Rail transit lines and transit railroads are being extended in almost every region of the United States and Canada. This phenomenon was common in past decades, but not anymore. Still, there are several new rail segments to ride in what will apparently be a short-lived situation. In this article I’ll describe these new segments and look at what we can expect for new transit starts in the future.
First a personal note. I came on board at Railway Age in the fall of 2018, and this is the first article of this sort that I have written since that time. Before then, I was Contributing Editor at the now-defunct web publication Destination: Freedom at www.nationalcorridors.org, which folded in 2017. (Founder Jim Repass died last year at 75.) Every year, I compiled a “New Starts Roundup” and wrote a shorter version for advocates that ran in the Rail Users’ Network’s RUN Newsletter. There were always enough new starts and newly opened extensions to provide enough material back in those days, but that has not happened in the past ten years or so.
On another personal note, in 2019, for 77 days, I held the distinction of having ridden every bit of rail transit in the United States (a few segments in Canada, particularly in Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, had eluded me). I had essentially caught up with that feat by the end of 2024, but now there is a lot of new riding to be done, with everything that opened for service last year or will open this year.
Most of the new starts or extensions are light rail or “modern” streetcars, as opposed to the heritage style found in places like New Orleans, Dallas and San Francisco, but there are other modes, too. These lines are running or will soon run in nine metropolitan areas in the United States and three in Canada. Most regions with strong transit in the United States are represented, as are Canada’s principal cities.
U.S. Developments
Only one of the new starts is part of a transit railroad, but it’s a major addition to its system; a Y-shaped “line” serving two major destinations that had not hosted passenger trains for 67 years. It’s South Coast Rail on the “Commuter Rail” system of Boston’s MBTA, and it’s running on a temporary alignment. At this time, it runs on the Middleboro Line of what was originally the Old Colony Railroad, which later became part of the New Haven Railroad. The only town with a downtown station on the original line is Brockton, and there is a junction in Taunton (but not close to downtown) that serves as a transfer point between trains heading to or from the historic towns of New Bedford and Fall River. Cross-platform transfers are available for most trains. Service is running for the first time since 1958 and began on March 24, 2025. This writer rode in early October and filed a trip report on Oct. 17. It was a worthwhile trip to both towns. There are 74 miles of new track, with plans to move the line to the original Old Colony alignment through Stoughton, Easton and Taunton, and electrify the line, but those changes are several years off.
Chicagoland has a new line coming, but it’s not in the Windy City itself. Rather, it will be on the NICTD’s South Shore Line in Indiana. It will be a new branch off the main to South Bend Airport. It will branch off at Hammond Gateway Station, a new station in the former industrial town known for a lack of local transit and as the setting for short stories by radio personality Jean Shepherd, who wrote about growing up there in the 1930s. Local transportation will improve with the new Monon Corridor (named after its original railroad); also known as the West Lake Corridor. The nine-mile branch will have stations in downtown Hammond and in Munster. While service has not started yet, the South Shore Line’s website has posted a schedule. There will be through service to and from Chicago only during peak-commuting periods. At other times on weekdays, and on weekends, there will be shuttle runs that are poorly scheduled for connections to and from trains between Chicago and east in Indiana. According to a report from Jan. 27 in the Post-Tribune, a paper affiliated with the Chicago Tribune that serves Northwestern Indiana, the new corridor will open for service on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17.
Elsewhere in the Midwest, the K.C. Streetcar in Kansas City has been a successful operation, with two extensions; one of which is now in service. That one runs south of Union Staton, a 1914 architectural masterpiece served by Amtrak trains, with most of its space now occupied by museums. The line now ends at the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC); a 4.5-mile extension. Service began on Oct. 24, 2025. At the north end, a ¾-mile extension to the River Market is scheduled to open soon.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas is the only place in the Lone Star State where rail transit is strong, and it became a bit stronger on Oct. 25. That’s when the Silver Line on Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) opened for service on track that was previously part of the old Cotton Belt Route. The line is 26 miles long, and it bypasses downtown Dallas, running north of there, between DFW Airport and a station called Shiloh Road in the northeastern part of the city. The rest of DART’s rail system consists of standard, electrified light rail lines, but the Silver Line is different. It’s considered a “commuter line” and runs with Stadler FLIRT DMU units on hourly headways, with extra service at commuting hours.
West of Dallas, but not as far as the West Coast, lies Phoenix, Arizona’s capital and the former location of a long light rail line that ran from the northwestern part of the city through downtown Phoenix and the college town of Tempe, to Mesa. That is no longer the case today, as the local transit authority, Valley Metro, has split the former single Valley Metro Rail line into two lines by adding an extension and some new stops downtown. The east-west portion of the alignment is now known as the A Line, and it runs from downtown Phoenix, east to Mesa. The north-south segment of the former single line is now the B Line, along with the new South Central Extension. The original line had expanded several times since opening for service in 2008, and this marks the first time that there are two separate light rail lines in operation. The new B Line segment runs from the newly-created Downtown Transit Hub southward for 5.5 miles to Baseline/Central Avenue, serving eight new stations. It opened for service on June 7, 2025. The other rail transit line in town is the Valley Metro Streetcar in Tempe, also known as the Tempe Streetcar. There are plans to extend it into Mesa sometime in 2027.
There is a lot of new rail activity in the Los Angeles area, much of it on LAMTA’s Metro Rail system. An additional 9.1 miles of the Foothills Extension, from Azusa to Pomona, opened on September 19. The light rail line was formerly identified as the Gold Line, but it’s the A Line now. A 1.2-mile light rail extension to LAX Airport entered service with a separate opening for each of the two stations. The new segment serves the C (Green) Line and the K (Crenshaw) Line. Construction is also proceeding under Wilshire Boulevard for three new segments of the D (Purple) Line. The line is currently only two stops long beyond its point of divergence from the B (Red) Line between Union Station and North Hollywood. Section 1 will bring the line west to LaCienega Boulevard, Section 2 through Beverly Hills to Century City, and Section 3 will go to UCLA in Westwood. The D and B Lines are subway lines, which run entirely underground. Plans call for completion in time for the 2028 Summer Olympics.
There is another project in the region, but south of the city, in Orange County. It’s the OC Streetcar, a 4.15-mile line that is slated to begin service later this year (currently planned for August) in Santa Ana and Garden Grove. It will connect at the Santa Ana station with Metrolink and Amtrak trains. It will be operated by Herzog Transit Services with Siemens S-700 cars.
Further north, Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) has extended its line northward. It runs on the historic Northwestern Pacific Railiroad, now part of UP, in the area north of San Francisco Bay using Nippon Sharyo DMU units. Its southern terminal is at Larkspur, where it connects with ferries to and from San Francisco; sometimes conveniently and sometimes not. It now extends as far north as Windsor, service there having started on May 31. It stops at historic towns such as San Rafael, Petaluma, and Santa Rosa. Of interest to classic film buffs, Santa Rosa was the setting for Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1941), which featured views of the train station, which is again in use.
In Seattle, two major expansions of Sound Transit’s Link Light Rail system (operated under contract for King County Metro) occurred in 2024. The 2 Line (East Link) in Bellevue and Redmond began operations on April 27, but that line is not connected to Seattle; at least not yet. This writer was there to cover the event and take the ride. On August 30, 2024, the line through Seattle (the 1 Line; Central Link, the original line) was extended 8.5 miles north from its former terminal at Northgate to Lynnwood (the Lynnwood Link). Since then, two new light rail segments have opened and one more is expected to begin service soon. Two new stations in Redmond, at the northeastern end of the system, opened on May 10, 2025. At the south end, 7.8 more miles opened on December 12, on the 1 Line: the Federal Way Extension from the previous terminal at Angle Lake to the new one at Federal Way, on the way to Tacoma, where Sound Transit also runs the T Line. Plans call for connecting the two lines soon. A new segment of the 2 Line, running from Seattle’s Chinatown to Bellevue over a new Floating Bridge over I-90, is scheduled to open for service on March 28, 2026.
Canadian Developments
Rail transit is limited in Canada. There are major systems in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, along with Ottawa, the nation’s capital, have smaller systems. The only other rail transit line in the country is Ion; a single line in Kitchener and Waterloo, Ontario, about two hours northeast of Toronto that can be reached on VIA Rail, a GO Transit train, or a bus. Three of those cities have new rail segments that either opened last year or are slated to begin service this year.
Montreal’s Metro subway system has not expanded since 2007, while the regional rail system (Exo) offers relatively limited service, at best, on five lines. The activity in Montreal today is on REM (Réseau express métropolitain), a “light metro” system that features fully automated operation using two-car units built by Alstom. The original line of this type, now known as the South Shore branch, runs from Central Station (where VIA Rail trains and Amtrak’s Adirondack stop) through the southeastern part of the city and across the river to Brossard. It opened for service July 31, 2023. On November 17, 2025, a former CN suburban line that had been converted to REM operation restored service on the line to Deux Montagnes. Today the segment between Central Station downtown and Bois Franc is considered the Main Line, and the rest of the line is called the Deux Montagnes branch. A four-station extension branching off between Bois Franc and Sunnybrooke and running southwest, the Anse-à-l’Orme branch, is scheduled to open in the second quarter of this year. The next extension will comprise two stops south of Bois Frank and will terminate at Montreal-Trudeau Airport. Service there is slated to begin at the end of 2027.
Toronto has a reputation of hosting the best transit system in Canada and is often considered better than any system in the United States. Local transit in and near the city is provided by the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). A new light rail line, Finch West (Line 6) began operations Dec. 7. The line is 6.4 miles long, has 16 stops, and extends westward on Finch Avenue from the Yonge-University subway (Line 1) to an underground terminal at Humber College. Another light rail line, Line 5 (the Eglinton Crosstown) is opening with limited service Feb. 8. Metrolinx, the provincial authority that operates GO Transit trains in the Toronto region, built and tested the line. On Dec. 2, 2025, Metrolinx announced that it would turn the line over to TTC to operate. It will run on an east-west alignment with 25 new stations
The original O-Train line in Ottawa, run by local provider OC Transpo, was a DMU operation that ran on a southerly alignment from a place near downtown Ottawa. It became known as the Trillium Line and connected with the east-west Confederation Line (now Line 1), which opened in 2019. After a four-year absence for construction, the Trillium Line came back as Line 2 on January 6, 2025. Two extensions opened for service that day. One is a southerly extension of Line 2 that runs from the end of the original line to Leitrim, makes a left turn, and ran two more stops to its terminal at Limeback. The other new service was Line 4, which makes a similar left turn at South Keys, one stop closer to Line 1, and proceeds two more stops to the airport. Extensions of Line 1 are supposed to open this year to the east and next year to the west. An additional branch to the west is slated to open next year, too, and it will be designated Line 3. While Line 1 is an electrified light rail line (Line 3 will be, too), Lines 2 and 4 are diesel light rail lines.
Companion Commentary
It has been a long time since there were enough new rail transit starts and extensions to describe them in an article of this sort. This is the first time I have written such an article for Railway Age and, sadly, it will probably be the last. The pace of construction of new rail lines, whether upgrading a railroad for passenger service, building a light rail line, or installing street-running tracks and overhead wires, has slowed, especially as construction costs are rising at an ever-increasing pace.
While Canada operates under different statutes and regulations than the United States, one important factor that has led to the recent spate of new expansion in the USA was the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) from the early days of the Biden Administration. It helped pay for capital projects, including transit projects. Elected officials and the transit agencies in their cities and states had a chance to build new projects, and they did so. The money has been spent, and that opportunity has passed, Nonetheless, some riders will benefit from it.
The current situation looks far less rosy. In 2023, there were 64 applications before the Federal Transit Administration for capital grants under 49 U.S.C. §5307 and §5309. Of those, 39 were for busways and only 25 for rail projects (including megaprojects); or 39% for rail. In 2025, there were 58 applications; 39 for busways and only 19 for rail; less than one third. From 39% to 33% in only two years represents a 15% decline, percentagewise. Given today’s political and cultural scene in the nation and the expense of building rail projects, it’s reasonable to expect the share for rail to decline for the foreseeable future.
New rail transit starts appear to be winding down sharply and quickly. Of course, cultural or political attitudes could change, and the public and their elected officials could suddenly shift transportation priorities to rail. It’s not impossible, and young folks think differently from us seniors in many ways including about living in urbanized areas and using transit to get around. Still, the overall picture does not look good. There are several new or extended lines now, though, and I am making plans to travel to some places north and west of here, so I can ride them and report to you about the experience.
