This is in fact a good news story.
The A-Line spur would have been mix in with traffic, which does not fit in with the City's vision of rapid transit.
The A-Line 'express' bus currently runs 7/8 empty outside of the McNab-Mohawk College stretch along the route.
This frees up money for a possible *crosses fingers* B-Line extension back to Eastgate as originally planned. This has been a very popular bit of feedback the City & Metrolinx has been receiving.
If this happens, I'm happy too. While I'd like an LRT to be built along James someday in the future -- I'd rather it wait until enough funding occurs to allow it to connect to at least Mohawk/StJoes. Eastgate is more important at this time, if Stoney Creek politics can be overcome.
I'd go with either:
- A-Line upgraded to frequent all-day 2-way rapid transit (transit priority & bus lanes), ala Brampton's Züm bus. And the B-Line extended to Eastgate.
....OR....
- LRT all the way from waterfront to Limeridge mall, with Mohawk/StJoe stops, with dedicated lines like B-Line (except the James St N section between Wilson & West Harbour GO).
This 'Gage Park' stop should have been placed at Gage & King, not The Delta.
That adjustment should have been made (and still needs to). To me, it's a separate problem than the Gage Park stop.
Also, Gage Park stop has other alternate benefits (interchange with future allstop Main 2-way bus, interchange with future accessible GagePark-MountainPark gondola). This can potentially help far more Hamiltonians as a whole. Merging Scott Park + Delta Station into one station would help far fewer, with the massively wide stop spacing.
Also, there are solutions as well to accomodate Cumberland residents. North-south bus routes need to be
loops. To avoid loops, it becomes
too short and uneconomical (even in 2041) to be single lines that terminates at waterfront & escarpment. So they have to become loops or L-shaped (e.g. Gage-Ottawa loop or Gage-Sherman loop).
A bus loop usually needs a terminus, or a selected end point where buses can begin/end service, or allow driver-changeovers. So this is an opportunity for Scott Park to be the terminus of a north-south bus loop; such buses could turn onto Cannon and then loop back to the Scott Park station via King.
Barring the Scott-to-Gage station move, I'd say, we ought to focus on moves that can be done forward to protect for north-south bus routes. One good example is we need to inform the City (at next PIC) that the Melbourne-Cannon or Lottridge-Cannon intersection, needs to accomodate a future Gage-Ottawa bus loop, or Gage-Sherman bus loop. Including turning-radius considerations and the safety considerations of running a bus route adjacent to the nearby school.
