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When Toronto’s Finch West LRT opened in 2025, the conversation did not centre on design quality. It centred on journey time. Within weeks, the line was being compared not to other rail systems, but to the bus it replaced and even to a runner along the corridor. What the design choices reveal The Finch West LRT was planned around short, local trips. Coverage mattered more than momentum. Stops are frequent and closely spaced across the 10.3-kilometre line. The vehicles move whe

I've watched cities invest millions in gleaming rail infrastructure and flood their streets with shared bikes and scooters. The hardware looks integrated. The reality feels anything but. What strikes me most is the precise moment when these systems stop talking to each other. You arrive at a modern station after a delayed train. Step outside and micromobility options sit right there, visible and available. Yet the rail system behaves as if that last leg does not exist. Journe

I realised efficiency metrics were failing us when systems kept improving on paper whilst passengers quietly stopped using them. Passengers were responding to a loss of perceived control . The metrics that blind us Sydney's tram extension to Randwick  illustrates this. From a planning perspective, the upgrade made sense. From a passenger perspective, a familiar routine had been broken. Efficiency metrics tell us how well the system moves people who have already committed to u

I still remember when we overlaid mobile phone location data onto what we thought was a complete picture of rail demand. Traditional models told a familiar story: home to work, work to home, AM and PM peaks anchored to major employment centres. But they were incomplete. What appeared was a set of consistent, high-volume movements that didn't line up with recognised peaks. Short-duration, off-peak trips clustered around health facilities, colleges, and logistics employment. Tr

I’ve had many enjoyable commissions auditing air-rail systems around the world.  The very first signal that tells me whether a space understands passengers comes at a specific moment: the threshold out of controlled arrivals. This is where uncertainty spikes. Does the space anticipate the passenger's anxious question before they have to ask it? In an interchange that understands people, the environment answers immediately: "You're doing the right thing. You're still on track.

In 2022, a driverless Cruise car blocked a San Francisco fire engine for 25 seconds. The vehicle had stopped next to a bin lorry that was double-parked, technically the car was "behaving as designed." A human driver would have assessed the situation and reversed a few metres to clear the path. The fire engine couldn't get through. City officials later noted the delay "slowed SFFD response to a fire that resulted in property damage and personal injuries." The AV had done the r