It’s an exciting time for transit construction in the United States and Canada. With projects like the REM’s phases three and four in Montréal, New York’s Second Avenue Subway Phase 2 and Interborough Express, Toronto’s Ontario Line, and Hawai’i’s HART in the works, new transit lines are receiving a lot of attention and praise. Unfortunately, what much of the praise and even criticism of these and other projects lacks is a decline in high-performance design: our new trains are slow.

Though this post began as a series of observations about slowness on the REM, it has developed into a treatise on the importance of speed. Below, I will do my best to use the REM as an example to examine a broader trend in our industry. Nothing in this post should be considered reflective of the views of my employer.