mdrejhon
Senior Member
It makes a lot of sense to do this. Get the cities addicted to enhanced rapid transit, and province doesn't have to spend nearly as much on freeways 30 years from now. But yes, standardized policy would be essential as Ottawa/Waterloo/London is left holding the bag now. Maybe they get more funding in Stage 2 (e.g. Cambridge LRT, Ottawa LRT Phase 2/3), as a compensation for the others, there will be future budgets beyond today, it just means later construction start dates than the rest of the LRTs.Some kind of standard policy would be nice. How about everyone gets their first LRT free, but needs to chip in for subsequent ones?
Agreed, and that's why I wrote to the city council to keep the door open for Main 2-way conversion (by not putting a LRT lane on Main). I also mentioned that Main 2-way today if it's too difficult to reopen the debate, but to plead "keep the door open" by putting the LRT lanes onto King Street.The question is, given Hamilton's history of prioritizing car traffic over public transit and of green field development over re-urbanization, will the LRT see its full potential? Having an LRT doesn't guarantee ridership, it takes municipal support
Hamilton is definitely automobile-optimized. Though took a first huge step at de-prioritizing cars in some areas such as James Street, and a few other surrounding streets. It worked spectacularly as any annual visitor to SuperCrawl from 2009-2014 would attest, and it's not even the end of the James revitalization. The city wavered when they considered the idea of turning Main 2-way, declining that idea in 2011. But the door is not slammed permanently shut. It has a long way to go still, but it doesn't look like Detroit anymore. And over the last five years we have had ferocious debate on whether or not to convert additional streets to 2-way. I actually become neutral or moderately anti-LRT (though soft) if they put separate LRT directions on Main and King to cement their 1-way nature. But if city planning is done in a way, where LRT can improve upon the James Street momentum and brings all of that to Main/King/Barton over the next decade or two, I'm all for it.
We need to do rapid transit properly, and if we're getting an LRT, doing it properly is even more important due to the permanence of the tracks.
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