A very large amount of the discourse I see online among the “transit-uninitiated” often involve confusion regarding what a particular project or intervention actually is. Of course, this confusion is often exacerbated by advocates, planners, and governments using language in completely confusing ways!
And this problem is truly a global one. A great comparison I like to use is this:
LRT in Singapore (a people mover):
LRT in Manila (a metro):
LRT in Toronto (a “Streetcar” referred to as LRT when opened and still on some signs):
(Another) LRT in Toronto (a modern tram that operates along streets):
Now, while it might seem that this article is about “light rail” and what it is or isn’t, that’s not really the point; the point is that when people in the transit space call two things the same thing when they’re not the same thing, it’s confusing for everyone involved. Moreover, I would argue it is detrimental to the cause of improved transit and successful advocacy.
In the next section, I’m going to provide a few examples of why the language we use is important. The examples are Canadian but broadly relevant'; if you want to skip to the impact this has, I’ve separated this section with some dividers.
Probably my favourite example of the problem here can be found on the Montreal REM project, which is constantly referred to as “light rail” even by its builders (though they have mostly fixed this now).
The issue with this is that in North America, the default meaning of “light rail” is tram, and a tram is really a lower-investment, lower-speed, and lower-service level form of transit than what Montreal got and is getting with the REM — an express metro system. That instantly confuses the public, proponents, and even opponents about what a project is and what they are trying to talk about!
Another classic example of this from Toronto’s Rob Ford era was the rather well-known charges from Ford that the Scarborough LRT (which, to be clear, was a bad project) would be like a streetcar, when it would actually operate in its own right of way taking over the space used by the Scarborough RT, making it much more like a subway.
Of course this also goes the other direction. So many times I’ve heard the line “light rail is not a streetcar” or “light rail is nothing like a streetcar” when it is absolutely the case that light rail — especially in the Toronto context — is closely related to and very much like a streetcar, from very similar vehicles to the same odd alignment planning decisions. my only hope is that “light rail” might be able to avoid the horrendous operating practices that are currently driving passengers away from Toronto’s streetcars.
There’s also the very frustrating situation where Canada is referring to its possible new intercity rail line as “HFR”, which is clearly meant to be a play on “HSR” and uses the ambiguity inherent in an acronym, as well as its meaning “high-frequency rail” to suggest a level of thought that the project clearly has not actually had put into it.
In fact, one of the arguments that first made me skeptical of Twitter was when a very angry person took issue with me stating online that “light rail in tunnels is functionally a subway” which, to be fair was a simplification on my part. Their argument was essentially “the government is putting a light rail train in a tunnel and selling it as a subway rather than light rail, because they are liars!” when clearly to the average citizen an electric train in a tunnel that runs frequently is a subway even if it doesn’t have some of the design elements a subway usually has, such as high platforms. Saying something is “light rail” as you can see from the pictures above is actually the real cop out because you can pretty much call anything “light rail” without that really meaning anything.
The reality is that what people call transit matters a lot, but when saying this in the past I’ve heard people deride the need as being obsessed with categorization. The issue is people need to understand what is being built and what politicians and planners are proposing, and understanding transit modes and having standards dramatically simplifies this, speaking as someone who has dealt with this first-hand a lot. Perhaps this is an issue only applicable to North America where the average person probably doesn’t have all that much experience with urban public transport and so you need to provide more info — but I have seen the importance first-hand.
In discussions with the public, it’s common to hear politicians and planners make bold proclamations about how their system is one transit mode or another, without them clearly understanding what that implies or even how their system is different from others. Rail is rail, bus is bus, and any extra detail is often treated as extraneous and only an engineering consideration that doesn’t matter to a regular person, leads to confusion and public misunderstanding.
Some of the most frustrating examples I can think of is how I’ve heard people in Edmonton refer to its new low-floor tram line as “new LRT”, which makes calling the (frankly better) old system of trains “old LRT” sound inherently bad and dated! Around when E-BART, a DMU shuttle from the end of one of BART’s existing lines onwards, was announced, officials were referring to traditional BART as “big BART” when electric BART, or high-capacity BART would both have been much more useful descriptors, while the “Antioch BART shuttle” would probably have been a better name for E-BART, which isn’t even shown as being a separate service on some maps!
This is also important for transit agencies. Agencies that don’t really have a “standard” descriptor for their transit systems will typically be described by outsiders by whatever they see fit. For example, Vancouver tends to refer to its automated rapid transit system as SkyTrain or automated rapid transit, but I’ve heard outsiders call it a monorail or light rail — both probably less positive descriptors than something like light metro, which Translink could certainly use to refer to SkyTrain.
Of course, some transit systems are legitimately hard to describe — for example the Stuttgart Stadtbahn.
But in such cases, I think the best description is probably just a long but explicit one. Stuttgart has a hybrid tram-metro system, which Germans would generally just call a stadtbahn, and which I have been calling citytrains.
To some extent, people may argue that being forced to call a system that has some surface sections a “subway” or a line that mostly operates on streets a “tram” will somehow compromise the flexible nature of their system. In reality, this just serves to provide clarity to people about what the usual experience will be, and it might also force us to think about whether hybrid solutions are really the best option at any given time.
I do think that some advocates prefer the sometimes ambiguous language used to describe a project or system they support, because ambiguity makes it easy to pivot advocacy messaging. In Toronto, when the performance of the “LRT” routes on Spadina and St. Clair was realized to not be fantastic, suddenly they were no longer “LRT” and they were once again simply “streetcar” routes, and new far-off routes were labelled as “true LRT”. The issue is now LRT is basically a toxic term in Toronto, and while some advocates act quite sanctimoniously with the public when people are not entirely clear what “LRT” is, I can’t help but see this as an own goal.
Because of all of the debate about modes, I have heard from some that we should probably just talk about right-of-way: whether it’s elevated, on-street, mixed-traffic, or in-tunnel. This has some appeal for sure, and it kind of underlines my talk about how LRT in tunnel is “functionally subway”, but the issue with making what we call transit only about the right-of-way is that the vehicles matter a lot. Non-high speed trains can’t operate at high speeds on a high speed line, and trams don’t do a very good job providing subway-style service. So while I think we can generally use right-of-way, in many cases the best thing to do to communicate to someone what transit actually is or will be like for a user is to simply compare it to a similar system — i.e. “the Toronto Subway’s Ontario Line is like Sydney Metro”, or “the Singapore MRT’s Thomson-East Coast Line is like most lines on the Hong Kong MTR”.
Ultimately, having a consistent way of talking about different transit modes, lines, and systems makes it easier to communicate and get one’s points across. And more broadly, if those interested in transit could try and stick to well-accepted terms with well defined meanings (“tram” good, “LRT” bad!) I think there would be a real opportunity to elevate conversations around transit.
We need to use the ROW category, which would be C for mixed traffic with optional paint or reserved line, B for segregated with physical separation like BRT or LRT, but with shared intersections (outside intersections, there should be a barrier, a curb or grass to block cars from entering). ROW A is 100% controlled, no intersection (or fully prioritised like rail crossings) and no trespassing allowed (metro, regional train, monorail, gondola, etc.) These are associated, in urban area with average operating speeds: C: 15 km/h, B: 25 km/h, A: 35 km/h (more for regional train). Then you add the technology itself (tires, rail or other). The rest is way less important on the resulting service.
Summary:
C: mixed traffic, 15 km/h average operating speed, bus or streetcar
B: physically separated, except at intersections, which must be prioritised, 25 km/h: LRT or BRT. LRT would have an average boost of 20% more passengers compared to a similar BRT because of better image and efficiency.
A: fully separated, 35 km/h in urban environment, can be more outside the city: subway/metro, train, monorail, gondola, etc.
C+ would be mixed traffic but with a bus lane (only paint, no barrier), bus-only traffic lights, no-right-turns at bus stops, etc. This would allow an average speed of 20 km/h operating, but it is way less reliable than ROW B or A.
I'm someone who's interested in this stuff, as witnessed by my subscribing to this Substack, and I don't understand about 75% of the categories and non-categories mentioned here, so this does seem like a real issue.