Comment 2697

By jason (registered) | Posted December 19, 2006 at 19:05:21

a few points to add:

  • Hamilton is quite dense...more-so than Portland and many other North American cities.
  • Ottawa recently put plans together for an $880 million dollar light rail system. 95% of the cost was to be paid by senior levels of government. Even Hamilton can afford 5% of $880million, or $2-300 million.
  • Red Hill is up to $440 million. Almost half is being paid for by Hamilton residents. Seems to me that the money is always there for projects we want to do. BRT/LRT deserves to be one of them.
  • Hamilton's economy may not be booming, but it is still quite healthy compared with many cities that have LRT...we have tens of thousands of jobs still along the waterfront (we're a true port-city remember) and over 40,000 jobs downtown. Those numbers are more than adequate for high speed transit.
  • Hamilton's current transit system is maxed out. Jammed buses regularly zip past stops full of people.
  • merchants downtown were the loudest opponents of the one-way system in the 1950's. Many of them still have 'receipts' showing declining sales and eventual closure within a few months and years of the proper city streets becoming 1-way freeways. To make matters worse Hamilton's transit system was destroyed - we pulled up all the tracks and took down all the electric wires. And ridership plummeted. And where is the bulk of transit ridership? Downtown and urban BIA's. That's also the area that will reap the most benefit from 2-way conversions and BRT/LRT.

Cheers

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