During today's Council meeting there was a motion moved by Mayor Brown about replacing watermains, utilities, and doing streetscaping on Main Street, the LRT situation was mentioned by members of Council and staff. At one point, Councillor Doug Whillans tried to move the
first motion to STOP the LRT on Main Street (the C325-2015 resolution I believe was the October 2015 motion to stop any LRT on Main Street), but then also implied he only wanted the tunnel motion, even though that's not what the motion said. The Clerk said that it would be a reconsideration motion and require 2/3rds. The Councillor then said he'd be okay with the tunnel, but the
second motion below was passed so his motion became redundant and wasn't voted on. At one point, it sounded like Mayor Brown was/is leaning to the tunnel option, and indicated the preference by the current party in power at Queen's Park for underground transit (he's probably thinking of Eglinton West LRT and SSE). Of course, the Province just provided $1.7B for the Hamilton LRT, the OL has an above ground portion, and the YNSE has an above-ground portion.
Side note: I believe the 2018-522T motion from the previous term of Council and was for the Downtown Reimagined contract. It excluded surface or tunnel LRT. One media publication's take on this is
here.
First motion:
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Staff later on noted that the results of the EA aren't done, and the EA has to follow due process and seemed to imply there would be legal risks to the City if the a decision was made before the EA results were done and the latest PIC results were known.
In response to a question, the GM of Brampton Transit (who is one of the LRT study point-people), said that staff hope to bring the next Main LRT report to Council at the end of June. Maybe the 23rd or 26th. It sounds like that will be the next opportunity for staff to comment on the
two options (surface and tunnel) and to summarize the feedback from PIC No. 2. I think it's fairly predictable what the feedback will be and who had the time to participate.
The adopted (
second) motion passed 11-0 and is here (screencapture of part of it):
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