I really don't enjoy pouring cold water on transit projects, but according to the attached document this project would spend hundreds of millions on less than 1000 riders per day. It's not worth it. There is very little potential here to capture riders from cars, and this is not helped by poor station location and forced transfers at both ends.
I view this line under the lens of seeing ION LRT Phase 2 *and* allday GO service to Kitchener.
In that case, I believe ridership will be well over 1000 given the long-term aspirations to densify the region. There's obviously the famous NIMBY factor here, but look at what happening -- even Cambridge now has gleaming new >10+ storey towers!
I was there this summer, and it looked different than ten years ago.
Obviously, the devil is in the deets. Let's say this project does not start operating until year 2044 -- that's twenty years from now.
As long as it's not designed as a connecting service but also a serious way to get around the Kitchener-Waterloo-Guelph-Cambridge region (long-term, e.g. 20+ year)...
...I can easily win a bet that (if properly designed, as a 30min service) year 2044 it's well beyond 1000 people per day ASSUMING the presence of ~30min allday Kitchener GO service *and* Phase 2 ION LRT.
Also, Ottawa's first LRT was built for a cost of less than $20 million dollars on an existing ROW. While this BMU route is more complicated (grade separations).
I just was in Cambridge earlier this summer. There's freaking *brand new towers* in Cambridge already. There's also crane towers too. Although Guelph isn't there yet, a developer attempted a proposal for a 23-storey tower (now rejected) in Guelph of all places. But it's a matter of time before a developer successfully begins building tallness in Guelph.
Cambridge is way ahead, there's an active construction site for a 37-storey condo already under construction in Cambridge, chrissakes. This isn't Cambridge 2014.
So theoretically, just give it time, and it's likely significantly over 1000 per day.
Hamilton LRT was first proposed in 2007 (Rapid Ready study) leading to a 2011 IBP (Hamilton funded, submitted to Metrolinx) and construction is only starting roughly next year (early prep is already under way), for a possible operational date of maybe 2031 (more realistically 2032 or 2033).
That's 20+ years from IBC.
I see many instances of 20+ year IBC-to-operational, including Ottawa's earlier cancelled 2003 LRT to Barrhaven (now a stop in Ottawa LRT Phase 3, I believe), as well as Eglinton Subway 1995 (heavy rail) reborn as Eglinton Crosstown LRT (~2025). There's also the original Transit City lines such as Finch West LRT, first IBC'd roughly twenty years ago(ish). Sometimes the plans are rewritten, and sometimes resurrected (like Hamilton LRT). Nothing new.
Even being faster and saying 15 years - this BMU (BEMU?) is probably a 2039 - 2044 operational date. (Even extrapolating that far ahead, BMUs will be even better of a fit, too).
I see no problem letting it get it all the way to TPAP and EA stage, let it cook on the shelf until the other pieces fall in place, and then push forward.