[URBAN NOTE] "A Love Letter to Light-Rail Transit"

[rfmcdonald]

Tricia Wood's Torontoist post is an ode to light rail that looks to the example of Dublin.

Dear LRT, please be mine.

I want to say a few things about light-rail transit (LRT)—really, it’s a love letter—but this is not meant to be a comment on any specific project under discussion in Toronto. This column is not about what we should build in Scarborough. It’s an effort to celebrate a great mode of transit that has been sadly misunderstood.

It seems appropriate that I am writing this from Dublin, Ireland, where there is, at present, a significant expansion of their LRT system under construction. I live in Toronto, but for research I spend a lot of time in Ireland.

When I am in Dublin, I often have to travel outside the city, and one of the things I appreciate about travel here is how easy it is to disembark from an intercity train at Heuston station, walk for no more than two minutes, and step on an LRT train that zips me into the central city.

No stairs, no tunnels, not even a real road to cross.

Let me tell you why I love LRT, using Dublin’s Luas system as an example. Spoiler: it has nothing to do with construction costs.

The Luas (Irish for “speed”) is a new system in a very old city. There has been some kind of permanent settlement on the site of Dublin for well over 1,000 years, and it has lots of old, narrow, winding cobblestone streets. The entire city centre could be considered a heritage district.

And it works, well.