Comment 100298

By JayRobb (registered) | Posted April 15, 2014 at 20:27:48

Does anyone still believe the province will pick up the whole tab for Hamilton's $800M LRT?

In Waterloo Region, all three levels of government have put money in the pot for an $800M, 19km LRT that's gotten the green light.

The province is investing $300M. The feds have promised up to $265M. And the region is ponying up $253M. That's roughly a third of capital funding from each level of government.

We've had seven years in Hamilton to bring the feds to the table.

Seven years to figure out how much Hamiltonians could afford and how to finance it (Waterloo Region citizens are looking at an average property tax hike of $11 a year).

Seven years to get out the vote for the provincial and federal parties in power that cut the infrastructure cheques. The provincial Liberals and federal Conservatives hold just two of our seven local ridings. In the last election, we voted out a Cabinet Minister who was a Hamilton advocate at Queen's Park. If you're the Premier or Prime Minister, what's the political uplift from investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Hamilton's LRT?

And we've had seven years to come up with messaging and messengers that could win over Joe and Jane Hamilton who live in the 'burbs, don't take transit and rarely, if ever, venture downtown.

If we're serious about an LRT for Hamilton, there's just seven months left to do what could and should have gotten done in the past seven years.

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