[officedweller]

One thing I wonder is whether having multiple hubs (a natural consequence of the multiple municipalities) is just diluting ridership to the point where it is too expensive to build rapid transit. Metro Vancouver has, however, done a good job of connecting the hubs with rapid transit (i.e. now that the regional town centres are connected to each other (or will be with the Evergreen Line), we now you have to feed each of those hubs to get them to grow with office space - which could be more challenging).