 Oh my goodness. Well, 10 pass the hour and I guess it's unsurprising that we were, no one was in the chat or was in the stream because I realized I hadn't gone live. So I've just been talking like a moron for the past 10 minutes. Why is no one responding to my message? Why is no one saying anything? Well, now we know, Rhys, because you weren't live. Okay, well, now that that issue has been sorted out, let's see if we can't salvage this stream. So hello everyone. I just realized I haven't been live for the past 10 minutes when I've been talking, so that tells you how much of an expert at streaming I am. Anyways, let's get into this. So I'm going to wait until let's say like 313 roughly before I start talking about these news items and discussion points and the like that I've prepared just so that people who thought the stream maybe wasn't happening have a chance to kind of join on and see everything. I actually have my stream set up properly now, I think, so we should be all good. But yeah, I have a bunch of discussion points I added. Usually I talk about kind of a do a lot of Q&A and I do some news items, but I thought like maybe some discussion points like things I think might be interesting to just kind of chat about talk about. And then we can kind of see where things go from there. So people are joining up. I think I'm going to get started. The first thing that I thought would be an interesting topic to talk about today is delays and kind of people's willingness to deal with them. I think it was in the news this week or last that Ottawa, Canada's capitals, transit systems expansion, so that's in three directions, east, west and south, has been delayed by a few months, at least the southern extension has been. And a very funny Alfie. Oh, that's a good question. So I'll answer some of these things here. I'm going to do a little bit of an announcement too after I go through this first story, just waiting for people to hop on. Yeah, so I think it's interesting that there was this delay and then people were just freaking out about it. And I thought, you know, I think at some point people have to realize that these gigantic infrastructure projects are just delay prone because they're really complex and they're not simple and they take a ton of people working together and they deal with a lot of uncertainty. And I think people need to become a bit more okay with delay happening sometimes. Now it's not good, but also four months is nothing. And I think like compare that to any large transit project like the Eglinton Crosstown in Toronto or Crossrail or Stuttgart 21 or some crazy project that's been delayed years and years. I think four months should be considered acceptable, especially because I don't think we consider transit on the time horizon that is reasonable. I think transit projects are hundred year projects, right? They last for decades and decades and decades. So you have to look at everything within the scope of that time horizon that transit lines are being constructed in, right? And so when something is taking or being constructed over decades or, well, sorry, over years, I think a few months is nothing, but also when it's a few years late, you know, on the time horizon of how long a transit line is going to be open, it shouldn't be considered that big of a deal. So that's my spiel about that, the delay itself. But then I also was just thinking, you know, Ottawa's going to have a pretty nice rail system. I know there's a lot of complaining about it, and I did make the video a while back about how Ottawa system isn't that bad. It's not bad at all. I think that, you know, the issues that have happened are unfortunate, but I think that once the system has those sorted out, it's going to be fantastic, right? It's got CBTC. It's got capacity for the future with platform extensions and frequency improvements and hopefully a better train design. Sorry, Alstom, but I don't love the train design. So it's got all that capability built into it. You've got the Trillium line, which should be inexpensive to extend and take to different locations in the future, which is really exciting. It kind of is among the first diesel-multiple-unit lines in North America, and I think it kind of set an awesome precedent by being so inexpensive to expand and operate and build in the first place, remember $21 million. So I'm excited for Ottawa. I think it's a very exciting place for a number of reasons. I think it's cool how between Waterloo, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, you have all of these cities now with their own competent rail systems, with Via Rail connecting all of them up. Remember, you can take a train from Toronto to Ottawa and you can take the train to the train station in Toronto and from the train station in Ottawa, and I think that's awesome. So it's just going to be a really interesting, cohesive experience in the next couple of years as Via gets its new rolling stock, which is going to be modern and have a lot of nice new features. You'll be able to get onto those trains at a high platform at Montreal. Hopefully there's frequent service up to Ottawa with HFR and service expansion. And then you'll be able to get off onto another modern train and head wherever you need to go in your kind of destination city. And I think that's so exciting and I think it starts to feel like a place that has competent public transportation. And so I guess that's what's so exciting for me. But that was the first thing I wanted to discuss. The second thing I wanted to mention is that I have put the link to the next stream at the top of the chat, it's pinned, and I have also put the link for the next stream in the description of this video. So if you want to make sure you don't miss the next stream, join me to chat, then please set yourself a reminder for that next stream. As usual, I should say, if you're not already, go follow me on Twitter and Instagram. My handle is at rmtransit on both, as well as consider supporting us on Patreon. We do streams, not really chats with our patrons, which are group calls on Discord that are really fun on a monthly basis. You can track how the channel is doing and stuff. So it's pretty exciting. Just looking at the chat here, I'm just going to start at the top and work my way down. So someone is asking when Station Focus is going to come back, and we are 100% bringing Station Focus back. But obviously, we haven't easily been able to go out and film stations because of the pandemic and all of that. It's crazy. It sucks. Still stuck in my house. Hair still not been cut. It's getting really long now, longest it's ever been for sure, which is crazy. At some point, my hair will be cut and people will be like, whoa, your hair is so short now. But yeah, I'm kind of excited for when that day comes. I'm excited to get vaccinated, hopefully sometime in the near future. Station Focus will be coming back, and you can expect a lot of exciting things on the channel in the next little while. When I say next little while, I mean next few months, I think around the beginning of June and of May, there should be some exciting stuff. I'm not going to go too far into what you'll be seeing, but Station Focus will be returning. There will be some new series. There will be some changes to the channel. It's all very exciting. I think you folks are going to enjoy it a lot, and it's going to take the channel to the next level, so I'm very excited about that. Let's continue along. I'm just quickly going through the chat. There's a bunch of stuff supposed to open between 2029 and 2031. Do you think they'll be delayed? Honestly, I don't think that anyone can really answer that question. Hopefully not. It would be the best answer I could give you. Six new metro lines and five BRT lines using potentially bi-directional buses. That's interesting. That's exciting stuff. Which of the potential three stations on the young subway extension will be added if you had to choose, or what do you think will be added? I wish it was Cummer because I think any TTC station within Toronto will probably perform better than a TTC station within York Region, because York Region Transit runs bad service. York, run better service, please. I like to tell the story of when I was stuck waiting 40 minutes for the Leslie bus, which is funny because it runs infrequently, but it runs a gigantic articulated bus, which was so weird for me, because from Vancouver I was always used to, if they're running articulated buses, it must be because the route is busy and frequent. But in Toronto, or more specifically York Region, they run a big bus so they can run it less frequently, which is terrible. So yeah, that's the situation for that. I think I would prefer Cummer be built, but I think it'll probably be Clark or Royal Orchard that gets built, just because they're in York Region and the government might want to pander to York Region. So the Honolulu Metro, let's try to use better terminology here, the project, I don't know if it was delayed again. It might have been, I think the price increased, but yeah, it's a little sad to see because that would have been like such a great model if it had gone better for the rest of the US. I mean, I still think it's a good model, but I just think the problem with it is now that if you say, hey, build something like what Honolulu built, they'll be like, you mean the $10 billion or $11 billion light metro line? You know, you could probably build the whole Skytrain for that price. So great, light metro in America is going to be forever known for the whole Honolulu situation. Anyways, the next question is when will Calgary get intercity regional long distance passenger rail? Not sure. 35 years Ottawa will get better trains. I think it'll be sooner than 35 years. I think, you know, 25 years is probably not unrealistic because, you know, Ottawa's system is largely outdoors, right? That's actually something I think it might be a bit interesting to consider is how that impacts the longevity of the trains, right? Because they're not, they're heavy duty-ish, but I don't know how long they're going to last because, you know, harsh weather and really heavy operations, right? Like, they're operating all the time frequently. So I think 25 years actually might be a bit more realistic, right? These trains are being really intensively used, as I mentioned, and the conditions are harsh. Plus, they need more trains to expand, and I think something similar to the Skytrain will happen where you see a phase in of newer trains over time. So, am I in a different room? Yes, potentially. That's all I'll say. But it seems like Alfie might have a better idea about that. So the next, the airport branch being a shuttle rather than going all the way to Bayview is infuriating. I agree. I think that that's a big mistake, but hopefully in the long term as when the line gets electrified and there's improvements, etc. That will change. But at the end of the day, as long as it's a really good time to transfer, which seems to be the plan, it's not the end of the world. But yeah, it's not great. But then again, Ottawa is not that big of a city, and to think that it's getting an air rail link before Calgary is crazy. Because remember, Calgary International Airport, I think this year overtook, well, this year I know it's crazy, but Calgary was already on pace to overtake Montreal as the third busiest airport in Canada, right? So the fact that Ottawa is getting an air rail link before Calgary and around the same time as Montreal is wild to me. But Calgary has some odd ways of doing transportation. The next question is, do you collaborate with Metro 6 and Vanishing Underground? Well, no, because you haven't seen a collaboration, but maybe that'll happen in the future. But via rail is pretty poor. You know, it's not amazing. It's okay, but with the new trains I think it'll be better and with HFR you'd get more service, right? Things could be better, but yeah. That link literally leads to this exact stream. That's a good point. Let me quickly fix that. You folks know that things have been a little crazy, so let's just go over here. The computer I'm on is kind of a small monitor, so I'm just kind of struggling to get the link. But yeah, let me hop over and grab the link to the next stream. Hopefully everything is on the rails. Oh no. Oh no. That's not good. Oh my. Well, so we have a bit of a situation, and the situation is that I, again, having screwed up, I set the stream that was supposed to happen today. I screwed up, basically. This was supposed to be stream 7. It turns out it's not stream 7. Today is stream 8. We're skipping episode 7 entirely, so make of that what you will. And I'm creating a new stream, which will be stream 9, which will happen on April 4th. I'm going to copy my link here and close this. So this should be the right stream link. So let me go like this and paste this down here. Let me pin this. This is the actual next stream. That should be all good now. And let me also go and edit the description of this stream and add that in so everyone knows what's going on. Cool. I think we're all good now. Maybe someone can check and tell me if we're all good. I think it's good. So glad you made a video on LA Transit and what's wrong with it. About the use of RAM technology in LA, a good place where it could be used as a West Santa Ana line, I agree. We were all waiting on the March 21 stream. This was supposed to be the April 4th stream. Oh, I see. Yeah. Well, everyone found the stream eventually it seems, but yeah, I messed that up a bit. I apologize for that. Yeah, it's a bit of a yikes situation. I won't do that in the future. Sorry, folks. I like how on every RM Transit video there's always the promise of great exciting stuff in the future. I like to keep it positive between the existential dread and the North American transit will never be good talk. Or Ant provides illicit haircuts out of her home. That's interesting. Thanks for the information there. Do you think extending the Ontario line to Don Mills and Shepherd than East along Shepherd would be a good alternative to extending line for East? Hmm, that's an interesting thought. As someone who lives maybe near Shepherd Avenue, I might not be opposed to having a line that goes directly downtown. But yeah, I don't know. It's a good question. Maybe. I have to think about that more. But yeah. Do you think Canada will ever get a new private passenger rail line like Bright Lion or Texas Central? I think it's possible. If anywhere, you'd think that would happen in Alberta because they are the Texas of Canada, right? Alberta tends to like its private enterprise. So maybe. I think Alberta would be a great place to do it. So maybe I'm hopeful. Do you think an extension of Finch West Young is better than Shepherd to Shepherd West? Definitely not because I want a subway extension, not a late rail extension. Will every go line get upgraded? Hopefully eventually, but not in the current plans. What do you think of the Jakarta high speed rail? I don't know enough about it to have a strong opinion, so I'm going to defer that. Do you think it's better to add Scarborough R.T. to line two as an extension so it will remove the transfer at Kennedy and will remove the outdated trains? Well, that's kind of the plan, right? With the line two extension, albeit not on the exact alignment that line three is on. Trying to look into the camera, but I am looking at the chat. What projects are best to decadjust busy rail corridors slash Termini? Convert regional rail to Metro or expand stations? Well, with cross rail style operation, right, the point is to connect to disconnected lines, and that provides a benefit that larger stations doesn't, which is that trains can operate, which allows for more capacity. So the cross rail approach, probably. It's a different approach, though. Any thoughts on our federal government's funding of local transit, but absolutely nothing so far on via rails HFR project so as to provide seamless connectivity for travel between cities? Well, I believe it is being studied, right? So it's being studied. If we don't hear anything soon, then I will be concerned, but I'm assuming that something's going on behind the scenes. So someone is saying, what do you think of the news that the REM-A would have a fourth branch going from Deux or so to Laval? Will it affect frequency on the other branches? I'm not aware of this news, so if someone could share it in the chat, that would be great. Which train models, if you had to guess, do you think the Ontario line will operate? I think something like the REM is most likely, right? Like, that's how the Ontario line has been described. Loud noise. And I think that given that description, it makes sense for it to be like the REM, right? It's an automated Metro train with similar specs that the Ontario line sounds like it will have. Why is higher speed rail or high performance rail marginalized as proposed to via rails HFR in comparison to high speed rail? Well, I think that that's, you know, a friend of mine, Paige Saunders, recently made a video, which I'm going to link here in the stream. Because I think it's an important video, especially for Canadians to watch, about the whole Rogers and Shossing. And if people are interested in hearing my thoughts about that on stream, because it's not something I would talk about in a video ever, because I am a transit channel, but the stream can get off topic, then let me know. I might discuss the Rogers and Shossing a bit in the stream if people are interested. But there's a link to the video in the chat now. And I wonder if it's because of the great oligopoly of the airlines. Because, you know, if the telecom companies have this great poll on government, why wouldn't the airlines, and I think that providing a solution that's going to destroy the airlines might be something that gets a lot of pushback. And that's what high speed rail would do. Okay, opinion on the South Shore Westlake corridor. I'm sorry I'm not well enough informed on the project to talk about it at the moment, but it's something I will look into. I have followed it a little, but not enough to talk about it in detail. Well, Science Centre station built with the provision for the Ontario line underneath. Well, Science Centre station is already built, mostly, right? So no would be the answer to that. Do you think the elimination of two stations on the Young North subway extension is a good idea? It's disappointing to me. I talked about it in my recent video, so I recommend going to watch that. But no, it's not good. Any thoughts on the Bart San Jose tunnel proposal? They ditched the 55-foot single bore, but it still looks way over-engineered. I think they're doing a 48-foot single bore now. Yeah, I don't know if it's insane like the old one was, but the old one had a centre platform in the single bore, which is like this giant abuse of the single bore tunneling approach, right? And it kind of reminds me of what I talked about in my Young North subway extension video, where it feels like sometimes there is this performative cost-cutting measure, and that's what it felt like. The Bart folks were like, well, single bore tunneling is a thing. Cool, cool, cool, let's do a single bore tunnel, but they don't actually do it in a way that makes sense. So yeah, I think it's crazy. The original proposal was crazy, especially because there were these giant station boxes that had to have giant empty void spaces, and it was just not a good use of single bore tunneling to actually reduce costs and the like. And yeah, that's a big problem. Also, the redundant connection between I think it's Deerodon and Santa Clara, probably. That's silly. Oh, now someone's saying they're doing a two-bore tunnel. Well, that's interesting. A bunch of people made the transfer over, good to know. Thanks for a recent video about trolleybuses. Do you think there's a bright future for these buses in North America? I think there's a future for them, but people freaked out about that trolleybus video, and I think it kind of tells the story of people being quite fixated on mode. I'm going to quickly check something for a second here. Let me just do a check. I might get into that a little later. I'm also just looking at the Discord, which I'm not checking properly, so please folks don't send me a message there. But yeah. Oh no. Anyway, I messed up. Yeah. Uncomfortable. So trolleybuses are good, but it astounds me that when you talk about trolleybuses and you say a negative part about trolleybuses is that they need extra infrastructure that regular buses don't need, people lost their minds about this, and that is a legitimate downside to trolleybuses because they need overhead wires, which regular buses don't. Battery buses are definitely an option that's important for the future, and I know people also didn't seem to like that suggestion. And I think why that's important to remember, what's important to remember is first, in any case, if you want to build trolleybuses across all of North America, you're going to need a ton of minerals and copper and stuff to do that, and a ton of rare earth materials and stuff like that. So the idea that because I guess it's hard, we need to mine a lot of lithium for batteries and stuff, that should be the reason we don't do battery electric buses, seems a little odd because we're going to have to mine a ton of materials no matter what to build way more public transit infrastructure. We have a lot of lithium in North America actually, it's just that it's more expensive to extract, which is obviously not a reason not to use it, but the idea that because we can't get the lithium, we shouldn't do battery electric buses is problematic. Building heavy infrastructure has a cost, and the cost is you can't expand service quickly. And so for people who actually think that climate crisis is a real issue, I think it's important to consider the fact that we need to be able to deploy things faster than we'll be able to build heavy infrastructure out. Remember that like in Ontario, for example, it seems like part of the recent transit projects are not moving as quickly as they could, it's because there's a shortage of workers. And so can you imagine if we tried to just put trolleybuses in every city, what the results of that might be is that there may not be enough workers, whereas the supply chain for building like a battery electric bus, I think could be scaled more quickly. It's also worth pointing out that like we need to fix lithium-ion batteries. Like, yes, that's a problem, but the solution is not that we will not use batteries because a lot of things need batteries. Like we cannot just avoid using batteries. Batteries are important. Storing energy is critical for so many different applications. So if the reason we don't go with batteries is because batteries are bad right now, well, that's not a good reason because we need to fix batteries and make them better. And if this would drive us to make them, you know, even better, faster, I think that's a net good, right? And so yeah, I don't think that's a good rationale. I'm surprised a lot of people were like, battery swapping is impractical. I don't know about that. It's one of those things that, you know, we say it's impractical, but is it really impractical? Like if you want a competent battery bus system, I think it's possible. Folks saying that like, yeah, like shifting around heavy batteries is difficult for sure. But there's battery swap systems for cars that exist. And albeit it's less important for cars because cars tend to have a lot of downtime. But if you have a bus system and having battery swapping would make it a lot easier to operate it, then yeah, there should be battery swapping. It fixes a problem that a lot of other people were pointing out with battery buses, which is they need to idle while they charge. So yes, you get more battery packs and you swap them out and that helps your battery bus system operate better. It's also worth pointing out that the battery swapping helps you increase the longevity of the buses as well because you could swap a battery out when the first one is out of life. So yeah, I just went on a long divergence about trolley buses and all my topics that I was going to talk about, I still haven't, but I'll go through a few more messages in the chat first. How far up do you think Line 1 will reach in the future, at least to the north pole? No, I don't know. I think that Highway 7 is a reasonable endpoint for the foreseeable future because GO Trans can go further north. What is your personal opinion on ION? Oh, okay, so this I'm not going to mention because I have a thing I'm going to talk about it. Why do you think trackless tram proposals are so popular in Western Australia? I just wish they'd consider conventional light rail. Well, are they really that popular? It seems like there's one proposal, right? I think it's silly. You know, it's a fad. It's like the straddle bus thing that happened. People will grab onto anything that they think is some easy way of solving a major problem. And at the end of the day, there's no easy solutions, right? We have to build better technology and we have to expand our existing transit systems. And yes, maybe trackless tram sometimes makes sense, but I don't think that's something that's going to make sense for a lot of places in the immediate future. And also just like, it's a bus. Come on. Yeah, the All-Stone Metropolis has really become the gold standard. It seems like will there be a video on the high-speed rail line in I'm not going to try to pronounce the next word. I'm sorry. I know I'm terrible. There will be many more high-speed rail explained videos. I am seeing that we have a super chat. I will get around so my new policy is what I'll do is I've seen other people who stream do this at the end. I will take time to address all the super chats in detail. That way the super chats definitely get answered and because I don't always answer every other comment. Yeah, thoughts on the Scarborough subway extension using single bore. I think it's kind of the same case with Bart. The trains are wide and not that tall and so it's kind of weird because think about it like you're trying to fit a rectangle like this in a circle, right? There's a lot of dead space above and below. Maybe the plan is to put a secret car highway above and below the trains in the Scarborough subway extension tunnel. We'll see what happens. Why are Canadians unaware of the tremendous benefits and convenience of modernized passenger rail as evidenced in European countries? I'm personally hurt by that. Next up, someone is quoting to get to Laval a new branch. Can someone link me if there's actually an article that talks about this? Because yeah, I don't know if that's an actual thing that's happening in the short term. I did do a video talking about long term REM plans though so definitely go check that out. Elevated young extension. Yeah, you know it's something I kind of wish they thought a bit more about. I don't know how much they considered it. Bart and Caltrain just started talking about merging. Well, there's been talk of merging the two for a long time, but yeah, I mean it would be great if they did merge. I think it would make a lot of sense. I like trolley buses, as do I, sir. Any comments on the Ontario Line extension to Union? So UP Express has commonality with Ontario Line rolling stock and storage facilities. Well, given that UP Express is already meant to operate with go stuff, like go rolling stock and the like, I think it doesn't make a ton of sense. There's a couple of issues here. One, I think the Ontario Line loading gauge is not going to be the same as go RER and UP, so that's a problem. The top speed of UP equipment will be faster, which is a problem, right? The voltage on the overhead lines will be different, so there's that as an issue. I'm trying to think if there's any other issues. I understand where you're coming from with that idea, but I just think there's a lot of issues with its actual implementation. But I do think that metro service to the airport makes sense, but yeah. What did you mean about old fashioned looking trains not being fine? So this is something people also seem to take issue with. When you have these trains that are old fashioned in terms of how they appear, that tends to reflect on the interior experience. And for example, you have smaller windows and you have a dated interior that's not super bright. And it just looks old and an old looking vehicle doesn't attract people to want to use it. Like having an old rickety looking train is not as good as having a modern looking train. I'm sorry. I know that old trains, some people like them, and I like them too, like nostalgia is great and stuff. But if I could choose between the up express looking like it looks and having a new London overground train, I'm going to choose the overground train. Just because a better looking, more modern train has modern features. And it's amazing how in North America we just refuse to accept that our trains are dated and they're not great. And I think that when you look at a place like Europe or Asia where they have more train service, it seems natural that they would have a better train design because they operate more service and so they have more experience and so they develop better train designs and they iterate more quickly. And so that's why I think naturally we should be looking at designs that are more like what are used in Asia and Europe. Charge as you drive is the future for trolley buses. I mean, I think that in motion charging does make sense for a lot of places. Why don't trolley buses use train like pantographs? Well, the answer is that think about it, how would they maintain contact with the wire if the bus moves left and right? So if you look at the E-highway stuff that I kind of referenced in my video about trolley buses, they have like a guidance system that keeps the pantographs on the wire. But that's a little more complicated than the standard trolley bus pulls, which are just held onto the wire by a shoe. Kind of looks like this. And so that's the reason. Will RER ever become reality? If so, can you provide a timeline? Yes, like this is something I've mentioned for a long time. It will definitely become a reality. Like it's being tendered, basically it's being bid on right now. So I'm very confident it will happen. I think it's more of a by 2030, I think we'll see some serious stuff. Trolley buses, electric buses, and diesel buses all have strong and bad sides, none are perfect. Yeah, I don't know why this is so controversial. Like obviously trolley buses have a niche where they make sense, as does every transit technology. Like funiculars make a lot of sense on the side of a hill. But if someone starts telling you that you should put a funicular on every street, well, you might raise your eyebrows. It's being facetious, but it's the same idea, right? Like every transit technology has a certain place where it makes sense. Again, I'm going to do super chats at the end of the stream. Do you think the REM is the right technology for densely populated areas like the east end of Montreal, where the elevated structures go near homes and there are less stations than separated lane trams? Yes, like far east Montreal is not that densely populated. I don't think elevated structures going near homes is a big issue. I really recommend people watch this video, and this might be something I do a bit more. Where I actually just send links to the chat for people to watch, and maybe I'll send this link. Not enough people watch this video, and so I would love if folks went and watched this video. It's one I put a lot of effort into. It's on the Vancouver Sky Train, and it's where I visit all the stations. And you should go watch the beginning scenes where I walk from my friend's apartment building, and there's houses around, and there's a train viaduct, and it's fine. It's quiet, the cars are louder than it. So yes, I think it's a great solution. Trams are cool in dense, dense areas where not going super fast isn't a huge issue, but I don't think that I would say East End Montreal is one of those places. Ah yes, the climate crisis is not real. It's apparently an actual thing that some people think. I haven't seen it confirmed, but in early February it was reported that they're studying the possibility. Yes, but then I think someone said there was news of it, right, of it actually happening. Again, I talked about that in my future Montreal video, so I'd recommend watching that, but when and if things do move forward I'll make another video talking about it. Yeah, in Germany and Sweden there are E-highways. Yes, correct, that's what I was referencing. On the subject of electric vehicles, can our infrastructure handle having most vehicles be electric? Today probably not, but the good thing is that we have time to build out renewables, which make a lot of sense with electric vehicles, and kind of transition our energy infrastructure to make more sense with electric vehicles. And yes, larger batteries and the like are more efficient. So I'm scrolling up here. Day two of you saying older design transit vehicles look cooler. I just don't agree, and I think that there's a reason that... There's obviously some old designs that you can have nostalgia for, and they can look cool, like I don't disagree. The original TGV trains look great, they look awesome, but would I rather have an old design than a new one? No. Do you think automated Metro is going to replace LRT as the de facto new urbanist transit meme? More expensive, less common, but way more successful on a case-by-case basis? I don't know if it's... I don't know, I don't get into memes much, but I don't think it's very meme-worthy at all. I think light rail is the meme-worthy technology, right? Trams plus plus. It's too bad that battery-powered passenger trains do not have the speed or performance levels of electric trains. Well, battery-powered passenger trains are electric trains, and I think if they don't already have the performance, they will eventually, right? Personally, I think having wires on key corridors for in-motion charging is the most practical and efficient, would allow for constant runnings with smaller batteries that are deep-cycled less. Yeah, no, now see, this is a pretty sensible argument to make, and I agree, though I think in the long term, as battery technology becomes very good, I actually think that in-motion charging entirely will cease to exist. Or at least the way we think of it, it will cease to exist, because, again, at the end of the day, you're still maintaining a lot of infrastructure, and if you could avoid having to, I think that that's something we'd probably want to do. You know, and for bus routes, maybe for like BRT, but like for a bus route, unless it's a really highly traffic trunk, I just don't know if it makes sense. It depends, like if our batteries are fantastic, then we'll need less, and if our batteries don't improve as drastically as we'd like quickly, then we'll need more. Do you think hydrogen buses will make more sense than battery buses in the future? I think it's again, it's a place where there's different technologies with different benefits. The benefit of hydrogen bus technology is if you have a huge electricity surplus, you can electrolyze hydrogen, right? And so there's different benefits. I think for large vehicles, hydrogen makes a lot of sense. I'm not too familiar with the system in Australia, but I heard that the trolley bus system had been, I'm not sure what city is being referred to. Hydrogen has problems, yeah, but maybe sometime there will be a solution. So someone saying, I was simply asking this question because a large portion of Canadians have never ever taken a passenger train. Well, I actually don't know about that, because the subway is a passenger train, right? So long distance maybe. I think there's a case to be made, but I think a lot of Canadians have. Not a giant number, but a lot. Nippon Cherrio DMUs on the Ontario line would be scary. Do you have any plans for a video specifically about the appearance and image of transit? No, but actually that's a great idea, and I am going to take a note of it right now because I think it's a smart idea. So thanks for that idea. Thoughts on the New Orleans streetcars? Should they modernize their fleet? Yes, see another case where old vehicle not good, right? They're not accessible as far as I know, and they're, I'm pretty sure they operate like PCC streetcars or something like that. So yeah, let's look. Trackless tram, or extreme? Okay, I see, I see. I'm just looking around. I think go-by levels are much better than the multi-level threes used on NJ Transit. They are if you're boarding from a low platform. Yes. You're absolutely right. People are much more likely to take modern trains as opposed to old trains. Yeah, I mean like, I know car analogies are not things people necessarily like, but how many people want to drive like a really old car, right? Yes, cable cars and PCCs are old-fashioned. I'm just working my way down. Okay, so orange TGV is the best TGV. I agree. And actually, we will have a high-speed rail explained that will feature TGV trains. I won't say where that high-speed rail explained video is on. It's coming out this Saturday, so 9 a.m. Saturday, get ready, you know, try to get that early view in. Try to get that first comment. I find it funny when people comment that. But yeah, there will be a video with TGV trains in it on Saturday, so stay tuned for that. We already have battery trains capable of 160 kilometers per hour and with pretty long ranges. Yeah, so I guess that whole concern about battery trains is less of an issue. See, I don't see a point in having battery trains when we already have more than enough technology for electrification wires or third rail. Well, again, it's the same sort of case with buses. If you're not operating a certain level of service, and I think that the amount is something that we haven't figured out yet, then why would you pay to maintain static infrastructure that isn't being used for so much of the time, right? Like for a metro line, yeah, sure. It makes sense. And the power to weight ratio and stuff pushes you in the direction of we should have fixed power source for our vehicle. But for an infrequently used route or like a lot of bus routes where having the flexibility is valuable, having to use fixed infrastructure is a bad thing, right? Maybe if it's an optional thing, that's okay. But yeah. Oh, Wellington, New Zealand, yeah, they did get rid of their trolleys. Boo! Yeah, you made a video happen. What's wrong with those up express DMUs? They're bad trains and they're not suited to going down a metro line. Yeah, a lot of the... Well, when people say the VIA system has been abandoned, it hasn't really been abandoned. The tracks are still used by freight railways, right? Stations have kind of been abandoned, yes. In Western Europe, there's only very few people who have never used a long distance train and I've never met a single person who hasn't. Yep, that's sad that we aren't in that place. But what can I say? That's the hope long term, right? Okay, I'm going to just take a second to talk about some news since there's a lot of stuff going on in the chat about ION. So this is a short thing, but I just want to mention that in the same way I'm excited about Ottawa's transit system, ION is super exciting. And think about this. When you start thinking about like GO commuter rail servicing Waterloo, potentially from London, but also from the east, you know, Guelph, Toronto, imagine how interesting the idea of people commuting from Toronto, Guelph, you know, Brampton, Miss Saga, and London and places west, Stratford, London, as I just said, into Waterloo and then riding on the ION to commute to work. For example, there's that research and technology park station that's by a bunch of different office buildings or University of Waterloo. Like imagine how cool that would be. Someone who lives in Guelph could take the Kitchener line to Waterloo, get on the ION and then go to university or work. Like the options that having local transit that's high quality like ION is are immense. And so it's very exciting to me. And I think that with the extension to Cambridge, the system becomes even more useful. And yeah, for a small city, it's just, it's lovely. It's a fantastic little system. The other news item I wanted to mention is, yay, the West Coast Express is getting a dramatic expansion. Not, I think some people had posted news items and I was really excited that West Coast Express, there's going to be news about it. I wonder what I wonder what the news is going to be. And it turned out to be the trains are getting a new coat of paint and maybe new engines. Yay, it's important stuff, but it is a little, it's a little sad. It's not the most exciting news. I'm going to try to get through all my news now so that I can just go back to to chat with folks because it's a lot of fun. So there is going to be a new Skytrain yard. I know stuff like this. Some people don't find it interesting, but for me as someone from Vancouver, I think it's interesting whenever they talk about a new yard. And I think that it's just cool having heavy rail infrastructure serving passenger trains, right? And so the new yard is supposed to be north of Braid Station, I believe. Adjacent to Highway 1 and the Skytrain corridor serves the Expo line. It's very interesting. It's actually a very natural location, I think, for a yard, but the elevation is fairly low. So that's not great for flooding and stuff, like there is a risk. But I'm quite excited. I think it's a good location. It's cool to see that TransLink has acquired it. It's close to the Millennium line, right? Just south of Lowheed Station. It also services the Expo line. So yeah, it makes sense as a place to put a large operations and maintenance facility. Of course, there's also the new operations centre going in at the original kind of yard. So lots of exciting stuff happening with Skytrain yards. The last news item of the day is that I'm going to be attending a bunch of conferences, I think, at the end of this month. So yeah, if you're at any transit conferences in Canada or if you work in the industry, you might see me or hear from me. My hair is so crazy. Yeah, I'm quite excited to go to some conferences and hopefully I can bring some interesting news and discussion back to the channel and talk about that. So let's get back to the chat because it's really flowing. Have you looked into any of the transit being built in Israel? Yes, I have. I think Jerusalem's red line, I looked at it a bit. I've looked at the national rail network. I might talk about it in a future video. I'm not sure, 100%. I hope they extend the expo line to Langley. Well, that is the plan. Someone's proposing I look at the Athens Metro. I'm not sure. It's not like high on my priority list, sorry. But I spent a lot of time in Greece a few years ago in Athens and also in... I need to remember, Heraklion? Is that what the city's named? I'm actually very sad that I... let me remind myself. It's on an island. It was an amazing city. When I visited, I was quite stunned. I thought it was very cool. Yeah, well I may not make a video that does not mean I do not love a place. Yeah, Heraklion. It was such a cool little city, like a port city. So, if you're interested, when I was in Greece, we went to... Where was it? We went to Santorini and we took a ferry. It was a high-speed catamaran and the water was rough. It was a miserable experience. So miserable that we cancelled our next ferry ticket, which was to Mykonos, and we instead got a flight because it was terrible. Half the ferry was sick after that because it was just like... Not fun. Not fun. Terrible experience. Catamarans or whatever. They don't handle well in rough water. Yeah, like I agree that those older streetcars are for tourists, but that's the problem, right? That's a big part of the problem. Yeah, the cable cars can't be replaced, but they're also not really a transit system. And also, the idea that they couldn't be... I don't think the original cars should be replaced, but the idea that a functioning, useful transit system can't be modernized with new vehicles... Well, I don't really agree. Have you seen Europe? They have lots of historic rail lines that have been modernized. Well, the whole thing about the trams in Lisbon not being replaced... Yes, they could build new cars. There are companies like Statler that build rolling stock totally custom that could build new trams for Lisbon, so getting rolling stock is not an issue. The cost might be. Yeah, I'm not a fan of stainless steel trains, to be honest. I don't think they look amazing because they look like cans, but they can look okay. The Canada line trains have a stainless steel finish, but the front and back, like the ends of the train have some color, but I think they look a lot nicer. Same with the Azure, it has like a metal finish, and it looks okay because they use it correctly, in a way that looks attractive. I shouldn't say correctly. I'm just continuing along. No, I don't agree. I think the up-express trains look pretty bad, especially the fact that there's different cab designs. I think the forefoot commented on one of my videos. He's got a cool channel. He's like, why do the trains look like that? And I was like, well, because they have different cab designs. But yeah, also why? Why do they need to look like that? It's terrible. Do you think a lot of the LRT confusion comes from many U.S. systems, essentially being inter-urban lines? Maybe a bit, but the fact that the lines are also just... The term LRT is used in such a... It's abused so frequently. Like, sometimes I believe there are systems in East Asia that literally refer to subway-style systems as LRT. And they, of course, refer to light metros as LRT as well. So LRT is a terrible term. I'm just going through... It's kind of annoying. The chat doesn't refresh. I scroll down and it jumps to the bottom, and so I have to go back up. Finally got the TTC map. Yeah, I have a TTC map here. Sorry, the mirror effect. Love your channel. Thank you so much. What are these conferences? When will they take place? There's a CUDA conference going on at the end of the month. There was a QTRIK conference going on, and there was a European, I believe it's called, Railtech Europe that's going on at the end of the month. So all around the... Literally around the end of the month. Well, I don't know if the issue with the ferry was really because it was a catamaran. Well, it was partially because it was a catamaran, but it also wasn't that big of a ferry. I haven't been on the ferries in Scandinavia, but I get the sense that from when I was in cities and I saw the ferries that they're like the ferries in British Columbia, which is that they're generally pretty large. This was a small passenger ferry that was a high-speed ferry meant to go between islands. Albeit, this was a pretty busy ferry, and it was obviously a busy line, but yeah, it was rough. Yeah, it was rough sea for sure. Yeah, I love when they incorporate natural rock formations like they do in Stockholm or ancient ruins like they do in Mexico City or Athens into the metro. I think it's really cool. In Athens, metro construction is constantly delayed by archaeological findings. I know the same is true in Italy. Have you heard of Viva Rail? Yeah, they converted, what is it, D-stock trains into like mainline electrified battery trains, so I think that's pretty interesting. Are you familiar with the Pacers? Yes, terrible. The subway trains are way off crash strength standards if they're mixed with heavy rail train stock. Yeah, unfortunately. However, that should be improved with the new FRA regulations being changed. Someone keeps sending messages and retracting them. I'm not sure why. How are you doing? I'm well. 150s are probably the ugliest trains in the UK. Yeah. What long-term future do you see for Viva Rail if our federal government chooses not to approve the HFR project? It may not be a great future. I think that's the end of the chat and so I'm going to go do the super chat. Let me see. Oh, interesting. Oh, interesting. Okay, so I'm just looking at the top chat there. So yeah, let me go and do the super chat. I need to, it's kind of a little weird. Okay, so I can see it here. Have you heard about Amtrak's plans to expand quarter services across the country? Some of the first could be the front rage of Colorado, Phoenix to Tucson, and Nashville to Atlanta. I've heard of the discussion, obviously, between these kind of city pairs that are very important. I think it's very exciting. My only hope is that it's not with RDCs or with some kind of cruddy rolling stock. I would love to see Brightline, i.e. Chargers and Ventures rolling stock on such lines. I think introducing a new service, you have the best opportunity to excite people and get them to ride, right? So why introduce a new service with a really bad old rolling stock in a place like the U.S. where the first impression is so important? I think it would be awesome to have, you know, like, let's get some Chargers and Ventures and let's throw them on Phoenix, Tucson, Front Range in Colorado, and Nashville, Atlanta. You know, I think it's really exciting. So thank you for your super chat. And yeah, I mean, I think if we see major progress, I'll definitely do videos talking about some of these. I haven't done a high-speed rail explained on the United States, but it's something I will do in the future. And I'm quite excited about the possibilities. So yeah, so cool. I'm going to look at the chat and then I'm going to wind down the stream. Yeah, I was working fast to climb my way down the chat. What do you think of the viewliner twos? I think, are those the ones by CAF? I'll have to look them up. I think, let's see. Oh, they're beautiful. No, I'm kidding. I hate them. I don't think they look good. Like, come on. Let me send a link to this. Come on. Like, look at this. This is brutal. This is the viewliner two. I'm sorry, but I just can't pretend I'm a fan of the way this looks. I just sent the link in the chat. Inotrans 2021 was canceled. Very sad indeed. I would love to go to Inotrans and maybe in 2022 I will go. Maybe that's the thing I should do. How would people feel about me doing that? I guess also no one wanted me to talk about Shavee Rogers. That's okay. Yeah, RDCs are terrible. What do you think about sleepers? Will they be economic enough to be successful? UK sleepers appear to be quite expensive. Like, I think if you provide a good service, you can charge a lot. I think the problem is then in North America, our rail services are so bad that you can't even imagine charging a lot of money for them. Why do quarter trains in the United States and Canada use locomotives and coaches instead of DMUs like the UK, Australia, and Japan? Good question. I've talked about it in a couple of videos. I think I talked about it in my Penn Station video, maybe? Well, anyways, I've talked about it in a couple of videos. I wish they used DMUs. I think it's because the early DMUs in North America have a lot of problems and we did our classic thing, which is that if you have a problem with something, never use it again ever or talk about it. What will replace the car for suburb to suburb? I mean, it'll be a mix of rail and bus service, I think. Rease for Inotrans. I love the hashtag. I could support that. I would love to go to Inotrans, and maybe I can meet some European viewers if I do that. So that sounds like a really good idea. I'm thinking in my mind right now, like, wow, Rease wants to travel to Europe. Inotrans is in Europe. Rease could visit Europe and see trains and visit Europe next year. That sounds like an amazing idea. So yes, I would love to. What do you think of San Antonio being one of the largest cities in the U.S. with no rail transit? Boo, San Antonio. Come on, let's go. Let's get some rail transit going. And it would be awesome if San Antonio did like a Copenhagen-style light metro, just to dunk on the other Texas cities that all have light rail. So, yeah, there you go. What are the gray headphones you have on the other desk? I'm not sure what you mean. As you point out, they are gray headphones, but what is your specific question? If you go to Inotrans, you should see if you can meet up with Jeff Marshall. That would be neat. I would love to meet Jeff Marshall. He's a cool guy. There's a bunch of cool transport YouTubers. So, yeah, it's really exciting. Especially the fact that the circle of interest... Okay, I'm not sure. Can you give me a ticket to Inotrans? It's one of your... Anyways, yeah, I'd love to see if some people can come along. Columbus, Ohio is one of the largest cities with virtually no other transit besides a bus, no Amtrak, no light rail, no light metro, nothing. Yes, the US really is the land of... This city is really big and has no serious transit. Because what? Kansas City and Nashville? Kansas City has a streetcar, but Nashville is pretty big, right? And it doesn't have any rail transit. It has the Music City Star, but it doesn't have any actual reasonable transit. What trains should SEPTA use for the Silver Line? As they proposed, if they use those London Overground Trains, the Class 7 something-somethings, the Aventras, I would love it. I would be in love with that. Those headphones are the Sony WH-1000XM3s. Yeah. What is the future of coach and long-distance bus service? I think electrification and better amenities, probably. Winnipeg is the Columbus of Canada. That's not a very high praise for Winnipeg. Anyways, I think that's it. That's the end of the stream for today. I hope everyone has enjoyed. I love chatting with everyone. If you're not already, please consider supporting on Patreon, as well as following me on Twitter and Instagram, and join the Discord. If you like chatting with me, you'll love chatting with other transportation enthusiasts over there. There is a link in the channel to all of these different things. Thanks, everyone. It's much appreciated. Prepare your questions for next time, and I'm always willing to answer questions on here. Thanks. I'll just stay on for a minute. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Dwayne. Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Charles Solism. Sorry. Probably butchered that. Metal Wolf. Good night. Yep. Cool. Thank you, folks, and I will see you in the next one.