>>1923047>it's practically an amalgamation of the twoWhy do you think they called it light rail?
Lighter stock, lower capacity and less frequency than heavy rail aka subways/elevated metros and so on.
I'll agree with
>>1920719 too, they're really useless for anything other than a real estate investment because an LRT line tends to kick off transit oriented development around the stations.
They only work well when you properly invest in them. No street running like they do in some cities. Have it be fully grade separated. Use underground or elevated stations/sections if you need to avoid traffic. Build platforms large enough or at least make it possible to expand them so that when they hit capacity, more LRVs can be added.
I don't know much about US LRT systems, but in Canada we have a few that are pretty decent. Ottawa, Ontario built a huge system a couple years ago. It had a fuck ton of problems at first, but it's mostly okay now. Edmonton, Alberta first opened one in the late 1970s and it was way more metro like than LRT today, but it was still LRT. Both utilize underground and elevated stations nor do they mix with traffic anywhere (not certain about Edmonton actually) and the systems fill the role for both cities given their 1 millionish population size. Toronto, Ontario is also building a few new LRT lines in a similar fashion. Waterloo Region, Ontario built one but fucked up by having it mix with traffic and building platforms only large enough for 2 LRVs despite an extremely fast growing population.
We just hate transit on this continent ... ;_;
