Raise the Hammer

Please forward to Councilor Collins.

I am a independent urban planner who lives in Ottawa but grew up in Toronto and still have many friends and family members throughout the Greater Golden Horseshoe. I have experience in Transportation, Environmental and Historic planning. Although I enjoy it far less I am also very experienced in project management and policy planning. I have been involved in various capacities for several BRT and a few LRT projects, as well as few other rail based projects. I was part of small group of people and community organizations that helped start up Ottawa's original O-Train Diesel LRT/Commuter Rail Hybrid Line in the mid 1990's (now referred to as the Trillium Line).

Councilor Collins, I can see and understand you are mainly concerned that without the public endorsement of a referendum, you can't support the B-Line LRT project. However you must consider these facts first. There have been more than two dozen studies involved in this project going back to 2008. This process for LRT in Hamilton, has lasted threw 2 local election cycles and has still survived public knowledge and approval. The people who are against this project are doing it for there own selfish political and commercial interests and I can tell you they are very much out of step with the norms in this province. The project's opponents are backward thinking and if your name is attached to them then, for all time your name will be attached to a moment in history when a bad decision was made that was in the long term, very destructive towards your city. Proponents of this project including the majority of the development community and commercial sectors of this province look forward to help develop your city's core by establishing a city wide backbone LRT system that future extensions will radiate outward from. Your BLAST Network of LRT lines is a good step towards the future. New technology like driverless cars will only make the traffic problems worse because they take up a large amount of road space, even more than today's cars with just single driver occupancy because they can drive back to and from home driverless and take up greater amounts of road space instead of being forced to park your car today. There will also be very little funding for any future road project from the Federal or Provincial government for a considerable time period. The negative attention these projects generate will forever limit new expressway and major road projects until they are absolutely critically necessary. Transit, cycling and other active forms of transportation are the future for the vast majority of Ontarians.

Communities of greater and greater density will become the norm and the suburbs that do not adapt to that form will become the "slums of the future". The future is in greater density because you simply can't afford anything else, the middle 20th century form of low density suburbs are dead because they are unaffordable. The people who live there will be forced to accept not only higher costs (reflecting the much higher costs of servicing low density development) but be comfortable with also greater density inside those existing communities, whether they like it or not. The easiest way to proceed forward has been happening naturally already in your downtown core. However, greater and greater investment levels must be made in your downtown area and LRT systems like the B-Line is the anchor that will pull in that greater and greater level of development and its greater and greater levels of taxes. BRT for the record, will ever not do that to the same extent. Even if it is real BRT, with a physically segregated right of way not just painted bus lanes, these faux BRT pretty express bus systems with great marketing names and nice hi tech bus stops won't either. Although they will to a very minor extent improve transit ridership. BRT has a problem that is not discussed much by its proponents. The busier the system gets, the more money you have to invest in its operational infrastructure. That infrastructure very quickly is no longer easy and cheap to install but becomes bigger and out of need grander in scale and complexity. This results in very high operating costs. The higher operating cost of BRT will cause financial and thus political issues if it is successful. Unless your system is designed to be easily converted to some other operating technology in the future, changing the operational technology will be painful, complex and you will have to spend a lot of money at some future time, to actually convert it. Trust us here in Ottawa its a lot harder than it sounds. Just build LRT instead, from the beginning and you will have a big head start. It is much cheaper and easier to add capacity to a LRT system than a BRT system. This is something we also discovered in Ottawa after 33 years of experience with high capacity BRT service.

The City Council in Brampton, Ontario rejected a 3km section of the Hurontario LRT project for "a better made in Brampton line routing". They are now at the back of the line for any provincial funding and will not likely get any for a considerable time. Unfortunately for the people of Brampton, there city has been turned into a laughing stock in my industry. There is just no nice way of saying it. Don't be a Brampton! They may have also lost there long sought after bid for a university campus because of it. Essentially forward thinking cities don't do stupid things like this for lets be honest, provincial political party loyalty reasons.

Referendums are a callous political way of avoiding decision making. It's just normal human psychology that, most referendums will fail regardless of the merit of what is being proposed. It is easier to just say no! This is a politically calculated idea that is negative in nature and in anyone's educated opinion, has a better than average chance of killing the this transit project.

I say, if you do this to the gift that you have been given from province of Ontario then, all major local transport projects including road proposals also must then also be subject to referendum. I have also heard often the cry from many local politicians against certain projects, to force projects they don't like to a business case analysis. By the way, most transportation projects whether they are road or transit projects also fail business case studies as well. That's why most municipal road departments never subject their road projects to them. That's why the road production industry and suburban development companies in Ontario screamed at the provincial government when they were forced to subject expressways and major road projects to those same studies. The same studies that transit projects have been subjected to for over 3 decades.

You are getting for free what it took us in Ottawa a decade and a half of lobbying by senior Federal, Provincial, and influential local politicians. We still have to pay 1/3 of the bill for our LRT line! Just like your neighbor, the Region of Kitchener-Waterloo and its Ion LRT Line. In Ottawa, phase 1 and 2 of our LRT system building program will cost $5.1 Billon. Approximately, $1.9 Billion or about 38% is funded locally. Real BRT lines at the end of our LRT lines are still being built as well. We currently are building 3km of BRT right of way at the moment. These are being 100% locally funded. When the stage 2 LRT lines come on line around 2023-24, we will have 50-55 km, of LRT lines and still 20+ km of BRT lines.

This does not come cheap for the tax payers of Ottawa, we actually municipally speaking, get less money from our property taxes because the provincial and federal governments don't pay property taxes. They give us cash in lieu of property taxes. The amounts they pay are decided by them not us. In fact, compared to current property tax values we get roughly only 40% of the money from the federal government owned property including Parliament Hill, than we would receive if it were privately owned. The problem here is that we have a lot of federally owned land. This has meant that we take in 20-30% less than if it were all privately owned. The provincial rate is around 70% this year.

You are getting your starter line for free! Yes, there are operational details regarding concerns like, where the money from the fares will go, which with projects like this are usually decided at a point further down the implementation process and will not be known until then, but you already know that don't you councilor? Your job is to make your constituents understand that, if you didn't know that then you need to do some more studying since that kind of knowledge is municipal politician 101 and should have been explained to you on day 1 of your appointment to council.

There are no fewer than 30 Ontario cities who would immediately apply for your Billion dollars if you chose not to except it. It will not be there for you when at some point in your future when your city's council comes to some decision about what Hamilton really wants and or needs regarding rapid transit. The cash will simply not be held for you, it is LRT now or nothing. saying otherwise is just lying to yourself. Too many other municipalities in Ontario like Ottawa, Toronto, the Region of Waterloo, Peel Region (both Mississauga and Brampton) Durham Region, Niagara Region, the City of London, Halton Region (both Oakville and Burlington) and even the City of Peterborough have rapid transit projects ready to go, all they need is the funding. Promising taxpayers that maybe nervous or have concerns about the LRT project that the money will be there waiting when your city finally decides on the perfect solution is just not admitting the reality of the actual situation. If you say no, to LRT, the money will not be there for a decade or more. Just tell us now if you don't support LRT and let us here in Ottawa warm up our lobbying effort for your LRT cash, will take it no questions asked!