Raise the Hammer

Wow, 3 weeks! That is the real reason your city has a problem right there! Instead of quickly dealing with a minor vote and moving on, they are letting the whole situation languish for 3 weeks. Does your council know that they have a dozen or so, procedural LRT votes like this one left to do, before shovels even hit the ground? If every vote is going to be like this then most likely this entire LRT project, and definitely the reputation of your city, is toast!

It doesn't matter if you are for or against LRT, delaying simple voting only adds cost to everything around the LRT project as well as extra costs to actually running your local government. It wastes everybody's effort and the years that have already gone into this project. These politicians are fiddling about with the time of the 50 or so very talented and expensive Metrolinx and or privately on-contract, LRT project planners, engineers and designers. Not to mention frittering away the time of potential contractors and suppliers, who might want to bid on parts of this project, most of them by the way, will be local Hamilton companies! This is only doing damage to your collective reputations folks.

The people who are presently working on this LRT project are in Hamilton right now, not in some far away office in Toronto, they are occupying office space in your city! Spending money in your city! These delays will just confirm that, costs will go up for everyone. If you want LRT, just vote yes. If you don't I'm sure Waterloo would love to have some the $1 Billion in cash for phase 2 of their LRT project. They are calmly waiting for news about their funding. The planning and procedurally steps needed to be completed for ION LRT's Stage 2 program are almost done. Or, how about the dozen or so other transit projects in the Greater Golden Horseshoe Region that have their EA's done and have city council's as well as supporters, who are tolerantly waiting for any sign of cash!

As a person who doesn't live in Hamilton and speaking for everyone else in Ontario who would love to have Hamilton's problem, which is having the provincial government dump $1,000,000,000 into our laps, for an 11 km LRT line , a 15 km BRT line, Another GO Train Station and improved GO Train service. I have 2 things to say, WILL THE HAMILTON CITY COUNCIL JUST VOTE AND PLEASE STOP WASTING EVERYBODY'S TIME!

Thank You.