Edmonton is in the midst of building a line, to the point where the first car is complete. No where else in Canada seems to be seriously looking at building a light rail line, so there's no other point of comparison.
As for the rest of those cities, I think you are trying desperately to make a distinction where one doesn't exist. Most of them have elements that are just as much LRT as any of the lines planned to be built here.
Dan
Toronto, Ont.
Cities planning (
proposing) or
building or
have built light rail: Vancouver/Surrey, (
Victoria),
Calgary,
Ottawa,
Toronto (St Clair, Spadina, Queensway, Harbourfront, Cherry, Portlands,
Finch West, Eglinton, SRT, Sheppard East, (
Jane)
), Mississauga (Hurontario), Hamilton,
Waterloo/Kitchener, (
London), Montreal (more of a RER thing, but it's called light rail), Quebec City, (
Halifax). Of those, a bunch are being built now, including Waterloo, Mississauga, and Toronto. We have vehicles here, we know how LFLRVs work. They fit the streetcar network. Passing them off as LRT that's supposed to be more rapid is not going to end well.
And a bunch of the cities you mentioned: Cincinnati, KC, Detroit don't have Light Rail systems. They have streetcar systems, where they run in mixed traffic.
The systems in Boston, Newark, Salt Lake City, Portland (Older vehicles), etc have layouts where one section is fully low floor and the other 2+ are high floor. The argument is strictly against the types of low floor vehicles we're seeing here in Toronto, where space is used inefficiently.
Also: none of the systems you mentioned with the exception of maybe Boston will have light rail ridership anywhere near what we're expecting on the Crosstown (or finch west on a ridership per kilometer basis).
