 There's this weird dynamic that feels like it exists in a lot of cities in the US and even sometimes in Canada, where when a city reaches a million or maybe 500,000 residents, the number isn't really important, it graduates into the big leagues and starts building a light rail system. Known to the rest of the world and many RM transit viewers as a tram. But does this pattern really make any sense and what might cities be missing out on? One city in Mexico actually has the answer, so let's go take a look. I've made a bit of a bold claim in the intro about how many cities in the US are mostly or entirely relying on light rail for their rapid transit these days. Low floor light rail in particular, which is by far the most common, from Seattle to Portland to Denver and Salt Lake, San Diego, Sacramento and Phoenix. Some of these cities do have a commuter rail line or a couple commuter rail lines, but none of them have a rapid transit backbone comprised of anything but light rail. Now, this might not seem all that surprising. There are tens of cities in Germany that rely entirely on trams, so what's wrong if a few American cities do? Well, for the most part, those German cities don't only have trams or are much smaller than their American counterparts, and yes, they're Canadian counterparts as well. Seattle has 730,000 residents and Denver and Portland are not far behind. These are not small cities and they're even larger when you consider how suburbanized they are and their larger metro populations, which in the case of Portland is 2.5 million, Denver is 3 and Seattle is 4. Now, part of why I highlight this is that it's not all that unusual for smaller cities and other parts of the world to have a spectrum of transit options. For example, Oslo with less than a million people has trams, metro and suburban rail, and the same is true of Helsinki and Valencia. And that's because most of the time the population of a place shouldn't be the main determinant of what kind of transit it gets, but rather the transportation problem that a certain transit service or line is trying to solve. Need long-distance suburban commuter service, build an S-Bahn or a regional express system? Need an urban people mover or walk accelerator? Trams. Need to move a ton of people or go through difficult geography? Well, metro makes a lot of sense, since they're probably building a lot of bridges and tunnels anyways. Of course, sometimes the problem you're trying to solve is that you're trying to move more people, but I'd argue that's rarely the case for light rail systems in the US, where many systems operate surprisingly low headways and could probably move the same amount of people less expensively and more conveniently, i.e. more frequently, with buses. There's not really a better example of this in my mind than when I recently visited New York City and figured I'd try out the Hudson-Burgin light rail with a friend. Despite being within spinning distance of one of the most used metro systems in the world and in a dense walkable environment, the service is pretty abysmal. The trains were literally only running every 20 minutes, and when you look closely at some of the other light rail systems in the country, it gets even weirder. Seattle's light rail system's initial segment had a fairly substantial at-grade tram-style portion and a lot of grade crossings, but with each new extension of the system, there is less and less of that, and more and more, it feels like Seattle is building a metro system, but with trams instead of more conventional subway trains. You see something similar with the San Diego trolley and its mid-coast trolley extension, where the entire end of the line is built on a modern elevated structure, kind of like the Vancouver Skytrain. Except there is way less service and there are pedestrian crossings at the elevated stations? Unlike in Europe and other places in the world where the transit solutions are tailored to the service and type of corridor they're trying to serve, these systems often feel like a case of someone picking a train model from a cablog and everything else being shaped around that, rather than the service being the primary motivator of how everything is designed. And this isn't just me blathering about light rail, this has real impacts. The Seattle Link light rail can't operate much more frequently because of all of those grade crossings, which means less frequent trains, less convenient transit, and that means ultimately less people riding transit in the first place. Now you might actually be aware that Seattle was at one point going to get a full subway system and Atlanta actually got that system instead, but I'm also not really sure that's what Seattle needed. There are a bunch of American cities which have full heavy metro systems and do not make good use of them. A good example of this is Miami, a recent tweet I saw was talking about the service and this was the headway, on a metro system. Branch or not, this is crazy. My point here is that Seattle probably shouldn't have built its network as light rail, but that a big subway also probably didn't make sense for Seattle. It's not that big of a city. Miami or Atlanta's trains are far bigger than those you'd find in Paris or Madrid, for example, and probably more appropriate for a city in the high millions of population. So then what actually makes sense for a middle sized city? We can actually learn a lot from humble, underappreciated Guadalajara, Mexico, which actually has an excellent transit system. Guadalajara has around 5 million people in its metro area, and around 1 million closer into the urban core, not dissimilar from a city like Seattle, which it actually has another very weird and wonderful thing in common with. Currently there are three rail rapid transit lines in Guadalajara. Lines one and two are high floor light rail that use similar trains to Calgary, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, and Istanbul, as well as the DLR in London, with a bend in the middle. That means while they can theoretically round tight corners and operate on the street, you also get a very metro like experience. The floor inside is flat and very spacious. Line one is a 16 kilometer 20 station north-south line that runs in a tunnel in the city center and in dedicated rail right of ways to the north and south. The line is really busy and in peak periods trains operate every five minutes or so, and so the plans for the long term are to remove the grade crossings to create a true metro experience here. As an oddball piece of transit trivia, trolley buses temporarily actually use the city center tunnel in Guadalajara, which is something that actually also happened in Seattle at one point. Now what's interesting is that line two of the Guadalajara rail system has sort of moved more in the metro direction. Line two is an eight and a half kilometer 10 station line that runs entirely underground, east across the city from its city center connection with line one. As it's a popular line and it's fully in tunnel, it operates every four minutes during peak periods, very much like any metro line you'd expect. And since both lines one and two are quite busy, both are having their stations expanded and extended by 30 meters, so that they can accommodate three unit 90 meter trains, which is pretty nice to see. But it gets even better because in 2020 Guadalajara finally opened a proper full metro line that would be right at home in Europe. Guadalajara line three is also super popular. It's already moving over 200,000 people every single day. The line's 21 and a half kilometers long and runs from the northwest to the southeast with a tunnel in the middle and modern elevated guideways on both the south and north ends. It's probably my favorite metro line in Mexico and there are a lot of interesting metro lines in Mexico. Line three is great for a bunch of reasons. It's fast and frequent, with trains every few minutes and its stations are absolutely gorgeous. With super modern designs, which are honestly better than most in North America and again would look right at home in Europe or Asia. Interestingly, its trains operate using 1500 volt DC overhead wires and are straight from Barcelona, being virtually identical to those used on line nine, albeit three cars long with the option to extend up to five cars long in the future. These trains are actually known as the Barcelona 9000 series and are also used in Santa Dominico, Panama and Lima on their metro systems. And this current rail system, which is fairly extensive and essentially consists of one metro line and two light metro lines isn't even all the higher order transit Guadalajara has. There are also two modern high floor BRT routes, one that operates a near complete loop around the city and another that operates as a cord similar to the metro lines. And construction is also underway to a new rail line that will operate to the city itself. I think what Guadalajara shows so well is that you don't need a city the size of New York or Osaka or Barcelona to have a proper metro system. And that if you build one it might be super heavily used. I mean 200,000 daily riders with frequencies not maxed out and with just three car trains is honestly astounding and would be super respectable in most Asian or European metro systems. I think this also breaks the stereotype that Mexico can't build modern urban transit, because in most ways line three is far more modern than the light rail systems that predominate in Canada and the US. It should also go to show cities like Miami that already have metro systems that they invested in that nobody is going to ride if you run the trains every 30 minutes and if you want to see true success and actually use the thing you built you need to run more service. So if your city is planning rapid transit in the future and people are saying it's not big enough for a metro system ask them why and mention what's going on in Guadalajara. Thanks for watching.