Toronto LRT Information Blog

The latest city to come to this site was photographed at the end of March. It is San Francisco’s Muni Metro LRT system.

Something new to this site is that there are some photos taken on a new extension that is not yet open for service. The Central Subway takes Route T north on Fourth Street from where it currently turns at King Street. With one street-level station, it then enters the tunnel and serves three new underground stations.

As a trainer for the company contracted to provide the CBTC (Communications-Based Train Control) signalling system, I had the opportunity to visit the three stations on the Central Subway during the training sessions to provide the maintainers attending the training to get some hands-on experience with the equipment before it goes into revenue service. The photo has me at the signal on the west track at the north end of the Chinatown-Rose Pak station.

The first LRT system to open in Ontario starts carrying passengers on Friday June 21 after an opening ceremony at 10:30 am at Fairway station.

All GRT services, including ION, are free of fare Friday, June 21 until Canada Day, Monday, July 1.

Calgary’s West extension to their C-train system opens for revenue service. Initial opening with free rides occurred over the weekend.

In the near future, the Calgary Page will be updated with photos and information on this new part of the system.

For now, here is a video of the trip:

It is nice to be able to travel to other cities to see some really inspiring transit development, but it is a reminder of how much we drag our collective asses here in the GTHA. When we finally get to a point where something is underway, a change of government can so easily cancel everything in the name of it being their ‘mandate’, despite being elected on a whole other issue while their ‘transit plan’ was essentially created on the back of a napkin (or was that toilet paper?) or late at night as a YouTube video.

For some inspiration, check out the new Expansion section of the Denver page.

Sometimes attraction for development is used as an argument for subways over LRT. The silly thing about this argument is that there are many other factors that come into play, and LRT can be just as effective as full subway construction at attracting new development.

While in Denver last week, I came across this sign at the side of a road near the Dayton LRT station…