With the degredation of regional rail in Canada. Many people have poor opinions on it as they don’t know that it could be significantly better. It is not uncommon for driving to be faster than the train between urban centers. This has contributed to a NIMBYism approach to a lot of rail projects. Even the REM faced pushback for elevated tracks in some downtown areas and that portion of the plan is still being reworked, with more expensive tunneling being pushed as a better solution. They claimed the elevated rail would be too noisy and ugly (but a 6 lane road packed with traffic is fine).
Theres also the issues that our developers and zoning laws prioritize building car centric suburbs and strip malls, which are nearly impossible to service with local transit and degrades the quality of regional connections to those areas. If we want good rail transit, we’ll have too approach it from a wider perspective than just building the tracks.
With the degredation of regional rail in Canada. Many people have poor opinions on it as they don’t know that it could be significantly better. It is not uncommon for driving to be faster than the train between urban centers. This has contributed to a NIMBYism approach to a lot of rail projects. Even the REM faced pushback for elevated tracks in some downtown areas and that portion of the plan is still being reworked, with more expensive tunneling being pushed as a better solution. They claimed the elevated rail would be too noisy and ugly (but a 6 lane road packed with traffic is fine).
Theres also the issues that our developers and zoning laws prioritize building car centric suburbs and strip malls, which are nearly impossible to service with local transit and degrades the quality of regional connections to those areas. If we want good rail transit, we’ll have too approach it from a wider perspective than just building the tracks.