many light rail lines, such as Sidney Light Rail, are way too slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwww to be effective rapid transit.
More pictures please
Personally I feel happy with the balance of how many maps and images we showed!
Where would could we have interlined LRT in Toronto? All those corridors that in Transit City that don't really make sense to be interlined are the corridors that make sense for transit.
Why not have one branch of Eglinton turn north on one of the major streets through Scarborough. There are good branches at the end of almost every TC LRT Line
@@RMTransit Eglinton with $6B tunnel should have had interlining through the Central portion. In West, at Humber River, one branch continues on Eglinton while another goes up to Lawrence/Dixon. In the East, maybe Don Valley East would be where one branch went up to Lawrence. (assuming STC served by some other major line).
Thats a lie!! Hyperloop doesn't "exist" in any meaningful sense of the word ;)
Here's a nice definition: If your trains run strictly on the street, its a tram. If they strictly run off street and connect different parts of the city together, its a metro. If it's something in between, its an LRT. If you have a tram that runs off the street, Low floor trains will count it as trams and high flow trains count it as LRT.
I lived in Montreal, so LRT isn't the best mass transit. Go ride in the metro system in Montreal, you'll know what I mean.
4:11 *in North America
What was said?
@@RMTransit Certain statements, in wich you said that in the 'Americas', most Light Rail Transit veichles ARE NOT high floor/ rasied veichles.
And now heer, Mr Blume has added his own opoion that suggestes that in 'Europe', most Light Rail Transit veichles ARE high floor/ rasied veichles.
America is a common way to refer to the US, I never mentioned Europe
@@RMTransit you didn't mention any region in that sentence. But you were referring to the situation in North America
LRT - really needs at least 3 definitions - plus acknowledgement of mix. -
Street car Toronto - except
Tramway - 510, 512, 509 and
LRT - Ottawa Calgary - with Tramway in core.
Plus- high - vs low floor - where high - would likely really be preferred where it is nearly all or all grade separated...
think s200 cars in say Ottawa- and how that would be different in terms of flows in car.
The use of "LRT" needs to be changed- to have clear definitions of what is proposed.
Eglinton east- 1 - stops show problem with near 0 cost with low floor stops... too many to close - in Golden Mile -
I would suggest however that while the Hydro corridors would be great- I believe the holder of the corridor has not been ready to see rail there- barely willing to tolerate bus .