mdrejhon
Senior Member
This is a new article, just out today. Seems it's behind paywall.
Summary I see in this article.
-- Province putting LRT cash on table for slightly shorter LRT, 2018+, will need to survive election cycle
-- GO Confederation station (Stoney Creek, at Centennial Parkway) will be announced & fast-tracked.
-- There were very intense behind-the-scene negotiations for the bus garage/maintenance allotment.
-- Presumably, talk of James Street North opening, due to timing
Based on what I'm reading, the province wants a spur line to one of the two GO stations. Currently, my wild guess is it would be a Hurontario-style loop downtown, so it goes to Hunter St. This would be a modification to the route, probably Hunter because that's the proposed all-day two-way terminus, since it's only 3 blocks off the LRT route, so it would be super-easy to add a spur line or a Hurontario-style loop. Also, it is wholly possible that Main Street becomes a 2-way street (as it's plenty wide for a pair of two-way lanes), since some parts of the King one-way would be narrowed to one lane (at the Sherman stop). It will be interesting to hear the announcement, and hopefully the city doesn't waver too much once the province makes both Lower City and Mountain happy enough (our 416 vs 905 equivalent).
From the optimist's viewpoint, the province delayed things to allow negotiations to take place on the bus shelter stuff and making an announcement banquet that would satisfy Hamilton's voter population more than otherwise. Normally the bus stuff is not Ontario's purview but the LRT trains need a maintenance facility, so they could cleverly piggyback a bus maintenance facility on top of it. By shorter LRT, it suggests it would stop at Queenston Circle -- (the traffic circle near 55 Queenston). Or maybe they're pulled that off to protect for flexibility of a better potential northwards turn towards the future Confederation GO station if they decided to reroute B-Line later for that -- potentially clever vote getter if Hamilton LRT connects more than one GO station with just one line. Alas, it means we have to have it survive one more election cycle, but if it's packaged as a bona-fide big mix of interdependent upgrades (LRT announcement and the GO Confederation station with LRT connection and maintenance facility that handles both buses and LRTs), it will be hard for enough voters to say no and risk losing it all, surviving the 2018 election cycle to do greenlighted construction. Not all dollars may come from this $16bn cycle, but there was already pre-allocated funds in ongoing GO expansions which of course, includes the partial work currently being done in Stoney Creek and Lewis, so some funding piggybacking may occur, so there may be room to use up the remaining "money pot" and combine with already pre-allocated funds / future allotments in 2018. Let's know there's other reluctant city councils, such as Brampton and Hurontario LRT. There's more unity in Hamilton city council than that. And no jokingly -- FAR MORE SO -- when it compares to Scarborough city council and their invisible subway that's far less certain than even the lower uncertainity of Hamilton's LRT. Enough said.
The pessimist viewpoint will be, obviously, the province kicked the can further down the road. And of course, that it all costs too much; which may be a legitimate criticism but consider what other relatively small-ish Ontario cities are now getting LRT -- look at small Ottawa and Kitchener-Waterloo as comparisions. Even when including central or Greater regions. I'll let the pessimist fight over that. I could write equal sized books on both the optimist and pessimist viewpoints, but I'm certainly not going to jinx things by doing so.
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