Tranzwatching in Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
Light rail in North America to date has mainly been confined to larger cities well up in the millions in terms of metropolitan population [US cities are often barely amalgamated and typically include multiple boroughs, counties and sub cities in what is essentially one contiguous urban area identified by the central hub city name].
In the last thirty years light rail has been built in Seattle, Portland, Houston, Phoenix, Austin, Charlotte, Norfolk, Sacramento, Edmonton, Calgary, Buffalo - none less than a million residents in metropolitan population and some of these home city to 3 or 4 million.
On Wednesday night, the Waterloo Regional Council in Ontario, Canada voted 9-2 to begin building a single light Rail line, believed to be about 14km in length between Waterloo and Kitchener, supported by an adapted bus rapid transit system to Cambridge. The line will cost $818 million and implementation will begin in 2014
The decision by the tri-city urban region of Waterloo-Kitchener-Cambridge which has only 450,000 population makes this the smallest North American city since Calgary in 1981 to commit to building light rail.
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