>>1872705it would be a great commuter but would need heavy upgrades to compete, there are many international/local ferry services that only go from either place so connections between them would be very helpful, I'd say it needs to be at least 60km/h average speed to make people want to take it, as the drive is 1.5 hours, up to 2.5 or higher if bad traffic or accidents. the rail is 117km to nanaimo and at 60 it'd get there in 1.9 hours which I'd do for sure (and if it made it to courtney it'd make going to mt. washington, the local ski hill much easier). as for ped friendly/suburban near the stations, the langford terminus is quite dense and in the middle of what langford considers "downtown" but overall that municipality is quite sprawly so it'd need good bus service. another issue is they made a new bridge to get from downtown to the area you see across the water (the esquimalt stop) which did not include any rail infrastructure so you would not be able to get downtown without a new bridge, luckily the current stop for that portion ends right here so it's like 5 mins to walk downtown (trams downtown on the other side is my unrealistic pipe dream)
