After riding aboard one of Ottawa's fancy commuter trains, Mayor Sam Katz wants to look at building a light rail transit system here. Katz confirmed city hall will investigate the feasibility of a light rail system after he joined Ottawa Mayor Bob Chiarelli in riding the O-Train in the nation's capital yesterday.

"I'm very much a fan of it," Katz told The Sun after his spin. "The biggest benefit is how quickly it moves people from Point A to Point B. And it moves them in an environment that they're very comfortable in, with easy access.

"And it's new, it's innovative -- it's the 21st century. There's no reason in my mind that we shouldn't explore this."

Ottawa is among the latest of Canada's major cities to launch light rail transit (LRT) -- a move it made in October 2001 after using only regular buses and a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, the kind of set-up Winnipeg recently shelved.

A $25-million city payout to start an eight-kilometre route as a pilot project in the Ontario centre has more than paid for itself with ridership far higher than expected, said Chiarelli.

"It would be irresponsible to the taxpayers of the City of Winnipeg not to do a full and complete analysis of this option," he said.

Though the electric-powered LRT trains and tracks run into the hundreds of millions of dollars in costs, Ottawa has benefited by rolling out at least part of its startup route using existing railway infrastructure.

That way, said Chiarelli, cities such as Ottawa and Winnipeg could roll out LRT more cost-effectively than bus-based transit on designated roadways.

"That part of it has worked out extremely well," he explained.

"Whereas our bus transit system would cost us somewhere between $12 million and $15 million a kilometre to build, the light rail costs only about between $2 million and $3 million a kilometre to build."

However, Coun. Jenny Gerbasi (Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry) said the light rail option costs four to six times more than a rapid-bus system when new infrastructure is involved.

BRT is still best here, she said, "because we're a very spread-out city and the cost of LRT is prohibitive."