Challenger Cities EP28: Why North American Transit is Mediocre ... and How to Make it Actually Good with Reece Martin

If you’ve ever tumbled down a YouTube rabbit hole about public transportation, chances are you’ve come across Reece Martin — the sharp, relentless mind behind RMTransit. With over 1,000 videos filmed across dozens of cities, Reece has quietly become one of the most insightful, entertaining, and occasionally exasperated voices in the transit world.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Why North America — and Toronto in particular — keeps getting transit so wrong
• The difference between places that treat transit like infrastructure vs. places that treat it like an expensive hobby
• How insecure leadership stops smart people from fixing obvious problems
• Why signage, governance, and shelters are more broken than you think
• What we can learn from Singapore, Germany, and even the SkyTrain in Vancouver
• The one change Reece would make if he was handed a magic wand

We also cover Reece’s personal journey — how a COVID-era side project became a global platform — and the two RMTransit videos he’s still most proud of.

This is a conversation about imagination, urgency, and doing the damn thing.

Because at some point, you have to stop planning and start building.

Watch Reece’s Vancouver video: I Went to Every SkyTrain Station in Vancouver

Explore RMTransit on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RMTransit