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Dive brief:
- More than 160 miles of new rail, bus and other fixed transit lines opened in the U.S. by 2025, and roughly 94 more miles are expected to be completed this year, according to data from The Transport Politic.
- Cities are choosing less expensive and more flexible bus rapid transit and similar arterial rapid transit for light rail projects, said Yonah Freemark, a researcher at the Urban Institute and creator of The Transport Politic. BRT lines generally run on dedicated traffic lanes, while arterial rapid transit systems use existing traffic lanes, often with bus signal priority.
- “Over the past decade, many cities have been reorienting their investment approaches,” Freemark said in an interview. “Light rail is very expensive for these cities and they’re not finding the mechanism to reduce it.”
Diving knowledge:
In total, about 150 miles of new fixed guideway transit lines are expected to open in the US, Canada and Mexico this year, compared to more than 240 miles in 2016.
Here are some of the big projects expected to open in the US in 2026:
- Atlanta will launch a 3.1-mile BRT line from downtown Atlanta to the Atlanta BeltLine.
- Baton Rouge, Louisiana plans to complete a 9.3-mile arterial rapid transit line to connect the city’s north and south sides with its downtown.
- Kansas City will extend its streetcar line 0.7 miles to Berkeley Riverfront Park, while Orange County, California plans to open its 4-mile streetcar line connecting the cities of Santa Ana and Garden Grove.
- Seattle’s 7.5-mile light rail extension will connect two existing light rail lines on Lake Washington.
Canadian cities Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto are building light rail projects. “Canada is acting a little more like the rest of the world,” Freemark said. “Their major cities are building a lot of rail lines and they’re doing it at a pretty fast pace, and that’s not true in the United States.”
