Future Rapid Transit, LRT, BRT, Commuter Rail in Canada
 

Discuss proposed, approved, potential rapid transit extensions, LRT lines, BRT, commuter rail opportunities in Canadian cities and regions, etc.

Try to have a little fun and maybe even be a bit creative in the discussion of where you'd like to see these things built and developed.

Proposed ground rule for this thread: No arguing over what counts as a "metro".

Everyone in favour?

I was careful to avoid even using the words "metro" or "subway" :haha:

Downtown relief line is the most necessary infrastructure in the country.

Just an LRT line from Davenport to the Lake on Bay Street.

To get rid of the congestion on Yonge Subway.

In Toronto, I think a series of LRT lines are needed. There are parts of the city where it currently takes double or triple the time to get downtown via the TTC than it does to drive at rush hour. "Smartrack" could be the solution; I live near a GO station on the Richmond Hill Line but it currently takes even longer than the TTC to get downtown from my neighbourhood.

I would also replace Toronto's entire streetcar network with LRTs and subways, though in several areas the existing streetcar infrastructure can be used for LRT. Spadina needs fewer stops and some grade separations. The King and Queen streetcars are incredibly inefficient and one of them should be entirely underground.

There's already a similar thread concerning LRT or rapid transit projects but I see this one involves BRT and commuter rail...

Well, that thread was also "supposed" to be for Under-Construction projects.

So in the end does it really matter? This thread is like the wish list, I think there may have been a similar thread before, but I'm not sure.

Halifax, Quebec City, Hamilton, London, Niagara Falls, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, and Victoria should have LRT.

Charlottetown, Moncton, Trois-Rivieres, Sherbrooke, Kingston, Peterborough, Guelph, Regina, Lethbridge, Kelowna, and Nanaimo should have streetcars.

Toronto should have a DRL/Queen subway, College subway, and I could even see a case for Eglinton being subway. LRT is fine for it, though I wonder about it's usefulness 50 years down the road.

Kitchener and Ottawa should've had LRT decades ago. Edmonton should've had lines to NAIT, Mill Woods, and the West End decades ago. Calgary's C-Train should've never been built above ground and Edmonton's future lines shouldn't be above ground downtown. It's cheap and causes issues down the road. The Metro to Laval should extend to Carrefour Laval and area.

Only Vancouver, Calgary (ish), and Montreal really have decent transit coverage. I guess a case could be argued for Ottawa as well, with its robust BRT.

I'm not sure Kingston needs streetcars. They've got a good thing going with their new express bus service. It just needs some traffic signal priority and it's good to go.

I apologize if this topic has already been posted. I think I'd rather have it as more of a wish-list type thread, as previously mentioned by somebody else. If it needs to be merged with another thread, I'd have no problem with that either.

I'd like to see some real BRT in the Edmonton area. There's no reason we shouldn't have transitways, separated lanes and right of ways, dedicated stations that function much like LRT, etc. I heard Iveson in a Facebook live session discuss the possibility of a future commuter rail line to Leduc or the airport, that would be great (it's not on the cards in the immediate future, but in the long term would be great). LRT isn't really feasible to that distance given the fact that it would take well over an hour to get into the central city, especially considering that there would obviously be further stations built in that time.

We already have transit priority at a few intersections, and a bunch more were funded in Kingston Transit's 2017 five-year plan.

I'll agree that streetcars don't serve much of a point. I have a hard time seeing what meaningful improvement they'd have over bus transit given the large capital expense. Especially with bus electrification on the horizon in the future.

I'm sorry to hear that, probably the ugliest thing that can happen to a city. I'm feeling sick to my stomach just thinking about the cables running everywhere and I've never even been to Kingston!

I thought 1overcosc was talking about electric buses, not trolley buses?

Well hopefully. Buses are a great application for electric motors.

Yes, I meant battery electric buses. And there's nothing specifically happening in Kingston on that front; more just that I meant that in the coming decades, buses will probably be electric. That eliminates a lot of the environmental and acceleration-speed advantages streetcars have over buses... meaning that, IMO, going forward, building new streetcar networks to replace local buses doesn't make much sense.

Hell no. The only people that seem to hate the streetcars are those who don't use them and those who drive in the city. You can't replace those lines with LRT's or subways because you need a vehicle that can make many stops. The only thing that could replace them would be buses but they are less efficient and way less comfortable. It's time to remove cars from King during rush hour. Cars create traffic not the streetcars.

Huh, funny. Those cables are probably the one thing I like about streetcars.