Looking around North America, it appears that cities hit a certain size and get rewarded with a catalogue of light rails to choose from. Not so much metros or BRT, but a a very specific looking and operating tram system. That is not the case elsewhere. RM Transit takes a look at the whether light rail is the correct fit for our very large but sparsely populated cities. He points out that Seattle is “building a metro system, but with trams,” and finds some possible alternatives elsewhere on the continent.
Ray Dubicki is a stay-at-home dad and parent-on-call for taking care of general school and neighborhood tasks around Ballard. This lets him see how urbanism works (or doesn’t) during the hours most people are locked in their office. He is an attorney and urbanist by training, with soup-to-nuts planning experience from code enforcement to university development to writing zoning ordinances. He enjoys using PowerPoint, but only because it’s no longer a weekly obligation.