Hamilton to get full funding LRT in not just one corridor, but two? It makes me angry honestly. City of Hamilton has been underfunding HSR for decades. HSR is starving for money, ridership is declining due to the neglect and now Hamilton can continue to not spend money on transit while all other cities in Ontario have made serious investments in transit to improve ridership? Hamilton don't deserve this money. They should spend at least one-third. Otherwise it is not right. I think the province is a making serious mistake here. To sell Ontario Hydro is already bad enough but to invest in transit infrastructure in a city that refuses to support public transit is the worst thing they could do.
I am against the sale of Hydro One, that I agree with you.
However, I have to make a correction to your post.
I am a Torontoian who has bought a house in Hamilton, so let me chime in.
The province has offered full funding to several others LRT lately, and that's fair. I'd be fine with much better bus service, too. Also, the B-Line manages to move a decent 11,000 per day despite
not operating after 7pm, and
not operating on weekends. I live near the B-Line but rarely take the B-Line because it does not operate during the hours I need them to. Downtown is only a 30 minute walk or a 5-10min BRT/LRT ride, but we drive to enjoy one of the new restaurants or blossoming new Augusta Street patio pub (forcing myself to be a designated driver). And, they could expand the B-Line using buses, and I would be happy about that, if there was a bus every 7.5 minute or 15 minutes at all times (except maybe a small overnight period 2am-5:30am) to support the pub crowd as well as the late night dinner crowd, not that there's (actual) dozens more restaurants open again downtown (Augusta, John, James, King William, etc) and there are really good longtime restaurants (like Sapporo Japanese Restaurant). And for the first time ever, new luxury condo towers being built along Main and James -- towers which aren't even open yet. 25,000 now work downtown and growing, and we got a new McMaster university satellite campus downtown that just opened less than 12 months ago, not just at the main campus. The transit need is growing, but buses are still decimated (Some routes are really great at peak periods, but if you stand at the bus stop offpeak, you may never see a bus pass by at all). I am witnessing that the downtown density (CBD/towers/condos) is looking like it will easily double in a short time period (20 year timeline) as there are dozens of proposals vying for attention that would rapidly get funded good decisions such as King Street 2-way conversion and LRT.
The LRT for Hamilton would not pay for itself by transit users alone. However, it would certainly pay for itself by a revitalization of the Lower City when properly combined with other revitalization initiatives (Such as eventually making Main a 2-way street).
The A-Line is only a 2-kilometer spur, only to connect to the new GO train station. They shortened the B-Line LRT corridor to create a spur line (2 kilometers long) that is the start of an A-Line corridor. Calling this second route a new LRT corridor is a bit of a stretch (today at the moment) since it's so short that it's considered more of a spur line that connects to the GO train station. That's how it's worded right now. Even if it's squarely directly in the A-Line corridor, it completes only ~10% of the proposed A-Line, only because of the mandatory requirement to connect to the GO train station. It is a part of the Metrolinx Big Move plan even as early as 2007, as part of the
BLAST LRT network master plan. So they cannibalized a few km's of the B-Line, shortening it before Stoney Creek (removing three stations) and transferring it to the spur LRT to the GO station (starter 10% of A-Line).
I was a carshare owner. I did not want to bear the cost of owning a car until it became necessary, and admittedly Hamilton is indeed a very car-friendly city. I have had been a transit user for many years. But I don't use Hamilton's buses often because they are woefully insufficient, for my hours. I really do expect that once LRT arrives, it will exceed projections if it runs 19-20+ hours per day, 7 days a week, with frequency no less often than 15 minutes, and preferably every 7.5 minutes.
The boarded-up storefronts have been slowly reducing, and there's none anymore on James Street. One big purpose of LRT is as one piece of the puzzle of the revitalization of Hamilton, and we need to revitalize Main/King/Barton concurrently, such as Main 2-way conversion, LRT on King, etc. Over the long term, the LRT will pay for itself in increased taxpayer revenues in less than twenty years, as compared to doing the bus/BRT option -- the numbers borne this out. Even parts of Barton is getting better, such as the new 541 cafe to things like the relatively recent Barton Village BIA (Which while good, isn't, as successful as James Street when nearby streets and infrastructure are still fairly run down).
A few years ago, James Street had boarded-up storefronts and grafitti. Today, it is a popular street and has an annual event (James St Supercrawl) with over 130,000 attended in 2014. There is potential to revitalize the east-west corridors, if a series of good decisions are made in combination with improved transit (BRT or LRT running almost 24/7/365).
When we were househunting, we found a number of semi-rundown neighborhoods north of King that were slowly getting better. We talked to a few neighbours of some houses, and we remarked many of them said the renters have been declining and new families have been moving in, and that there's no longer prostitutes in their neighborhood. These are people whose kids will be going to McMaster at LRT completion, and some of them work locally but drive by car because they work outside the hours the B-Line runs on. I am getting the sense people want transit, but don't like their Hamilton's options.
Have YOU recently canvassed neighbours, like we did, here in Hamilton, when WE were house hunting? Thought not...
Your interpretation of Hamilton not "deserving" the LRT is incorrect, sir (or madam). And I'm not one of the "entitlement generation" which you might blame me as, being a daily GO commuter to Toronto. Our city council, as harebrained as it is sometimes, have recently managed, somehow, to operate better than the Ford-era Toronto city council, and some brilliant decisions were made, such as those related to James Street.
Most of the Lower City population wants the LRTÂ even if the anti-LRT people are quite vocal. We have repeated voted for pro-LRT city councillors, moreso than places like Scarborough. I wonder if you would say Scarborough is deserving of an LRT, considering Hamilton's population almost the same size as than Scarborough (500K versus 625K). One might argue why Scarborough is deserving of a $4bn+ subway, while Hamilton is not deserving of a $1bn LRT!?!? I'd say both of them deserve an LRT, it would help both immensely. It is a legitimate topic of whether "Is it a good idea for province to spend the money on LRTs" and things like "what are the merits of the controversial Hydro One sale?". But the "Hamilton doesn't deserve an LRT" angle is quite stupid. Even though reworded, it becomes a more legitimate "Should Hamilton get LRT instead of better bus service?" and the latter is more fair debate.
NOW...again, I am against the sale of Hydro One. But that's a separate subject.
