Raise the Hammer

Total and utter nonsense. LRT is transit. Toronto needs some form of transit be it subway or LRT or something since they have a huge traffic problem. We have no traffic problems. Traffic moves quickly and efficiently on our SAFE one way street network. In order to make LRT feasible the study says we need to cripple our road network. The study comes from MetroLinx whose sole purpose is to fund transit. Is there any way they can have any other outcome than to recommend more transit. If they were to say we don't need transit then they would cease to exist.

One paragraph in your article sums it all up

"The study summarizes what all this means for Hamilton, concluding that LRT "has the potential to succeed in Hamilton under the right set of circumstances" but will be long and expensive to achieve."

The key word is potential. It has potential to succeed. Well I have the potential to be Prime Minister and guess what, that isn't going to happen either. Not it "will" succeed or is "likely to" succeed but simply potential to succeed, hardly a ringing endorsement.

You want to follow Calgary's example and make it more difficult to drive downtown. Sure that will make it work. But why? Why destroy something that works really well so we can spend a billion dollars and have another way to go downtown. Making driving downtown more difficult will not attract more people downtown no matter how wonderful the transit is. The theory that traffic speed reductions and two-way conversion "can reduce traffic accident risk and result in an improved environment for transit users, pedestrians, and cyclists." fails to include cars which is how the vast majority of people in our city get around. Transit and cyclists are necessary but the number one means of transport is still automobiles so why are we going to wreak havoc on drivers the largest group of users to make things better for two other relatively tiny groups? Calgary built their LRT because they had a traffic problem downtown. A lot of corporations have their head offices or at least regional offices downtown Calgary. This led to real traffic problems with commuters trying to get their. Hamilton simply does not have this problem, nor is it likely to any time soon.

So in the end we don't need LRT and we can't afford LRT. If we are going to spend a billion dollars to try and stimulate construction and growth then let's do that. By going directly to the desired stimulus we will get a lot more bang for our dollar.