looks like some transit agencies could learn a thing or two about frequency from you with all these high quality videos recently. Great work!

Got to love QC, they know how to make things beautiful. MTL's been hogging higher order transit for far too long. Love Quebec City. Most beautiful and unique city, not just in Canada but in North America.

Studied at ULaval in Québec in '05~'06 and back then I was *convinced* the 800 and 801 bus routes (not sure if they still exist) were busy enough to justify a tram in any European city. I'm thrilled to see this come to a city that's dear to my heart. Another great video, Reece!

I love how much Quebec is just going ahead and ignoring a lot of North American transit trends and just going ahead and copying France - where Montreal has a rubber tyre metro, and will soon get the REM (which, from my understanding is a lot like an RER or S-Bahn), and Quebec city actually is planning on building a thing called a "tram," which at least to me means something specific and distinct from the overly-broad term "light rail." I think tram is an underused term in North America - at least in the US, where a lot of light rail systems are misnamed with the word trolley, which IMO should only refer to anything with a trolley pole instead of a pantograph. And also a lot of streetcar systems in the US are way too limited in their length and coverage and also don't involve the changes in the streetscape that you need for a modern tramway.

The Quebec City Tramway is a surprisingly good project! I hope to see if built quickly! What about it excites you the most?

Québec is set to have systems in Québec City, Longueuil, and Gatineau soon 😎

living in Quebec CIty, there is still a pretty big opposition to the project (road users are unhappy), and it seems to be set up for failure by the provincial government, which forces the city to keep within a very specific budget, which is already estimated at 4 billion CAD, which is 700 million more than allowed by the aforementioned government. This may cause the project to be scaled back even more, or just canceled. Another issue is that the project will cause the loss of hundred of mature trees in some of the nicer parts of the city. The tunnel was already shortened (to save some money), which could cause more issues since the tram will need to go through narrower streets. And the government already forced the city to change the itinerary to go towards the east from downtown instead of north, despite the better structural effect (IMO) of going north (better interconnections with bus lines on perpendicular itineraries). From the same government who thinks it's a good idea to build a 10 billion CAD tunnel between Quebec City and Lévis, despite the lack of road capacity in downtown Quebec City to accommodate the additional traffic. /rant

Hamilton needs to start calling its ‘LRT’ a tramway. (I still wonder how Quebec plans to build their plan for the same price as Hamilton’s LRT when it’s longer and has a tunnel, with underground stations.)

It's wild as someone who lives in edmonton to hear people constantly ragging on LRT. LRT is very popular here...

Cries in an Ottawa bus stop as LRT shits the bed over and over

I'm so happy you made a video on this. I like the design of Quebec city's future transit. It will be really good when they add more lines to connect Wendake, Les Rivieres, Levis, Beauport. That's gonna take decades if not a century to build one all across the city. Quebec city will hopefully become livable.

Agreed, via rail connection is a glaring omission. Also, the lack of a ferry connection very problematic

This is such a great video and good for Quebec City for pursuing this. Winnipeg is actually the same size (slightly bigger actually) and about 10 years ago wasted time talking about rapid transit and then just put in crappy dedicated bus routes (BRT) that are short and then just feed into highly congested roadways anyway. It was a huge waste of money. They did it they said because it was more economically feasible, but I got a chuckle about that when I watched one of your videos that spelled out how in the long term, bus transit routes are actually more expensive than a train system. Ugh. Man, the more I watch, the more I think one day a city in Canada would be damn lucky to have you in charge of their transit system.

Your are right on!! Very well explained. I’m from Québec (downtown) and I’m impressed how well informed you are about the project! Great work!

I'm gonna watch this first thing right after this culture seminar. Those videos always make my day.

Quebec is such a gorgeous city. A plan that leaves the historic center essentially unaltered sounds like an excellent idea.

I was just looking for a good video about this proposal and I knew I could count on this channel to have some content about it. Thank you from Vancouver!

If I may add a little something, what makes this project especially well integrated in many different ways is the fact that, despite being the "star" of the project, this tram is just one component of a whole network that will be entirely rethought. This detailed reshaping of existing services combined with the integration of various and practical transportation modes (e.g., car and bicycle sharing) makes this project particularly interesting. Without forgetting that, as a tram passes through existing (car-oriented) infrastructures, such a project deeply changes a city by "forcing" the reshaping of many areas (which might explain the intense debates around this project !). In my opinion, this reflex of digging tunnels or building bridges for public transit is one of the main common mistakes in North American cities. Recognizing that these options remain relevant for bigger cities, it often creates poorly integrated networks as it doesn't "force" this reshaping our car-oriented cities. As it is precisely one of the main strengths of many European cities, we should look more often to the other side of the Atlantic (as opposed to the US) for good examples on transportation matters. I have personally lived in Zurich for about two years and this city (and country !) is close to exemplary when it comes to public transit... And I am actually surprised that Zurich and Switzerland are not more often in your favorites ! I believe that they have by far the best country-level system in Europe and (if we forget high-speed trains) they compete with Japan on efficiency and connectivity. Thanks for your very interesting videos by the way !

The amount of planning and design details in this project is amazing,normally North American LRT projects are rushed and have numerous problems. So this is a breath of fresh air.

Why are so many sections of your video blurred out?

Thank you Reece for this great video!

I have just one issue with your video. Comparing Quebec to Alberta or Ontario by the number of cities that have rail transit is a bit misleading. The Montreal area contains half of the population, whereas Alberta’s two metro areas each contain about a quarter. It’s way overdue to have a tram system in QC City, but the province has really been on par with the others when it comes to transit development.

Hi Reece, just here to say that i love your videos.

A small overview about rail services in Germany. From bottom to the top starting with trams streercars connection many but not all elements of a city. Often features different lines that run on streetcar tracks integrated into the street around multiple main or core stations. Capacity is around 200 up to 500 per service. Services range from 4 times to 6 times an hour. Stations are spaced at a 400- 700 meter interval. In some parts of the city often the city center they are underground.

Thanks Reece for this analysis! Watching this from Québec City. I really hope the new administration will support the project enough so it won't be delayed too much. The CAQ government seems not to be so keen to pay any extra costs caused by delays... Unlike its crazy 10 B$ highway tunnel project... :'-( If you ever come to Québec city (have you already?), tell us! I'll be glad to recommend special places to visit! There are plenty of hidden places tourists don't get to see, along with crazy stories about them... :-)

I have high hopes for this! Looking great

The difference between tramways and light rail is a blurry line of semantics and opinions.

GOD, it is so frustrating how much better Canadian transit projects have been recently when compared to the seemingly brainless projects we get here in the US. Admittedly, it makes for a higher ridership opportunity in the case of Quebec City due to its high density and walkability in the core (and it's easily one of the cities I most want to visit in all of North America), but that doesn't take away from the fact that the transit planners have done a really good job in deciding on this project, making a truly thoughtful project that makes perfect sense from pretty much any angle you look at. I live in a metropolitan area of roughly 4 million people (Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN) and while we have two LRT lines that function quite well overall, in the 5-stop section of shared track in Downtown Minneapolis, they run with ZERO grade-separation and virtually no stop-light priority (unlike in the rest of the system), making it almost as fast to walk - and crucially, the downtown section both limits speed massively and limits frequency on both lines even more. And the Downtown St. Paul section of the Green Line also runs at-grade on city streets, although with how much less busy St. Paul tends to be compared to Minneapolis, this isn't as big of a deal - although it is yet another choke point for the system. While the Green Line (I live 50 ft from a station) runs every 10 min during peak times - which is quite good for a US LRT system sadly, it has gone from being nearly always on-time to suffering from extremely frequent delays, and the downtown Minneapolis section doesn't help with this. The Green Line extension is extremely over-budget and makes zero effort to serve as actual transit for transit riders since it goes to the wealthy Southwestern suburbs of Minneapolis, all of which are highly car-dependent, and Metro Transit made the dumb decision to actively skip choosing the alignment through Uptown Minneapolis (because it supposedly would have cost too much money) even as the area with the highest need for high-quality transit and which would have dramatically increased ridership - and the alignment they chose ended up costing far more money anyway thanks to extremely rich NIMBYs who were "concerned" about the impact of noise on this trail that runs through the rich Kenwood neighborhood of Minneapolis. And thanks in part to the failures of the Green LIne extension, now Metro Transit has decided basically to make us into the BRT Capitol of North America by constructing a million "Arterial BRT" lines rather than investing in more rail. It's just immensely frustrating to see our "competitor cities" of Seattle, Portland, and Denver constructing these elaborate rail networks, while we lag further and further behind. And that is despite the fact that the Green and Blue Lines together have had dramatically higher ridership per mile (at 3,454 weekday boardings per day per mile in Q2 2019) than Denver's RTD (1,629) and Portland's MAX (1,993) systems, and in fact ridership per mile only moderately less than that of the Muni Metro in San Francisco (4,417).

Cool video! I think that Quebec will be a full-fledged tram network with wide city coverage compared to most American streetcars, the role of which is reduced to downtown connectors or even tourist attraction. I wish Quebec good luck with new tram system.

if only new york city could resurrect its tramways, lots of the infrastructure is still there, albeit buried under blacktop

Finally a proper tram system for Canada and North America. When complete, I think this system will be a model for other projects and systems within the continent. I think the closest and best attempt of this is Kitchener Waterloo’s iON LRT, however it still feels a bit like a token North American LRT system. Toronto’s tram network is great but also could be better. One of the thing I’d do to improve Toronto’s tram network is making more separated right-of-ways like on the 509, 510 and 512.

Hi Reece, great video! I'd also love to know your thoughts on Porto's Metro system. It's kinda like Ottawa for being basically a tram-metro hybrid, but without the constant failures. I've never been there, but people I know that live in Porto really enjoy the system.

Hi from Quebec City! Good video! The VIA rail station was supposed to be connected by a second line that was abandoned. This line was BRT style (named "trambus" in the project) that could be upgraded to a tramway in the future. Rising costs of the project forced this abandonment (or lack of interest by a governement highly elected in the suburbs). Meanwhile, it's hard to connect all point of interest by only one line in downtown. Many options are on table for future extentions. The new mayor elected last week could decided some modifications. Notably, the elevated 20 cm platform (for physical separation) is in target. Personally, I prefer this separation to ensure a good commercial speed and conpetitiveness compared to the car in a highly car oriented city (outside historical district). The tunnel will pass not directly below the historical district, but near of them. The primary motivation of this tunnel is for a softened slope. Your remark on line addition in the future is good, but no such of thing is planned at this moment in the tunnel. Line addition is more likely to be few km away. About 4 or 5 last km of this line, frequency will be halved due to lower trafic in the estern suburb. The probable future is to add second line to the north that will start at this breakpoint by using the other vehicles.

Canada is getting railed and loves it. OMG the rim network?

Please do a video like this on Project Connect in Austin, Texas. I've been involved in their community outreach meetings and would love to have your insight on the project.

Excellent video, good work Reece. In Europe actually we really don't make a clear distinction between tram and light rail in many countries (although in France tram is a very clear mode on its own). They are considered to be on a continuum. In the UK the systems have characteristics of both (generally). Mind you whether ours are as good as the French ones is open to question of course.

It seems somewhat similar to the Portland Streetcar except with larger vehicles and with a tunnel and a worse connection to passenger rail. Even in cities with just a miserable little streetcar loop, that generally connects to a rail terminal with the exception of Cincinnati. I don’t think it’s particularly revolutionary given Boston, Toronto, San Francisco and Philadelphia already did this decades or even a century ago, but it is getting back to that style that worked back then, which is great.

Great video. Quebec city, as the Provincial Capital, deserves this project. Can you please do a video about the Curitiba BRT and plans for Metro Manila's Subway and Regional Rail? Thank you!!! Keep up the great work!

Sounds excellent, but I agree it's fundamental that it connect directly to the _VIA_ rail station. Especially with the introduction of faster _VIA_ trains. These things need to work together.

More small cities should invest in PRT that can operate on their own guideways, for instance the PRT at LHR or the PRT in Morgantown, WV for West Virginia University

great video

I occasionally (but more frequently on your videos) hear transit enthusiasts briefly mention accessibiily, but I have seen few videos do more dedicated videos about the actual accessibiily features (even on the infrequent transit videos that I do while exploring Toronto in my wheelchair). That being said, I actually have a video idea for you. What is the most accessible subway system in the world and what is the most accessible overall transit system in the world? My personal prediction would have Toronto in the top 5 for subway systems and top 10 for overall accessible transit systems.

I’ve never been to Canada but this was really interesting

Yeah I live in a city about half the size of quebec city and while we don't have lrt or metro and basically just three train stations, our tramway + bus service is good enough to get you everywhere without a need of cars so it makes sence quebec is using trams.

sounds grate

You should do a video about some of the serious proposals in the UK at the moment ie the Bristol Underground, Cambridge CAM, South Wales Metro,

Could you please cover the linear induction technology used on the SkyTrain and some other systems?

Happy to see. Makes me wish the city of Halifax have more ambition.

Hey Reece! I have a question for you: do you play city builders, and more specifically, Cities Skyline? I would love to see you make a collaboration with City Planner Plays, and watch you overhaul a whole city transit system...

The proposed trams remind me of the longer trams used by the Hiroshima Electric Railway (Hiroden).

Provdence RI, New Haven CT, Trenton NJ, Wilmington DE Richmond VA and Petersburg VA need light rail systems.

Can you please make a video about Prague's tram network? All the tram networks you mentioned in your videos have lines that are pretty much separate from each other with not much of a shared tracks. I would like to see your opinion on a "mesh" tram network, where there is a web of tram tracks with multiple lines on them that constantly merge and separate from each other.

Great content. You're presentation skills are much more improved, a more fluid. Sounds professional. Only criticism, change the backdrop .. to get rid of the wall edge.

Amazing video. Canada seems to be getting stuff done transitwise. Wish the US could. Just got to see a ton of transit funding cut from our infrastructure bill 🙃

Nice video. So, do you think Windsor will get trams in the future ? That's the closest Canadian city to me.

Hey RMTransit, can you make a video about different rolling stock companies?

Take about the detroit q line abd the people mover and the smart bus system please

Great content! I've just watched your video where you talk about how it is an issue that all canadian LRT / tram projects use 100% low-floor units. From what I understand, the Quebec city tramway will also be 100% low-floor... is this not going to be an issue as well?

Vienna tryed bilding USTRAB U-Straßenbahn ore undergrund-trams in 1969- before we dicied to bild a metro in 1978 and upgraded some of the old USTRAB arund the ring. We still have some arounde the gürtel

I am from the Atlanta GA area and we desperately need new light rail. We are supposedly getting new Amtrak service across the state in the next 15 years

Among metro areas, Greater Toronto is growing as fast as Seattle or Phoenix, while LA County and LA proper are both growing slower than Hamburg (which is saying a lot because Hamburg is a notoriously slow growing city). So does this slow growth justify LA building more street running LRT? I think not, I think in fact that projects like the East SFV LRT scrapped and that money put towards expediting the Sepulveda Pass Subway. What it does mean for LA is that no matter how aggressively the government reforms the zoning code, LA will never even get close to rivalling Toronto's pace in building new TOD simply because Toronto has over 5x the growth, percentage wise.

Watching this 1 year later with half the video blurred is kinda sad.

Do you have any videos on catenary-less systems?

This is a very promising project and I hope its a success so that other North American cities can point to it and its more European design and operational aspects as a better model for their own systems. For all the lessons Quebec City seem to have learned from France, however, it's a shame that an aspect I would argue to be key to the tram networks in many smaller and medium sized cities in France - connecting to the cities central railway station - appears to have been omitted here.

Talking about “Stadtbahn”, can you do a video about them?

only took 20 years of study!

How might we fix walkability in St John's

Great analysis. It’s a nice love letter. And goodness knows Quebec’s tram needs some. Because there are still an awful lot of naysayers. They haven’t even done a sod turning ceremony yet… It should be a lot longer, or at least plan ahead for phase 2 to make it a network not just a line. But sorry to be negative but… they’re still cutting… However money is no object for that 🤬 tunnel to Lévis! Which nobody has suggested that it could/should be a light metro, of course…

I just think Trams are neat 💚

Why so many blurred video segments? And, no proposed route map? 😢

Please include a map next time!

I'd like to ponder the practicality of those lights rails. A few light rails lines will not connect multiple destination dots in a city. At that point the story isn't complete but just a few line. This applies heavily in Ontario.

Québec is pronounced "Kay-Behc" (just with slightly less emphasis on the first syllable). You're Canadian you should know this by now.

The tram is an underused means of transport, even in France. At a average speed of 19km/h you could travel 7km in under 20minutes. Witch is 50% of the travel distances in Paris city. With the reduction of car in the city center I think that a lot of cities could take benefits from tramway for distant to short for subway, and to long to walk (with better confort than bus and constant natural light). And as it is lot cheaper than subway you could have a lot more lines that make a less need of density (no high-rises) around the lines to justify them and create a more livable cities. The last advantage I see is as you said, for cities bulldoze for car recently, tram can be a cheap/fast way to build transit and build communities around without traumatize entire neighborhood with high-rises that consumes concretes and rise mostly NIMBYs ! we have a lot of researches in France about building 3-6 stories flat building that would fit in former single family houses neighborhood. And in Canada/USA, a lot of city seem shaped to tram, with middle density and a lot of width in the avenues. The only point is compared to modern subway system you need a driver. GO TRAM !

Would have been nice to see a route map of this tram and how it does or does not navigate the slope from the waterfront area to the downtown. Also, some pictures and details of the two underground stations would be nice to see and maybe some detail would be interesting to see what an extension from the airport to the via rail station might look like.

I hope this project ends up being built with no issues and the pattern of improving transit in other Québécois cities other than Montréal continues. I lived in Sherbrooke for 6 years, one of the fastest growing cities in Québec, and it’s public transportation system really needs to be overhauled. Moving from Sherbrooke to MTL really showed how lacking Sherbrooke’s busses are even when taking its size Into comparison. Over the last 7 years Sherbrooke has grown so incredibly fast and so obviously, new high rise buildings, multiple highway extensions, so many new neighborhoods, but no extension or improvements to the buses.

I am going to take a wild guess (please correct me if wrong!) and say that one reason for putting the downtown part of the tram into a tunnel is that Quebec City is famous as North America's only walled city. And knocking down a chunk of the city wall to put a tram line through will have all the historical preservationists launching a zillion protests.

Where’s the video on the Swiss rail network. Switzerland might not have might not have any big metro system like JP (the cities just aren’t big enough) but the network is still incredible. Swiss citizens per capita use more public transport then another other country beside JP. If the whole Shinkansen Netwerk gets a video, then Switzerland should too.

What I cans see the design of the new trams for La Ville d' Québec have nice large windows INCLUSIVE an open space sopassengers can see where they are going allowing for forward viewing! I am now very pleased! Seems that the public wants this and plus the railwaz enthusiasts finally have been accounted for (listened to)! YAY!

Annoyingly Quebec also wants to build a $10bn highway tunnel across the St Lawrence as part of the same project… so not all good news

8:55 Streetcars have a better capacity on dedicated tram-lanes above ground then in tunnels. This is because you can operate "on sight" and don’t have signaling-blocks. This is the reason why in Europe in a lot of tramway-city’s the main-streetcar hub is in a transit-mall.

Sounds like a good plan to me. Are they going to order Bombardier trams, like I saw the name on 1 on the film?

Something that’s been on my mind recently was the idea of a tramway express, not a LRT just a tramway with limited stops, make a km or so apart?, to have a higher average speed. The tram stops should have a bypass rail for timed over takes. I don’t how realistic this is but I a tramway that can over local and express services can maybe be useful?

As a resident of the Quebec City area, I am very happy that you finally got around to doing this video. You did great coverage on the idea of the tramway system proposed -- vehicles, stations, maintenance facility. But you didn't have anything to say about the proposed route(s) with the exception of the location of a tram stop relative to VIA Rail's Gare de Palais. Could you speak more about the routes being proposed ? Sure the choice of rolling stock is important; but I would argue the choice of *routes* is equally important. What's the point of having the perfect "Reece approved" rolling stock if they don't take you where you want to go ? Could you speak more about the routes being proposed ?

You should do a short, joking video about the Kansas City Streetcar

The Citadis is mostly just surface aesthetics. The fixed-bogie arrangement has a lot of well-documented drawbacks (terrible performance around curves, increased track wear, etc), and the very long overhangs just exacerbate them. The Arpege bogies that most Citadis trams are equipped with have no primary suspension and badly located secondary suspension which makes them very prone to derailing on anything other than completely flat curves. They are surprisingly capable in spite of all these design flaws, but they really aren't paragons of good tram design.

What about the ATL system that might be happening

Make a vidéo on Gaitneau tram please

I hope the platforms in the tunnel will be longer than 45m to enable future growth

So classic Québec, being like forget about North America let's do it like France :P

What's the route?? If this hits dense areas, great.

I wouldn’t put to much hope on the tramway being built… The provincial gouvernement is quite regressive and hostile to public transport projects. It’s instead pushing hard for a new highway project linking downtown quebec to the south shore… If we finally end up with a tram, it will probably be a scaled down version in mixed traffic. Let’s hope I’m wrong tho

Thank you Reece for a very informative video.. France lost Quebec to Britain in 1763, but (rightly) the Quebecois are copying France when designing their tramway! Algeria got independence from France in 1962, but several Algerian cities have now built French-style modern tramways. But perhaps most significantly, Morocco was never ruled by France but has French style modern tramways!

Still waiting for those studio lights eh? Supply chain woes even hitting KZfaqrs.

I don't mind the slightly inflated video title, but I'm not really sure how this raises the bar on the Valley Line in Edmonton. Sure it's nice to have single unit rolling stock, but on the Valley Line, a single unit will be just as large as in Quebec, just that Edmonton will be running two Quebec units together at rush hour. I also do appreciate good design but I'm not sure it's measurably better.

Can you look at MSP. They only have 2 lines but has one of the highest ridership/mile of any US city because they put the 2 lines where they should be

This is what Victoria needs to build to help connect the outer suburbs to the downtown

Looks like a good project that would be great if it served the VIA station as you note. Having ridden eight French tram systems, I hope Quebec is successful in emulating their highly successful aesthetics.

Why some parts of the video are blurred?

It's all great and stuff, the problem is that with all the delays and whining from car users... i don't even know of i'll still be in Quebec when the tram system will be completed.