The Transit Dark Ages

For the past 15 years or so, transit projects have come and gone, and there was even a period of transit "dark ages" where only 1 or 2 transit projects were in progress. How has that changed, and have we finally reached the transit renaissance?
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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!
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[@SpectreMk2]

"If Waterloo can build transit, we can do it too" Cries in London Ontario.

[@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102]

London Ontario is the city where all the anti urbanist NIMBYs of North America move to to get away from urban progress.

[@cloudbank3106]

Cries in Victoria BC. I'm still seething over Horgan personally shooting down LRT in the city.

[@SpectreMk2]

​@@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102 It's very sad. Considering the grid layout of the city, 2 tram lines crossing near the center could be built for cheap. It would be a great relief on the crowded buses going to UWO main campus in the morning.

[@haweater1555]

Hamilton's crying too... their LRT got into a collision with a Ford.

[@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102]

@@SpectreMk2 fake London's street network is rather bizarre. It does have a quasi grid system but there are also a lot of cul de sacs and major roads/stroads like Wellington, Dundas, and Adelaide that span much of the city but then just end abruptly. It seems to me that London's street network was laid out by drunks. It's nothing like NYC's famous grid system or even other Ontario cities like Hamilton.

[@johannessamuelsson6578]

Sweden had its own transit dark age between 1955 and 1975, with many smaller cities dismantling their urban tram lines/systems. Now only one city with less than 100 000 inhabitants has kept it's tram system beyond that time, and another city just opened a new tram line this year.

[@ZontarDow]

REM hasn't even seen phase one open and three expansions, an entire second line, and a potential third line are being planned. Surprising to say the least.

[@bobidou23]

What are you referring to with the third line?

[@peskypigeonx]

@@bobidou23 I _think_ that they’re talking about the line south of the river

[@donkeydik2602]

@@peskypigeonx ya they are still debating if it’s gonna be a tramway or the rem

[@ZontarDow]

@@bobidou23 the REM Sud given it may be a REM line rather than a tram. I'm hoping it is because having it be grade separated will mean higher speed and frequency without effecting traffic.

[@RMTransit]

It's incredible exciting to see!

[@TransitAndTeslas]

I could care less for electric cars. The problem is they’re still cars. They don’t spur development, make communities walkable and more. Give me transit!! Trains!! Trains!!! Trains!!

[@natedinnerplate8796]

they're also terrible for the environment

[@RMTransit]

More ev's are still important, they are a lot better than regular cars for urban dwellers (especially if we can get back to smaller vehicles) quiet and not much pollution is big

[@Friek555]

And bikes!!! bikes!! bikes!!! bikes!!

[@Newspeak.]

EVs have their place and not are necessarily a bad thing but I do wish we could move away from them entirely. Still as long as society is as car dependent as it is it’s still better to have cars on the market that aren’t emitting emissions and become greener the more green the power infrastructure gets. Also electric buses are probably a better idea then diesel ones for the same reasons.

[@TransitAndTeslas]

@@Newspeak. I have no problems with EVs themselves, I just hate how Tesla etc is trying to bill them as a public transit replacement. Yet when they did try that they built that stupid Vegas tunnel that could have just been a subway or underground bus route like Seattle used to have.

[@flare2000x]

What's great to see these days is that both conservatives and liberal governments are interesting in funding transit. Good to see it becoming less of a political issue.

[@RMTransit]

Absolutely, I think it's huge

[@MattMcIrvin]

In the US, liberals supporting transit means that conservatives MUST by definition oppose it, so nothing gets done.

[@3ktone685]

I visited Vancouver for the first time in 2017/2018. I'm a transit nerd so I had to ride the skytrain. I got a green compass card from one of the stations in the evergreen extension and it lives at the front of my wallet. I live in the US. I'm keeping that card.

[@cheef825]

I love metro cards lol, I have multiple from Taiwan and one from LA floating around

[@RMTransit]

Haha I too collect metro cards!

[@britishcorndog6079]

I got one from Hong Kong, and the WMATA

[@darthwiizius]

There's no downside to improved public transport infrastructure, it liberates people. As a car person I always tell people to not bother driving in London because public transport is much faster and convenient with no parking charges or restrictions.

[@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102]

Real London or fake London? In fake london the only transit option is crappy buses and they only have a frequency of 15-20 minutes on a good day.

[@darthwiizius]

@@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102 Real London where underground frequency is 2-6 minutes most of the time. There are extensive busses too, an overground metro, light railway, a closed tram route, national train operators and Cross Rail criss crossing the big smoke. Without an extensive public transport system London would grind to halt because it's road network was laid centuries, in some cases thousands of years before cars were even dreamt of so shifting 10 million+ commuters a day in/out/around the gaff would be impossible.

[@hyperspeed1313]

The only thing London's infrastructure really needs still is improved accessibility. Trying to take the Underground while mostly confined to a wheelchair can be very hit or miss

[@darthwiizius]

@@hyperspeed1313 Yeah there's a lot of work to be done in that regard. Perhaps we should start looking at this as a process beneficial to everybody rather than one historically ignored group of folk. In the same way drop curbs make it easier for wheelchair users to get access they also benefit everyone else, fewer trip hazards, easier loading/unloading, people with prams etc these types of improvements bring much wider benefits in general.

[@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102]

Coming from fake London I was quite impressed with Ottawa's light rail system even though it was quite obviously trying to do too much at once and was having serious problems as a result.

[@pex3]

It’s not fake. It’s just little.

[@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102]

@@pex3 my issue with fake London isn't that it's small. We have around 400,000 people liing here which is about the same size as the city of Florence in Italy but Florence is a lot more interesting because it was built at a human scale and is very walkable. Fake London on the other hand wastes a lot of space with parking lots and stroads and it's nearly impossible to get anywhere without a car.

[@analogbunny]

Ottawa transit grossly neglected enduced demand, and have recently finally come out saying "actually that LRT should have been a full metro/train system". Also the system is built on a spoke-and-hub system that bottlenecks everything down to a few spots, which means the system looks worse than it is. Also it means the system is veeeeery sensitive to upsets.

[@TrebleSketch]

"Every major city in Australia... Sorry Adelaide." Yeah, I felt that haha. Looking at how Canada can do a 180⁰ does give me hope Adelaide might do a 180⁰ some day with actively expanding out network too xD It's really nice to see the growth in Canada over the past decade!

[@RMTransit]

It's possible and I'd love to see it! Maybe more trams!

[@jacktattersall9457]

The fist thing Adelaide needs to do is electrify all their train lines. Seriously, Perth and Auckland already did.

[@TrebleSketch]

@@jacktattersall9457 with current issues surrounding spending… I heard they might just run battery/hydrogen trains instead of proper electrification, which is frustrating and I hope they won’t go down that path… we will need to drill new tunnels in the hills if we were to electrify the Belair Line too.

[@jacktattersall9457]

@@TrebleSketch Battery/hyrdogen trains are better than diesel but far from ideal. People seem to forget that where europe has explored/planned battery/hydrogen trains are low-ridership rural regional liones that run married pairs not main commuter lines for an urban region of over 1 million. Darwin could have a battery train, but not Adelaide.

[@camberweller]

One of the most unmentioned things regarding developing mass transit in Toronto is tax outflow. Toronto has generally had to give up about 7 to 15 billion dollars a year in taxes i.e. that much more goes out in taxes then comes back in in government services. It is rather difficult to plan, implement and pay for a mass transit system for the country’s largest city when so much of the rest of the country is sucking money out of it. This continued until Toronto’s parliamentary and Queen’s Park representation grew so large that it could no longer be ignored. Basically, when you could win elections by screwing Toronto neither the province nor Ottawa was interested in funding Toronto’s mass transit. When it hit a stage when you could not win a provincial or federal election without Toronto/GTA, all of a sudden its mass transit became an important matter.

[@RMTransit]

Thats definitely a great political story to tell!

[@rebeccawinter472]

Just what I needed to hear this morning, even if it’s a bit old, it’s good to remember.

[@graycosmics5408]

I remember how painful transit was in Waterloo region but ever since GRT opened the ION, taking transit especially during the weekdays is pretty easy

[@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102]

I'm so jealous of KW.

[@graycosmics5408]

@@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102 are you from a city with bad transit?

[@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102]

@@graycosmics5408 my hometown is fake London, I think it's fairly self explanatory.

[@graycosmics5408]

@@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102 Ohhhhhhh..... London is the definition of car dependency. I feel bad for ppl there

[@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102]

@@graycosmics5408 indeed. The city council is also quite anti urban and even their "urbanist" vision for the city (the London plan) just involves much of the same top down car centric vision for the city. The city is a craphole and I'm not if it can ever be fixed.

[@carllivingston169]

I think in the US, yhe 70s and 80s were probably the dark ages for us. Saw rapid transit line literary torn down and not replaced. Albeit the streetcar started disappearing in the 50s, many older cities like Boston, NY & Chicago started tearing parts of their system down and leaving parts of cities empty.

[@leoncchow]

Vancouver effectively was running Bus Rapid Transit for many years. There were many suburban express bus routes that ran into downtown. Then the 135 Hastings Express. Then came the B-Lines. Starting with the 99B along Broadway, there'd eventually be 98B on Granville, 97B in Coquitlam, 95B along 41 Ave. While the Canada Line would eventually replace the 98B, and the Evergreen Line the 97B, bus rapid transit was necessary because the original Skytrain was kind of rapid transit going to nowhere, while leaving all of Vancouver's west side unserved. Edmonton had similar issues with its initial LRT routing.

[@sylvainmichaud2262]

The REM in Montreal is a bit of a poisoned gift. Due to the way it's financed and promises of profitability made by the project leader, territorial exclusivity were granted. So basically, to garantee profitability, no competition will be allowed over a huge area. Therefore, killing any other futur projects.

[@IBeforeAExceptAfterK]

The more of your videos I watch, the more bitter I get about the pathetic lack of public transit in my area. I used to be a budding railfan as a kid, but the reality of there being no actual passenger rail available in my area wore me down until I just kinda accepted that it was an impossibility and resigned myself to driving everywhere. I feel like I've been in an abusive relationship with my local public transportation network and I'm only now realizing how terrible my "partner" really is.

[@frglee]

Some cities here in the UK are living in the dark ages as regards mass transit as well, with government (both local and national) refusing point blank to invest in infrastructure. Cities like Bristol (pop 617,000), Leeds (pop 455,000) and Leicester (pop 509,000) have been left to rely on polluting buses often run by commercial operators. The first two cities here have had repeated schemes for metro systems and trams/trolleybuses turned down for half a century, whilst other British cities have forged ahead with building impressive metro and tram networks.

[@alexhaowenwong6122]

San Diego might enter a transit expansion dark age after the Mid Coast Trolley. SANDAG has an over ambitious $177 billion grade separated RER plan with trains every 5 minutes. Got to take things more incrementally, San Diego. Although San Diego is simultaneously entering a TOD building boom, with 2 multibillion, outside-of-Downtown TODs on the Green Line.

[@RMTransit]

TOD's are really good for getting political support for transit

[@AlexCab_49]

LA on the other hand is in a golden age of transit. We're building more transit than any other city except maybe Seattle. I just wish the buses passed every 5 or 10 min. And metrolink trains should have a headway of every 30 min peak hour (every 60 min. Off peak) with electrification and express traind for those who live far away like in IE or Ventura County

[@Sneder]

5:23 I see what you did there, and i appreciated it

[@MelAtkey]

The real dark ages in Vancouver were the 1960s when, before the first NDP government, there was minimal public transit in Vancouver and Victoria, and nothing at all in the suburbs,

[@YoungThos]

Still waiting for Norman Wilson's 1959 Winnipeg Subway plan to get built, though. FeelsBadMan

[@Realistic_Management]

First I've heard of that! Looks interesting, would love to see it covered in a future video.

[@YoungThos]

@@Realistic_Management Winnipeg had big ambitions, so in 1959 they commissioned the guy who did the Toronto Subway to plan out the Winnipeg Subway. You can find maps of it online. In the end though, civic leaders decided to scrap the subway, rip out the streetcars, and put all the money into roads and buses. Only just now, decades later, is a modest BRT network finally being built out. Sad to think about what could have been.

[@MultiCappie]

Get your City to plan a line, and the Feds will fund it. Trust me. Plan it and it will be built. Love to Winnipeg from Edmonton.

[@YoungThos]

@@MultiCappie Sadly, I don't think there is any political will to build anything other than BRT at this point. I remember the previous mayor made a big show of travelling to Ottawa to inspect the O-Train, but then opted for BRT anyway. In any case, I've long since moved on to greener pastures, but I still think about my hometown of Winnipeg from time to time, the largest city in Canada without rail transit (once the Quebec City tramway gets built)

[@Hardtransport]

Interesting to know how the things works on North America, it`s kind of tedious because as you saying, that cause delays or simply canceling the transits projects. I`m glad to see a lot of improvements too, here where i live (Santiago/Chile) there a lot of new urban buses, new subway extensions being built, new lines being built (L7), new trains and infrastructure that are already in operation for all our commuter/regional trains that are in Santiago (Metrotrén), Concepción (Biotrén) and Temuco (Tren Temuco-Victoria). Great video i like a lot.

[@anilaurel]

The government of Alberta basically refused to give Calgary the go-ahead to build the Green Line for years so city council is doing its best. Also, the BRT is pretty great and allows the city to experiment with future train routes. There are some dedicated lanes and its great zipping past traffic. Also, the Dark Ages includes passenger rail being gutted in Alberta. If I want to ride a train I need to drive to Edmonton for a train that runs 3/week

[@smallmj2886]

Meanwhile in Halifax...... um...... a few bus lanes have been introduced on a couple of chokepoints. And I supposed plans are in the works to make a bus trip take slightly less than 3X the time of a car trip.

[@AlexCab_49]

I think the real dark ages of transit was in the 1950s-1990s because of declining ridership on intercity rail, the deinvestment and even decay of many transit systems, including the NY subway and probably the Chicago L as well since at the time everyone saw the automobile as the future and saw teansit systems as clunky or obsolete and many governments were more willing to pay for freeways and not on transit.

[@GreaterJan]

Take a drink every time he mentions the Vancouver SkyTrain on the channel

[@tiagoprado7001]

Here's hoping that Canada manages to get enough era score to keep that going into the next one

[@RMTransit]

I agree!

[@Michael-he7xn]

Just for fun how about doing a piece on Sir Adam Beck and his vision of electric inter-urban in Ontario. The London and Port Stanley was the prototype and by all accounts it was successful until the car / highway lobby got established. I doubt you’ll run out of current stuff to talk about but this might make a pleasant change of pace for your viewers. Keep up the great work. A+!

[@RMTransit]

Thats a good idea!

[@Michael-he7xn]

@@RMTransit If you’re interested my 91 year young dad Ross is one of the founding members of Transport 2000 - a precursor to what you’ve been doing so well on the internet. He’s also a former L&PS trainman.

[@Lafv]

It really annoys me when people see electric cars as an alternative solution to transit… as if the fact the cars use gas is the only reason people use transit

[@DP-gt7sr]

Electric cars does not ease congestion either.

[@Lafv]

@@DP-gt7sr exactly

[@tylerhergott3893]

Exciting times for transit in Canada! :)

[@xhonkeri4066]

The issue in Ontario was Mike Harris who cut the Eglinton and Sheppard SUBWAY lines. Yes. Subway. Not LRT.

[@MattMcIrvin]

Boston... might finally open the Green Line extension next year!

[@simoncauxbarge]

I would not call the REM a metro system, it's more of a suburban rail system

[@RMTransit]

For sure, but calling it a Metro better contextualizes it for Montrealer's I think

[@sterlinghartley2165]

I see your Canadian Dark ages and raise you the West Yorkshire Transit Dark Ages. Poor regional rail, unreliable buses, and no Metro or even LRTs. I'd take a Tram-train or trollybuses at this point for better transit, at least them options are fully electric. For reference West Yorkshire use to have the first electrified tram line and was built from transit oriented suburbs, it just no longer got any transit greater than a bus line or if your in an older affluent area then a train service. It been like this since the 1959 and hence it being 1 hella of a dark age that might have some light and the end of the tunnel if the transit Vision 2040 gets properly funded and built.

[@riruahm2960]

I day dream about moving somewhere in the north from London but bad transit is one the reasons I don’t want to do that. My hope is great local and regional transportation all around our country 😩.

[@mattevans4377]

@@riruahm2960 Manchester fits your criteria, IMO.

[@sterlinghartley2165]

@@mattevans4377 My first thought was but that Lancashire. I don't need to say what county I'm from. Manchester seems pretty good, I've not been it Manchester for tho. I used the trams to get between station due to dodgy train ticket and I liked it very much. Colour scheme is bee-utiful.

[@sterlinghartley2165]

@@riruahm2960 Yeah, that's my dream too. When I can get from Cornwall to Newcastle at a reasonable price and not get there and be stuck in an urban shopping centre. That's the dream, also just more Metros and trams the UK has a severe deficiency.

[@Croz89]

A lot of the UK outside London went through a transit "Dark Age" from about the 1960's to the 1990's (and arguably some places have still not got out of it). Beeching slashed regional rail, and transit project after transit project was proposed and rejected. It was especially acute as cities in the North went into decline in the 1970's and 80's, transit falling apart along with the cities themselves as people migrated to the south east. Around the 1990's you start seeing the "second generation" tram/LRT systems popping up in places like Manchester and Sheffield (built on the cheap compared to what London gets but better than nothing), and things do improve, a little.

[@OrenHofer]

love it 🤠 now passenger rail between edmonton and calgary 🔫

[@MTobias]

Honestly, Canada seems like transit (project) heaven compared to Germany these days. Okay, sure, we have a better substance to work with already and Germany isn't growing like Canada is. However, there are only a few short line extension u/c right now and there is very little in the pipeline. Berlin is completely ignoring it's subway network and will likely not get any new extensions or lines within the next 10 years (and has only managed to build 5 km of new subway in the last 20 years over all). Only the cities of Hamburg and Munich seem to have any sort of ambitious mid- to long term expansion plans as well. I honestly wish there was as much growth here as you guys are experiencing right now.

[@RMTransit]

Germany is a head scratcher for me, but you do have great existing stuff!

[@BaileyChap]

RM Transit: 5km is a minor extension also RM Transit: 7km is a massive extension Adelaide Metro: 1km (1 station) is a major extension

[@adithyaramachandran7427]

No transit in Windsor ? A light rail line would be nice to have. There was a train planned between DTW and Ann Arbor MI which got voted down with 50.1% saying No to 49.7% saying Yes. It was painful to see :(.

[@angusbeaty]

So optimistic! Love it

[@losh330]

Sounds like Philadelphia until hopefully this year with all their planned projects. Pennsylvania is very stingy with funding though.

[@gavinlee7554]

One city that I feel hasn’t really seen much, if any rail infrastructure is Winnipeg. It’s the 7th largest city in the country, bypassing Quebec City. They seem to have doubled down on BRT instead. If Gatineau, Hamilton, and Quebec City have potential plans then what’s stopping Winnipeg? Would love to see a video on whether their transit approach is good or not.

[@matthewgasparin7000]

From what I can see, the problem is the Manitoba government not funding high-capacity transit projects.

[@jontysherson]

We in New Zealand 2 projects in the building. The Eastern Busway and The CRL (All In Auckland)

[@thebob563]

My city is going through a dark age :( only two subway lines built in the 90s and 2000s respectively, and a 3rd line that just got finished but took 20 yrs thanks to corruption and lack of resources.

[@Latoetnino]

When the fire nation attacked lelelelelel

[@tronicman1]

Oh, I was thinking you would be talking about the mid century until the 1970ies, when tramways (streetcars) and even lightrail disappeared in too many cities and was on the decline in many others, something that changed in the 1980ies and 90ies.

[@JakoZestoko]

I love that BRT projects including the Mississauga Transitway was omitted from this video. Rightly so - that PoS is completely useless.

[@KingSobieski]

Can USA get some rail now? The local train station to me is now a T shirt printer and the switching yard is a until further notice shutdown museum

[@dakotanorth1640]

What's the current scoop on Hamilton's off-again on-again "B" Line?

[@ashleyjiscool]

If I had to pick a dark age for the uk, easily 1963-1968 Countless (someone has prob counted them all but me too lazy to put it in) rail lines were torn up as dr Richard thought they were going to be mothballed, he was wrong but in 68 vic Line opened in phase 1

[@allenmorgan6847]

Why don’t Winnipeg Halifax and Regina not have light rail or metros

[@simhakalimipalli3701]

victoria and halifax are next for lrts/brts. Winnipeg could use regional rail

[@jeffreysmith85]

You missed the decline in streetcar line in the states

[@vincentng2392]

It's unfortunate that BC urban rail projects in Fraser Valley and Greater Victoria are not considered.

[@MultiCappie]

How many departures on the West Coast Express these days?

[@geoffreyhansen8543]

Sydney had a bit of a dark age in the first decade of the 2000s and Brisbane had a dark age during the 1960s.

[@Brettski_1234]

Adelaide is actually converting one rail line into electric but that's not really major when its over budget and time too

[@bernadmanny]

(Cries in Adelaide) 😢 Still no new projects.

[@PWingert1966]

In Toronto's case as far as funding goes they can't raise the money because they are a creation of the province and can not utilize certain financial tools such as debt financing. The result is they only have property tax and their only source of revenue. This means it is virtually impossible t fully participate in the 1é3 x 1é3 x 1é3 funding because they are really not a third level of government since they are hobbled by their revenue abilities and their requirement to be debt-free. There is some discussion about whether Toronto should be able to operate more like its own province financially speaking and be able to engage in debt financing and utilize other financial tools that are currently off-limits as well as broaden their revenue sources such as being able to implement road tools without having the province approve it first.

[@nathandavidowicz3721]

Find the transit ridership per capita in Canada and the mode split and compare that to other countries, we are way way behind.

[@MrDigitalman78]

You can thank our Ontario politicians especially in GTA Toronto area for delaying the city's transit expansion growth for their own agenda, hint the Fords

[@alexm566]

what are your thoughts about the new seattle transit?

[@jonod7913]

Sorry NZ still working on just one project CRL in Auckland after 5 years and 5 more to go.

[@jonathanleonard1152]

The high end of transit here in the capital region of NYS (note NOT NYC) is BRT. Not mentioned here. Actually this channel makes me jealous.

[@cliffwoodbury5319]

could you cover Chicago's plan to raise roads or the tracks over most roads so there are less/no level crossings. I know they are doing this because there is more traffic cuased by interaction between vihcles and trains than anywhere in the U.S. but i'd like to know more and know how far they are into the project???

[@debbiewilson5739]

i wish london, ont would get some transit going on . we just got approval for GO train but it's going to take 4hrs to get to toronto to slow i hope they approve that

[@TheRJRabbit23]

Canada wants a population of 100 million and more and yet we don’t have interconnected transit across all provinces considering all the technology we have. My folks lived through these dark ages of transit and I can tell you having a car is more reliable

[@edgemsbrowse7467]

Hey Can you cover Rapid transit in India.

[@MikeDS49]

I get the feeling that this the case for the largest urban areas: Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ottawa, Montreal, Edmonton, Quebec City, Gatineau. Is anything happening in the other smaller capital (or otherwise) cities like Regina, Winnipeg, Halifax or Fredericton? Nothing good seems to be happening in St. John's. It's almost impossible to get a single MUP built, while a $60M four lane highway is built from the bypass highway to a rural part of the city. Given the demographics, culture, population density, and financial situaiton of the region ($14B hydro dam!), it doesn't look hopeful.

[@RMTransit]

Not enough, smaller cities are an area I'd like to see more improvement

[@railfanningstuff8333]

I'm more interested in the Peterborough high-frequency GO\Via Rail line. And will Toronto's half-mile-long bridge in the Don valley see rail trafic again after about 30 years ?

[@Newspeak.]

How does the federal spending on transit compare to highway spending in Canada?

[@billythorne]

my country has only existed for 70 years, but we already had some railways built by the former British Mandate. today, our population has exploded (we are one of the densest countries in the world), however, we neglected rail for decades, no city had any rapid transit at all, we were very much in "dark ages". then in the late 1980s, when congestion became a problem, we decided to start constructing new transit, and since then, we have built a lot (mostly national rail expansions and light rail). today we are on our way to have world class transit, including potential subways and 250kph HSR. Any guesses as to what country this is?

[@starfighterace]

South Africa or Egypt?

[@billythorne]

@@starfighterace neither

[@graycosmics5408]

Bangladesh

[@AridChannelOfficialSG]

Kenya?

[@darthwiizius]

@@billythorne Sri Lanka?

[@etbadaboum]

How do you see Reece the next thirty years for Toronto urban planning development? Considering that transit will be far better. I hope the Suburbia Plague will at least stop or severely transformed.

[@bobbaconofficial7462]

Calgary Gang

[@NickCC23]

Five worst industrailzed countries for mass transit: 1. United States 2. United States 3. United States 4. United States 5. United States

[@scottfaulds2645]

Hi Renee how come u talk about Calgary and Edmonton transit also how about Saskatchewan or Manitoba transit

[@kinggator8231]

Probably because Saskatchewan and Manitoba don't have trains.

[@scottfaulds2645]

@@kinggator8231 I know that I live in Steinbach mb. Winnipeg has brt now. When Sam Kay was Mayo, he said in the future Winnipeg will get a lrt or subway but don't know when before we lrt or subway they need to get the crime down on buses

[@kinggator8231]

@@scottfaulds2645 oof as an Edmontonian, I'm way too familiar with transit being a hot spot for crime and drugs

[@scottfaulds2645]

@@kinggator8231 oh wow I didn't know Edmonton had crimes on buses and on their LRT I know Edmonton has crimes in the city like Winnipeg but not on transit So I guess it makes no difference on transit lol if that makes sense

[@hollyvasquez2087]

How about if they funded VIA rail to have more long distance service.

[@alexandrupup7467]

Do the Timisoara Tram System!!!

[@Nik-ny9ue]

What can we do to improve walkability in St John's Newfoundland?

[@giancarlomartini2133]

Put those accessibility stair lifts on all the hills lol

[@Nik-ny9ue]

@@giancarlomartini2133 LMAO

[@garyhood4153]

Plow and salt the sidewalks. It has improved a lot since I moved to St. John’s in 2008, but it’s still terrible.

[@phillatwood7736]

Halifax ? Maritimes ? Is nothing happening in transit in the east of Canada?

[@matthewgasparin7000]

@@danielkelly2210 Hmm, that's sad. Hopefully the Nova Scotia government can warm up to transit and build something, the region definitely needs it.

[@bobbaconofficial7462]

What's wrong with MAX buses in Calgary???

[@RMTransit]

Very low frequencies

[@a2dsouza]

​@@RMTransit As I write this at about 3:30PM on a Friday, MAX Orange has buses every 13 minutes in both directions, which is pretty good for BRT, isn't it? Especially during the pandemic? Admittedly the other MAX routes are worse, 20+ minute headway right now. Even though MAX Purple isn't terribly frequent, I think it's encouraging that the city invested in building a dedicated right of way for it (and they did a bit of this for MAX Yellow too). Hopefully when ridership starts to return to normal as we emerge from this extended COVID nightmare, frequencies will go up too.

[@KKHYECR]

I love your channel but would prefer more voice over videos and illustrations than just watching you the whole time talk in front of a camera and plain wall. No disrespect at all! Show more visuals as you talk!

[@a2dsouza]

That would probably make the videos take longer to edit, and it would be hard to keep up the amazing one-video-per-day schedule Reece is currently managing.

[@rickmcginnis]

Electric cars dooming transit? That's REALLY getting the story backwards.

[@sauvanto9316]

2:38 face block hahahaha

[@jeffreysmith85]

What happened was a waste and a crime

[@linuxman7777]

I am American, so I am not sure about what Canadian conservatives are like, but at least in the U.S, alot of good rail projects are happening in the Republican areas, like Brightline in Florida, or the Central Texas Rail. The issue conservatives in the us have isn't with Transit, it is with being price gouged for projects like what happened in NYC or Boston where those cities paid several times more than what it should have cost to build. Also you do have the Strong Towns type conservatives who aren't against transit, but believe transit should come last, and that building a great place should come first, The are against Transit Oriented Development and for Development Oriented Transit

[@darthwiizius]

I think the US would benefit by the individual states building their own intercity networks separated from the old slow freight networks. Networking cities to airports to local hubs in cities while catching the towns in between with modern fast trains could be a real boon to commerce along such lines. Of course as these lines develop you can then allow operators to run cross state inner city routes connecting across borders in a way similar to services seen in continental Europe.

[@linuxman7777]

@@tompeled6193 They are models of urban planning, and a prime example of what planning without zoning gets you. Planning overrated imo, as some of the best cities I have ever visited like Tokyo, or Kanazawa had very little to no planning in most areas, while American Suburbia was meticulously planned. If humans are left to their own devices, they would build organic towns before building gridded american urbanism, or dendritic suburban sprawl.

[@pavld335]

There are plenty of conservatives who are explicitly against transit projects.

[@lars7935]

@@linuxman7777 There is lots of planning in Tokyo (and Japan in general). It's just a lot different from the american approach.

[@Rickyrab]

In other words, the car centric baby boomers are getting old. 😂

[@AlexanderPallares]

Why do people take trends of expanding poverty as a sign that everyone wants to live in a pod?

[@Secretlyalittleworm]

I’m always so grateful that my country never built as much car dependant infrastructure as the US- thank god we didn’t have a post war economic boom to build it all lol

[@AlexCab_49]

What country are you in?

[@edwardmiessner6502]

"There was only one major transit project under construction which is not much for a metropolitan area with a population of 6 to 7 million." *Cries in the United States* 😢

[@MultiCappie]

Good luck down there doods.

[@edwardmiessner6502]

@@MultiCappie Thank you

[@MultiCappie]

@@edwardmiessner6502 I mean it. You guys deserve to be proud of your cities. Got your back 100%. Make one city shine, let its rivals try to go one up. That's what we're really doing up here.

[@A_Canadian_In_Poland]

The real dark 15 years for transit in Canada were from 1991 to 2006. Other than Vancouver, almost no other system saw any meaningful construction during that time (Toronto built 'the useless subway line' nowhere near downtown), and GO Transit actually reduced services and closed parts of lines and stations during that time. Even the Ottawa Transitway (which was built as a BRT so that it could be built out one station at a time) saw few expansions during this time, save for some makeshift infill stations that were nothing more than standard streetside bus shelters.

[@Rickyrab]

In the USA, the transit dark ages were basically between 1946 and 1983, with a lot of trolley (tram) systems getting converted to bus, taken over by government, and underfunded, a lot of railroads closing to passenger service, the formation of Amtrak, and the takeover of passenger commuter railroads by state and local government.

[@RMTransit]

Unfortunately, I wasn't alive for a lot of that Haha - actually not unfortunate though. . .

[@paulrebstock4993]

VIA also shutdown service between Calgary and Edmonton in the 90s.

[@rogerclarke7407]

You should have looked farther back, from 1982 (when I graduated and got a job outside of Toronto) to 1995 (when I ended up back in Toronto) the subway got 1 new station plus the Scarborough RT. Also the streetcars that were so old in 2005 were stunningly modern compared to what they were replacing in 82

[@jtsholtod.79]

I have to agree. In the mid 90s the TTC were scraping together parts of New Flyer 700-900s and GM fishbowls just to make ends meet, never mind subway and streetcar considerations. Very bleak indeed.

[@RMTransit]

I guess for me it was more about something I personally experienced!

[@Lt_Col.Henry_Blake]

Agreed. That was a low point nationwide (except maybe Vancouver). In the early 90's, Montreal's busiest commuter rail line's passengers rode in cars built in the 1920/30's pulled by box cab locomotives built during World War I (

[@stephenp448]

@@jtsholtod.79 not to mention the sorry state of maintenance on the TTC that resulted in the Russell Hill crash in 1995.

[@Realistic_Management]

The Transit Dark Ages, also known as the Austerity Era, where government orthodoxy was "Cut, cut, cut, cut." We've seen how well that's worked out. Our cities are crumbling and our infrastructure debt is sky-high. There are some rays of sunlight peaking through, but we have a long way to go!

[@alexdunlop9762]

By austerity you mean more balanced budgets? Yes infrastructure spending is good for all, but arguing for limitless spending is just going to mean your kids or grandkids pay for it

[@svartmetall48]

Welcome to the UK now.

[@Realistic_Management]

​@@alexdunlop9762 that definitely was the prevailing way of looking at it. However, good investments in infrastructure tend to pay for themselves over time.

[@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102]

One of the problems with Canadian transit is that we overpay for transit systems that get delayed and are plagued with design problems (looking at you O Train line 1). Metrolinx/Go Transit also wastefully uses public subsidies to pay for parking lots and transit stations that nobody uses such as the new Bloomington Go station. People often think that the problem with public transit is a lack of funds when in reality a lot of it has to do with wasteful uses of those funds.

[@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102]

In Canada's case a more neoliberal state would probably improve public services rather than hurt them. The problem with privatisation/deregulation efforts in Canada is that they're done half-heartedly and not done in a way that promotes economic competition.

[@Theincredibledrummer]

Aucklands transit dark aged were 1950 - the late 90s where literally not a single transit project was built. Now we have expansions of our heavy rail and BRT networks and hopefully a light rail project on the way. Things can change

[@RMTransit]

Quite the Golden Age there too!

[@Theincredibledrummer]

@@RMTransit long may it continue haha

[@jacktattersall9457]

@@Theincredibledrummer May it never end.

[@ansonchan7323]

Don't forget they rip away most of the railway in the Atlantic provinces in the 80s and 90s

[@nicholasmahoney5653]

“Both parties recognize the importance of transit” In America, can’t relate. In the 1.2 trillion usd bipartisan infrastructure deal the entirety of transit funding was left up to one pos senator from Pennsylvania who absolutely hates transit. I guarantee if you put legislation on the floor of the us senate to add $1.50 in funding to one lucky transit agency, it would die in a filibuster.

[@AlexCab_49]

The US is run by white wealthy boomers who grew up in the age of car centrism.

[@Schinshikss]

This video somehow reminds me of the dark years back when there was only one metro line in whole Taipei and everyone was just squeezing their scooters and cars on the road, and turning right under red lights was completely legal. What's worse is that back then we were actually digging *a lot* to move the railway and HSR tracks and new metro lines underground, rendering some of the road surfaces unusable.

[@Fan652w]

Britain, OUTSIDE LONDON,is still in the transport dark ages! The biggest problem is that cities outside London usually have to rely on expensive privatized and deregulated buses, and that has been so since 1986.

[@ProvenScroll]

In the US we are in a perpetual dark age...

[@mr51406]

The dark ages started in Montreal in the 1990’s when the government froze all expansions. (And there was a very bad and long recession in Quebec at the time.) No more lines to Anjou or Montreal North. The metropolitan engineering/planning department was simply closed and its archives dispersed. (The ultimate irony is that the minister who did the cuts had a brother who was mayor of Montreal North at the time…) We indeed got the extension to Montmorency but it became very unpopular because of bad top-down planning and vitriolic coverage in the Quebecor press which made any heavy transit project unacceptable to the average suburban voter/taxpayer. Transit was now a vote loser. So we had 20 years of ribbon cutting for the odd reserved lane and a few bus shelters. It only changed when Premier Couillard saw that we were going to miss the boat when the new Champlain Bridge was being built and made the CDPQ plan the REM. And it was only made “acceptable” because the REM had a economic model based on profitability not on service. But the top-down planning model remains… We are in the beige ages, not gold and not green.

[@repulsewarriorx8825]

"i love this guy", i said to my wife. Here is a guy who loves what he's talking about; how can you not want to listen.

[@RMTransit]

Haha that's touching

[@DavidShepheard]

The dark ages of London, came after World War II, where the Northern Heights Project got cancelled to keep the Central Line Extension going, the Victoria Line got built, with the ends cut off and tiny tube platforms (that have since caused Oxford Street Station to get dangerously overcrowded). The end of it was the tragedy of the King's Cross Disaster, where the whole world saw that the government had allowed dangerous wooden escalators to remain on the system. We have had some significant forward momentum, since then. However, any transit improvement project gets serenaded with large numbers of concern troll arguments and is repeatedly called "unnecessary," "unwanted" or a "failure". It feels like if two projects get the green light, the second one gets the axe, if the first one gets delayed. The world needs to move past, this sort of thing and cities need to instead have continuous improvement in transit, with short term plans, mid term aspirations and long term goals all being considered together.

[@ericbruun9020]

The new Helsinki tangential line replacing the region's busiest bus route is a good example of a line that goes through nature and then stops in dense development areas.

[@RMTransit]

Absolutely, Helsinki is beautiful!

[@lzh4950]

Other examples include HK's East Rail Line tunneling underneath a mountain range to connect the downtown areas of Kowloon to the outer suburbs e.g. Shatin, Sheung Shui (which are dense as so much of HK is mountainous, so even suburban flat land is valuable), Singapore's North South Line cutting through forested areas (where Disney had considered building a DisneyLand in the 1990s) to connect downtown & the inner suburbs (Toa Payoh, Bishan, AMK) with the outer ones (Yishun, Sembawang, Woodlands) & Downtown Line's western stretch connecting the dense but isolated Bt Panjang suburb (~17km from downtown, ~120k population spread over ~3.65km^2, with apartments reaching 30 floors, & surrounded by forest on 3 sides) to downtown via an alignment along the forested Upp Bt Timah Rd