A Tale of Four Light Rails

I recently had the opportunity to visit Toronto, which in turn recently opened two new light rail/tram/streetcar lines--with a distinction in branding that marks these lines as more intended to be part of the metro/subway network than the existing tram lines. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about my experience, and how these three different light rails (together with the also fairly new Montréal REM, which Google Maps has decided to also mark as a light rail) show very different sides of what we can mean when we say something is a "light rail"--and what makes a "light rail" effective.1. Priority MattersThe single biggest difference between these various light rails is the degree of priority that each receives in relation to other transit modes serving the same space.The regular Toronto trams (the 500 numbered streetcars) get no signal priority at all and are indeed just...on the street (with a few exceptions like the Queensway tunnel).The Finch LRT, line 6, does better, because it…