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Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere
I'd say Toronto is the clear winner here. By July of this year there will be 86.5km (~54 miles) of LRT and subway lines under construction in the city - equivalent to over doubling the entire network length of the city's rapid transit network today.
Plus, the GO expansion program is expected to begin major construction around then as well, which will electrify 263km (163 miles) of commuter rail track and provide 15-minute frequency rail services across 210km (130 miles) of those tracks with much more all day, 30 minute to hourly frequency services operating across Southern Ontario.
Plus there are more lines in the pipeline, like an LRT for Hamilton, additional Subway and LRT extensions in Toronto, and an ever increasing scope of GO expansion which keeps increasing frequencies, extending lines, and adding new stations.
All of this will be built by 2030 basically. It's an insane transformation.
In terms of the US, I think Seattle has the most transformative network under construction and planned. The City will go from having very little rapid transit to having an effective city-wide network in only a few decades.
Ottawa also has an honorable mention, which is going from basically 0km of rapid transit to a 62km (38.5 mile) rapid transit system over about a decade, and again, with more lines planned. And while it does use LRT vehicles, it's fully grade separated and functions as a metro line, which makes it all the more impressive, especially since it's serving a city of only about 1.2 million.
I did the math a little while ago and I believe Ontario is set to have more transit under construction this year than the entire US combined, to put it to scale.
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Toronto is probably the winner, you're right. The urban rapid transit expansion underway is pretty impressive considering the relatively minor expansions over the past few decades. Hopefully they don't take as long to come online as Eglinton is. And then of course, as you mention, there's the GO upgrades and expansions, which aren't totally about Toronto, but for GO all roads lead to Toronto.
I'd say the second place would be Montreal, just due to the REM. It's not quite as impressive because it mostly involves repurposing existing ROWs, but it will result in 67km of 'light metro' service around Greater Montreal. I think it'll be a game-changer as the suburbs have mostly just had slow commuter rail and buses into the city.
Ottawa is probably third. Another laggard until very recently, it's really aggressively expanding the O-Train and not skipping a beat, despite its existing line being rife with issues. Far out suburbs like Orleans are going to soon have very easy access to Downtown Ottawa, uOttawa, and VIA services.
After that I'd say Edmonton. It's currently undergoing the largest single increases in track to the LRT system since it first came to be in the late '70s. There's currently 27km under construction (in two phases - the first is just wrapping up and the other has recently begun construction), with extensions to the existing lines either under construction or soon to be.
Calgary and Vancouver, which were probably the most aggressive rapid transit expansionists in recent decades seem to be taking a bit of a break. But Calgary has the Green Line and Vancouver has the Broadway extension to look forward to. Calgary also just recently implemented a BRT system.