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Public transit in Canada ...

Rail
... Urban rail transit entails heavy rail systems on dedicated rights-of-ways in Canadian urban areas....

Rapid transit


There are three urban rail rapid transit systems operating in Canada; also known as subways or metros, these are considered higher-order rapid transit by the International Association of Public Transport (UITP). The first such system, the Toronto subway, was a 12-station line opened in 1954 by the Toronto Transportation Commission (now the Toronto Transit Commission, TTC). It has since grown to encompass three heavy rail lines and one intermediate rail line. Montreal later introduced the Montreal Metro in 1966, though there were plans to build a rapid transit system since 1902. The Vancouver SkyTrain—an intermediate-rail, automated guided line—was opened in January 1986 for the Expo 86 world fair. The two aforementioned intermediate rail lines are sometimes referred to as light metros.

Light rail transit
Several Canadian cities run light rail transit (LRT) systems, sometimes referred to as 'light rapid transit' systems; with regards to the abbreviation, the two terms are sometimes conflated given the development of diverse public transit modes in the 1970s and 1980s. The Edmonton Light Rail Transit system was built from 1974 to 1978 for the 1978 Commonwealth Games, making Edmonton the first city in North America with less than one million people to have an urban rail transit system. Calgary soon followed, beginning construction on the C-Train in 1978, with the first line opening in 1981 and followed by additional lines in 1985 and 1987 in time for the 1988 Winter Olympics. In addition, Toronto features the largest streetcar system in North America, but differs from the aforementioned light rail systems in that it largely runs at grade on roads.

Bus rapid transit
The success of Canada’s first bus rapid transit (BRT) system—the Ottawa Transitway, which opened in 1983—has spurred transit systems worldwide to implement their own BRTs. Dedicated busways are existing or planned in a few communities including Ottawa, Gatineau, Mississauga, and York Region, while the Ion system, a blended LRT and BRT network, commenced construction in Kitchener-Waterloo in 2014.