A Tale of Four Light Rails

 I recently had the opportunity to visit Toronto, which in turn recently opened two new light rail/tram/streetcar lines--with a distinction in branding that marks these lines as more intended to be part of the metro/subway network than the existing tram lines. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about my experience, and how these three different light rails (together with the also fairly new Montréal REM, which Google Maps has decided to also mark as a light rail) show very different sides of what we can mean when we say something is a "light rail"--and what makes a "light rail" effective.

1. Priority Matters

The single biggest difference between these various light rails is the degree of priority that each receives in relation to other transit modes serving the same space.

The regular Toronto trams (the 500 numbered streetcars) get no signal priority at all and are indeed just...on the street (with a few exceptions like the Queensway tunnel).

The Finch LRT, line 6, does better, because it mostly exists in a separate center lane, but it doesn't get signal priority at all and is mostly on the street surface, so it still stops at red lights--sometimes right in front of a station--and famously isn't necessarily faster than a person on foot.

The Eglinton LRT, line 5, is faster, not because it actually has signal priority, but because (despite the above picture), it spends a lot more time underground, and thus grade separated from the traffic.

This makes it act more like a metro, and therefore faster and less at the whims of traffic, lights, or anything but its own passengers and track.

And then there is our friend the REM, le Réseau Express Métropolitain, which is, despite Google's claims, actually an automated system like the Vancouver SkyTrain and maybe "light rail" but not a streetcar or tram at all in the way that the other systems are. It doesn't run on the street, because it's automated so its entire length is grade-separated to allow for that. It therefore needs no signal priority over cars because it doesn't even bother with them. I don't have a picture of just a train of it, because it has platform screen doors (above) which means that it's actually more advanced than most North American metro systems.

Yeah, it's basically just a second metro for Montréal, and good for them.

2. Capacity Matters

Here's where the REM is most like the other systems: they do all run "tram-like" vehicles, without full gangways between the cars across the whole train (unlike, say, the TTC Subway or some lines of the Montréal Metro). But the capacity differences are still surprising. Here the almost-entirely roadbound TTC streetcars fall woefully behind.

Even when they're grade-separated, like here, they're really just a couple units long, and combined with the slow speeds created by the lack of separation from cars, that means that you can't really get that many more people on them than you could on a bus line. 

Finch West LRT is a bit bigger, and the rolling stock also seems (subjectively to me) to have a bit more space on it.

Same for the Eglinton, which I would bet moves more people per hour than Finch West LRT but only because of speed, not necessarily actual max train capacity.

And once again, the REM trains kick everyone's butt, because while you can't walk down the length of the whole REM train, there are multiple units connected together that each equal the other LRTs' size.

In real terms, then, the REM is both faster and more capacious than the other systems, and the main difference between the lines 5 and 6 in Toronto is how well they actually let the system run as opposed to letting cars get in the way. And then the streetcar is basically a bus on rails.

3. Common Experiences

What these do have in common is that they're all pretty comfortable to ride, and in very similar ways because they share a lot of that "tram-like" body.

I'd suggest this is the best aspect of the streetcars in Toronto: they do feel better than a bus to sit on, and their comfort is much closer to the others in this study.

The Finch and Eglinton LRTs felt very similar to me, with the main difference being the color palette where the Finch (above) and Eglinton (below) are very similar to each other but distinct from the red of the streetcars.

And then there's the REM, which I got fewer pictures of the interior of (because there were more other people and I tend to avoid taking too many pictures of people in public), but which is a bit more spacious and "metro-like" but still clearly the same tram-style overall space. As you can see in the picture in the last section, it has more space for standing and less comfortable seats--with more emphasis on capacity than on fabric.

This is perhaps the only way in which I'd "prefer" to be on the other systems than the REM: the seating is legitimately more comfortable on all 3 Toronto lines.

But overall, this should speak to the wide variety of what we mean when we say "light rail." It can cover everything from a fully separated, fast, capacious system like the REM to something that is basically a bus like the Toronto streetcar--and a lot in between, as we see at Finch and Eglinton. 

Perhaps we could use some better definitions...or at least a wider array of terminology for the systems we already have.

And perhaps also we could consider building more of our "light rail" to a REM standard than a TTC Streetcar.