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By MissingPartOfTheStory (registered) | Posted January 31, 2015 at 13:54:55 in reply to Comment 108640
I didn't claim that Viva "enaged with suburbanites".
Encouraging density is not a need, it's a want. I want it too mind you... taxes are going to get pretty high otherwise with infrastructure costs. But it's not a need, like alleviating gridlock traffic.
Gridlock traffic is often a sign of the kind of prosperity that can pay for things like LRT.
You can't expect suburbanites to be engaged if they don't feel they are part of the conversation, and if they feel they and the way they live are being attacked.
If you think the suburbs want something different than what their councillors claim, why don't you either, 1) run and get elected yourself, 2) find others to run and support them. Either would be more productive than beating your head against a wall every day and expecting a different result.
And I know I may be coming off like, I don't know, a bit of an ass hat here. And I'm sorry for that. It's just it really does hurt me to see what should be a slam dunk, a billion dollars in high quality infrastructure, turned into a gong show. And the only way out that I can see is getting enough suburban voters to support the LRT and to put enough pressure on their own councillors to support LRT (with the ultimate threat being to replace the councillor if they do not reflect that support).
You would need an actual plan, with a credible councillor-in-waiting ready to fight in each ward, not just for the LRT but for a better Hamilton as a whole (with LRT at the backbone of that vision).
As it is now, guys like Terry Whitehead know that if they just take the abuse from the enraged citizens, they'll live to win another election 4 years later. You either need to change that to speed up getting LRT and improving the city, or you can sit and wait until we don't just want an LRT for development purposes, but we absolutely need one for traffic congestion purposes. But that's probably looking like the 2030s.
As it is now, you know what's going to happen right? They'll say that even if the province pays for the LRT, the costs associated with the LRT will be too high (pipes, roads, whatever they need to justify it), and that we don't really need it yet. That's going to be a bummer.
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