Metro Vancouver Transit Discussion II

[Migrant_Coconut]

Google AI is not a reliable source of information. It just pulls semi-relevant 🞵🞵🞵🞵 from three articles and reads it out as if it were one's personal yes-man.

The facts as of 2025-26 are that A) off-rail automation is still in alpha testing, B) BRT can only exceed ~7k with four lanes, and C) a bus-sized four-lane Loop tunnel would be significantly more expensive than a two-lane train tunnel, and much slower.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Google AI is not a reliable source of information. It just pulls semi-relevant 🞵🞵🞵🞵 from three articles and reads it out as if it were one's personal yes-man.

The facts as of 2025-26 are that A) off-rail automation is still in alpha testing, B) BRT can only exceed ~7k with four lanes, and C) a bus-sized four-lane Loop tunnel would be significantly more expensive than a two-lane train tunnel, and much slower.

Okey dokey. AI uses the same websites to gather information that you use. And I wasn't comparing a 4 lane bus tunnel, and why would buses be much slower in its own tunnel? Maybe a little slower. Not sure where you got that from. Anyways, you don't trust the internet, so where are you getting your information from? Good news is, you are one of the few that won't get replaced by AI. Your ahead of the curve.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by logan5

- snip -

It's not about trusting or not trusting, it's about checking facts and not taking the first thing a bot says at face value. They can't think. You can.

It goes slower because that's all it's capable of right now. And if it's only a 2-lane bus tunnel, then at 25km/h, congrats, you've effectively invented... a very expensive RapidBus in a tunnel.
If we have money to try and reinvent the SkyTrain, we have money to actually build another SkyTrain; let's not pull a Vegas and set transit back another decade.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

That's EXACTLY my point. There was no need to throw money out the door on an intermediate capacity transit system like LRT (which would itself have to be replaced) because Vancouver was able to provide enough capacity with buses to bridge the gap until the ridership justified the construction of a grade separated solution.

I just see it as very, very difficult to find a use case where LRT is the right solution because you need more than buses but less than grade separation, especially when any route that needs more than buses is almost certainly going to need grade separation before the capital cost of building an LRT line can be recouped.

The use case is in situations where an underground route like Broadway is getting would be too expensive to be justified by that number of riders. That "gap" is much closer if you need far fewer riders to justify a far cheaper project. If you can justify a project that costs $ with say, 40k riders or more per day, then to justify a route that costs $$$$ (4x as much) you'd need 160k or more riders per day. So two places with the same level of ridership would be justified in choosing two different solutions if they face very different infrastructure costs.

The cost is part of the context. Not all that different than a place where one option is much cheaper due to there being an available surface alignment like a rail corridor or wide street median while another place doesn't. The place without the existing alignment might have to buy and demolish large numbers of buildings and face backlash and lawsuits to do a surface route. In one place the cost is much cheaper than in another, so in one place one option makes much more sense than in the other place. And that's true regardless of what causes the cost to be higher. But that's a difference in the places, not in the technology. So it isn't that the technology is useless, it's that it isn't appropriate in some contexts. Which is the case with every technology.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

The use case is in situations where an underground route like Broadway is getting would be too expensive to be justified by that number of riders. That "gap" is much closer if you need far fewer riders to justify a far cheaper project.

But if you have fewer riders then you can address the required service level with buses.

Broadway shows that buses were able to fill the expanding ridership needs up to the point where a tunneled solution with cut-and-cover stations on a busy metropolitan thoroughfare was cost justified. I just don't see the kind of "gap" you're describing where LRT makes sense, especially when you consider that a route with growing ridership which exceeds the ability of buses to service would soon need a grade separated solution anyway, which would make any interim LRT solution a white elephant.

[Glow Fun City]

The one case I see where LRT can work fairly well is in historic areas of cities where the capacity of rail is needed, but underground or elevated is impractical for heritage or archaeological reasons. Not really applicable here, though…

[mcj]

Originally Posted by Glow Fun City

The one case I see where LRT can work fairly well is in historic areas of cities where the capacity of rail is needed, but underground or elevated is impractical for heritage or archaeological reasons. Not really applicable here, though…

Typically they're better suited to that environment as well because the city likely grew around a tram network at some point, therefore having consistent medium density along the line (that is also a relatively short distance from the city centre). Even if those lines were then later removed, the density still remained in most cases (such as with Vancouver's own tram network that was largely converted to trolleybuses). Finch Street is not one of those streets. King George Boulevard similarly, is not one of those streets. 20th century car oriented suburbia that's dozens of kilometres from the city centre or more just isn't the environment for trams. Light metro or suburban heavy rail is really the best answer to that built environment.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

But if you have fewer riders then you can address the required service level with buses.

You completely misread what I was saying. You can't provide the required service levels with buses if the gap was much wider due to needing far more capacity to justify the cost of subway than in the Broadway situation. If an underground project was so much more expensive that you'd need say, 150k riders per day to justify the cost then buses can't handle that effectively. And of course, in regions with really good transit, they'd never have let the Broadway corridor get anywhere near that busy before getting an upgrade. For them, the ridership threshold to justify an LRT upgrade would be much lower than for us since we often avoid transit investment as long as possible. For them it would be more like 20k per day for LRT and 125k per day for metro (depending on route length). That's a huge gap and not one that would be quickly filled by new ridership since those places are already near saturation.

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

Broadway shows that buses were able to fill the expanding ridership needs up to the point where a tunneled solution with cut-and-cover stations on a busy metropolitan thoroughfare was cost justified. I just don't see the kind of "gap" you're describing where LRT makes sense, especially when you consider that a route with growing ridership which exceeds the ability of buses to service would soon need a grade separated solution anyway, which would make any interim LRT solution a white elephant.

I'm not sure how it's hard to see such a situation when we've been discussing one - Finch - for multiple posts. Finch was already getting too busy for buses to provide the service comfortably, but the ridership wasn't nearly high enough to justify a subway project at Toronto prices. And as someone pointed out earlier, ridership isn't growing that quickly so we wouldn't expect ridership to be high enough to justify the enormous underground cost any time soon.

I think what it comes down to is that if you have a bias against a particular technology, then it is often possible to avoid using it. But just because it's possible doesn't make it a good solution. The same way that someone with an anti-LRT bias might tolerate years of overly crowded buses hoping to make the leap directly to metro, an anti-metro person could tolerate crowded, slower LRT in order to avoid building metro.

If you were to couple 4 TTC streetcars and run 34 of these per hour per direction, you could carry over 22k people per hour per direction. That's significantly more than the Canada line but without any tunneling required. An anti-metro person could say that unless you'd need more capacity than that within the next 50+ years then a metro would be a white elephant. Therefore you shouldn't waste money going underground. You can do that with most technologies. You can often a minivan when an SUV would be most appropriate or an SUV when a car would be best. Doesn't make them good solutions.

If there was no appropriate setting for LRT then Metro system champions like Paris wouldn't have built multiple modern LRT routes. Paris has one of the oldest and busiest metro systems in the world - which is being aggressively expanded - yet it also has 15 tram lines to fill in the gaps with the oldest only opening in 1992. In fact, 5 have opened just since 2021, with the most recent being this year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tramways_in_%C3%8Ele-de-France

[Migrant_Coconut]

FWIW the 99 B-Line at its peak successfully carried ~56,000/weekday in mixed traffic. It's possible.

[BaddieB]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I sure can use the word efficiency because that is the correct term to use. Just limiting the discussion to the passenger experience ignores that the upgrade helps to reduce operational costs since an extremely busy bus route requires so many more drivers, and labour tends to be the biggest operational cost. Plus buses are very damaging to roads, so a high frequency bus route also costs the municipality in additional maintenance costs. So the additional capital expense isn't just upgrading capacity but also saving money in other areas. By being more efficient.

Even when you account for the reductions in labour, wear, etc. the CAPEX of this LRT is just so astronomically high that any potential OPEX saving won't make a dent. In fact, I would assume the OPEX of this LRT per passenger is still higher than it would be if it were BRT, because of how much more infrastructure is needed for the LRT. And as I have said, the ridership is expected to be about the same as the bus routes being replaced, so you're not benefiting from economies of scale.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

In terms of ridership projections, it's also important to remember that Finch will just be a small part of most people's journeys since its main purpose is the connect people in the northwest of the city to line 1 which goes to many other places. By comparison, the Canada Line is a main trunk route that other transit routes connects to. Not really a useful comparison. We would need to compare the LRT's projected ridership growth with the projected growth for other mode options on the same corridor to make any relevant claims as to how future ridership would compare.

It is fair to say that maybe a subway would not have great ridership if it were a subway just because of the area it is serving, but I beg to differ. The Evergreen Line went through a fairly low-density suburb and saw 3X ridership from the B-line it replaced. That was only possible because the Evergreen Line is very fast, *unlike* Finch West. Despite going through a low-density area, you can find good ridership by virtue of being fast, which Finch fails at. That is why I think ridership is suffering because the LRT is slow, and would be faster if it were a subway that would be capable of reaching an average of 40 km/h.

Finch will just be a small part of most people's journeys since its main purpose is the connect people in the northwest of the city to line 1 which goes to many other places.

Same for the Evergreen Line, it is a small part of most people's journeys since its main purpose is to connect the Tri-cities to the Millennium and Expo Lines which goes to many other places.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

My response was to someone who seemed to write off LRT as a technology by claiming that it it was as expensive as a subway but no better than a bus. But instead of people simply acknowledging that this obviously wasn't true, people are changing the subject to all this stuff that's irrelevant to the actual point.

I think LRT is a technology that at no point has a cost-benefit that exceeds either a BRT or a Metro.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

The SLS is not a better comparison because it's not in Greater Toronto. The cost of a subway in BC is completely irrelevant to what technology Toronto should be using. The only thing that's relevant is what Toronto would be paying and getting in return for different modes. Unless of course you think that if they chose subway instead of LRT that they somehow would have gotten BC subway prices.

It's true that building in a dense central area can increase costs, and I thought about using the Scarborough subway extension as a comparison since it's not downtown. But it's also completely underground whereas the Ont. line has significant surface and elevated sections. Also,the Scarborough extension hasn't made nearly as much progress so it's harder to predict what the actual final cost will be.

Fair point. I would concede that if such a project were constructed in BC it would be cheaper just because Metrolinx wouldn't be involved.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

An upgrade to capacity is an upgrade to service. Not just because you can provide service to more people but also since you can provide a better experience to the existing riders. Not only is it uncomfortable to be stuffed into packed buses, but sometimes people even have to wait for another vehicle because no one else can get on which causes frustration and increased journey times. And I'm not sure the 99 B-line is the best example of how a bus route can successfully handle higher capacity when the busiest part of the route is currently being upgraded to a higher capacity mode. And while it's great that the Broadway extension will include higher speeds, that might not have been feasible with significantly higher infrastructure costs. And no, high costs aren't just a Metrolinx problem. High transit infrastructure costs have become an issue in many different places to the point where RM Transit and other creators have made entire videos on it.

Again, the whole point of building LRT is because it has better capacity than bus, but if the ridership fails to materialize because it is slow, that capacity upgrade doesn't matter. Solely looking at capacity tells you nothing about how useful the service is. I can put a thousand chairs in a field, which a capacity of 1,000 people, but if the speed is 0 km/h no one will ride it. Likewise with LRT, because it is so slow, the ridership, i.e., its usefulness, will suffer, regardless of its capacity.

The 99 B-line is a great example actually, because you can run a line with just buses to a surprisingly high capacity until a point, wherein it becomes better to just do a full upgrade to a metro. Now only if they built that Metro 20 years earlier.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Fact is, surface LRT is cheaper than subway and has advantages that buses lack. That doesn't mean it's appropriate for every application or that we can't criticize instances where it's a poor choice. But there are some cases where it's a good choice, so claiming that it's just a bad technology based on the higher costs in a place where all modes are costlier isn't accurate.

The problem with LRT is that it just doesn't give you much for the money. Even in the best case, it only costs maybe half as much as a full metro, but you also get about half the speed and far lower ridership. That is a bad tradeoff. If youre trying to save money, you're usually better off building a BRT, which can match LRT speeds and reliability for less, even if capacity is a bit lower. If capacity actually does become an issue (which for BRTs is quite rare mind you), then it makes more sense to go all the way and build a real subway, because thats when you actually gain a lot in speed, ridership, and long-term reliability. LRT ends up stuck in the middle, too slow to attract high ridership, but still too expensive to justify the poor speeds and ridership.

[mcj]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

FWIW the 99 B-Line at its peak successfully carried ~56,000/weekday in mixed traffic. It's possible.

The 99 B-Line is/was just an express bus service that largely runs in mixed traffic (particularly on off peak times).

A true BRT system like the TransMilenio can even hit those number of the ~50k scale on a peak people per direction per hour basis (roughly the equivalent of running MkV trains every 1.5 mins all at crush capacity of ~1200 people per train).

Point is, at no point is a LRT system going to be worth it over a BRT system if your goal is capacity.

[Glow Fun City]

Originally Posted by mcj

The 99 B-Line is/was just an express bus service that largely runs in mixed traffic (particularly on off peak times).

A true BRT system like the TransMilenio can even hit those number of the ~50k scale on a peak people per direction per hour basis.

TransMilenio gets cited a lot by BRT advocates, but having been to Bogotá and ridden it, the capacity is woefully inadequate for their needs. Medellín's rail metro system is much better.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

It's not about trusting or not trusting, it's about checking facts and not taking the first thing a bot says at face value. They can't think. You can.

It goes slower because that's all it's capable of right now. And if it's only a 2-lane bus tunnel, then at 25km/h, congrats, you've effectively invented... a very expensive RapidBus in a tunnel.
If we have money to try and reinvent the SkyTrain, we have money to actually build another SkyTrain; let's not pull a Vegas and set transit back another decade.

I'll have to take the L on this one. I admit I can't beat your straw man debate tactics. The example in the link you provided is a mini bus doing a route in an industrial park, with a top speed of 40 km/h.

Buses need only be capable of 80 km/h to match Skytrain, which they can easily exceed. Then you went on to say the limit of BRT is 7000 pph, which there are examples of BRT that exceed that.

But my position was that BRT with automation can match the capacity/operator cost of LRT through automated platooning, and even if you built an underground BRT, there are cost savings over a subway rall line, while still realizing the same capacities through automation.

As a side note, I've been using Google AI searches for quite awhile now, and I have found that it is very good at constructing a thorough, well written report, drawing the same conclusions that you would yourself (given the same information you would use from the internet), except it does it in seconds, instead of an hour or so it would take to do it yourself. An incredible tool to have.

[BaddieB]

Originally Posted by Glow Fun City

TransMilenio gets cited a lot by BRT advocates, but having been to Bogotá and ridden it, the capacity is woefully inadequate for their needs. Medellín's rail metro system is much better.

I think it's moreso to say that once you are reaching capacity issues with a BRT, it makes more sense to just build a metro than an LRT, because the metro will have the right capacity and also provide a much much more superior service (reliability, speed) than the LRT could. That is why on comprable urban geographies, metros bring in much better ridership.

You can take an LRT system in North America and put them in two categories: would have been better built as a metro, or would have been better built as a BRT.

[scryer]

A lot to unpack in the last couple of pages...

Originally Posted by logan5

But my position was that BRT with automation can match the capacity/operator cost of LRT through automated platooning, and even if you built an underground BRT, there are cost savings over a subway rall line, while still realizing the same capacities through automation.

As a side note, I've been using Google AI searches for quite awhile now, and I have found that it is very good at constructing a thorough, well written report, drawing the same conclusions that you would yourself (given the same information you would use from the internet), except it does it in seconds, instead of an hour or so it would take to do it yourself. An incredible tool to have.

AI is brainrot brother... it's a good starting point but never good at concluding . You're better than that.

A few things I want to counter with:

1. Digging a tunnel or building elevated roads for BRT is a lot of disruption. May as well future proof it with Metro because, believe me, no one is going to want to re-dig those tunnels for when you need metro.

2. Have you seen automated vehicles operate in regular traffic? Automating free-driving vehicles is no where near sophisticated enough to operate safely in busy areas. The safety factor is not there.

Originally Posted by Glow Fun City

The one case I see where LRT can work fairly well is in historic areas of cities where the capacity of rail is needed, but underground or elevated is impractical for heritage or archaeological reasons. Not really applicable here, though…

I will add to that as well: At-grade LRT can be ok if existing right-of-ways exist that can not support the possibility of Metro trains.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I sure can use the word efficiency because that is the correct term to use. Just limiting the discussion to the passenger experience ignores that the upgrade helps to reduce operational costs since an extremely busy bus route requires so many more drivers, and labour tends to be the biggest operational cost. Plus buses are very damaging to roads, so a high frequency bus route also costs the municipality in additional maintenance costs. So the additional capital expense isn't just upgrading capacity but also saving money in other areas. By being more efficient.

I agree. These are, IMO, some of the correct benefits that LRT can actually provide. At-grade LRT has been mis-marketed to the masses as a rapid transit solution. This has led to at-grade LRT to being misused in cities. The Finch LRT, Edmonton, and Calgary, among many others come to mind.

There is a time and a place for at-grade LRT. The Toronto TTC streetcars meet those benefits you described.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

In terms of ridership projections, it's also important to remember that Finch will just be a small part of most people's journeys since its main purpose is the connect people in the northwest of the city to line 1 which goes to many other places. By comparison, the Canada Line is a main trunk route that other transit routes connects to. Not really a useful comparison. We would need to compare the LRT's projected ridership growth with the projected growth for other mode options on the same corridor to make any relevant claims as to how future ridership would compare.

The Finch LRT is a textbook case where the wrong technology was selected for the transit solution since the commuters needed speed more than anything. I honesty wish that Toronto had just extended line 4 and phased the project.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Fact is, surface LRT is cheaper than subway and has advantages that buses lack. That doesn't mean it's appropriate for every application or that we can't criticize instances where it's a poor choice. But there are some cases where it's a good choice, so claiming that it's just a bad technology based on the higher costs in a place where all modes are costlier isn't accurate.

I agree. Surface at-grade LRT has its time and place.

It's just that for the last 50 years, in North America, surface-at grade LRT has just been totally wrong for many transit solutions that require speed and reliability.

Originally Posted by BaddieB

And yet there are still people on this board who think it is a good idea to have a streetcar running through Downtown/South False Creek/Arbutus.

I think that this is one of the cases where it is worth discussing and not dismissing because surface level at-grade LRT could be a viable transit solution... a solution to what? Well, to your other point:

Originally Posted by BaddieB

The selection of LRTs in North America is an entirely vibe-based decision to look European, ignoring that the primary goal of transit users is to get from A to B quickly and reliably. LRTs and streetcars fail to achieve that. If you want transit that is not grade separated and is slow, we have that; they're called buses.

It's the speed part that an at-grade LRT won't be able to achieve. As Nouvellecosse had said, you would be using the solution to address capacity, comfort, reduced operational costs, and to open up bus inventory.

I also think that if an Arbutus or Dowtown streetcar system is well-designed with the intention of dumping passengers onto Skytrain lines and popular bus lines, riders wouldn't be riding it for the full length. And the metric that I would propose that should be used are the number of boardings and disembarkments at popular stops like at Skytrain stations and BRT connections.

For example, if someone rode the LRT from Arbutus to downtown Vancouver, I would be saying that they don't know how to commute as they should have transferred to a Skytain line at some point in their journey.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by scryer

A lot to unpack in the last couple of pages...
AI is brainrot brother... it's a good starting point but never good at concluding . You're better than that.

Eh. I went through the information that the AI report drew from, and it all looked accurate. The AI report I posted is true to the information it was given from the internet. And I have proof read other reports. It is pretty accurate. AI is certainly not brain rot.

I asked AI which is cheaper to build, LRT or BRT. This doesn't sound accurate to you? It just saves so much time. For the purposes of this discussion about LRT, in this forum that uses the same information that Google AI does, the report below is very useful.

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is significantly cheaper to build than Light Rail Transit (LRT), while the operating costs depend heavily on passenger volume and system design.

Capital (Construction) Costs

BRT consistently has lower initial capital costs because it leverages existing road infrastructure and does not require the installation of expensive, specialized infrastructure like rails and electric catenary systems.
BRT costs average around $10 million to $50 million per mile for dedicated guideways in North America.

LRT costs average significantly more, often ranging from $50 million to over $200 million per mile, due to the need for specialized track, power systems, and larger, dedicated maintenance facilities.
In higher-income countries, a surface LRT system can cost roughly 3 to 4 times more to build than a comparable BRT system.

Operating Costs

The comparison of operating costs is more nuanced and often depends on passenger demand:

Per Vehicle: It is generally more expensive to operate a single LRT vehicle per hour than a single bus due to higher maintenance costs for tracks/facilities and more specialized labor requirements.

Per Passenger: LRT becomes more cost-effective on a per-passenger basis, provided there is enough demand to fill the trains. LRT vehicles can be coupled into longer trains with a single operator, moving significantly more people than individual buses.

Maintenance: While buses have lower overall infrastructure maintenance (the road is maintained by general funds), they have higher vehicle maintenance costs, including tires and engine parts, and a shorter lifespan compared to rail vehicles. Rail infrastructure has high maintenance costs for tracks, signals, and power systems

Ultimately, BRT offers a lower-cost, quicker-to-implement solution suitable for corridors with moderate demand, while LRT represents a greater initial investment that offers higher capacity and long-term operating efficiency for high-demand, dense urban corridors.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by logan5

- snip -

Show me a driverless bus that's being tested at 80kph, and I'll happily cede the point... but none exist so far. All the demonstration models are slowpokes for safety reasons.

Yes, and 10k+ pphpd bus networks all use four-lane ROWs or larger. You said you were using two lane ROWs as a comparison, which cap out in North America at ~7k at best. Try and keep up with your own argument.

No, because BRT's advantage is its low cost, and tunnels are expensive. If you want a bus, just close off two lanes and run it there; if you have a tunnel, you might as well run a SkyTrain, because a BRT's not beating 26k pphpd with only two lanes. And if you've built a four-lane tunnel, you're spending more than a subway.

That's assuming AVs are even the future, because glazers keep promising this... and delivering this.

Yet any college prof on the planet can easily tell when their students are using AI to cheat. It's a next-gen autocorrect: lawyers are repeatedly finding that their clankers refer to cases that don't even exist.

[Sheba]

Shouldn't the last couple of pages be part of the Transit Fantasies thread? There's been very little talk about what TransLink is actually doing and a huge debate about LRT instead...

[logan5]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Show me a driverless bus that's being tested at 80kph, and I'll happily cede the point... but none exist so far. All the demonstration models are slowpokes for safety reasons.

Yes, and 10k+ pphpd bus networks all use four-lane ROWs or larger. You said you were using two lane ROWs as a comparison, which cap out in North America at ~7k at best. Try and keep up with your own argument.

No, because BRT's advantage is its low cost, and tunnels are expensive. If you want a bus, just close off two lanes and run it there; if you have a tunnel, you might as well run a SkyTrain, because a BRT's not beating 26k pphpd with only two lanes. And if you've built a four-lane tunnel, you're spending more than a subway.

That's assuming AVs are even the future, because glazers keep promising this... and delivering this.

Yet any college prof on the planet can easily tell when their students are using AI to cheat. It's a next-gen autocorrect: lawyers are repeatedly finding that their clankers refer to cases that don't even exist.

I clearly stated that BRT with platooning vehicles has a capacity matching rail transit. It is pretty clear at this point that driverless vehicles are going to work, as there are waymo cars operating driverless right now, in busy traffic. A driverless bus on a traffic separated route would be much easier.

Ottawa's former BRT could do over 10 000 pphpd, at 2 lanes. Curitiba BRT has a capacity of 15 000 pphpd using 2 lanes.

[twoNeurons]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Not sure why (NIMBYism, weather, IDK), but Toronto seems to be allergic to el-rail for some reason.

Two reasons...

1. the Scarborough Rapid Transit line.

It was always seen as a joke in Toronto and soured the public on elevated rail. SRTs failings (early SkyTrain tech) were due to it being a stub of a line with an overly complex alignment and requiring drivers (by the Union) means it was stripped of everything that would have made it successful.

2. The Detroit People Mover

Torontites are close to Detroit and likely have seen that elevated system and consider it a toy as well.

There's a feeling in Toronto that serious cities build subways.