Comment 116669

By mdrejhon (registered) - website | Posted February 29, 2016 at 12:56:21 in reply to Comment 116662

As many already know, Ontario awarded LRT to Hamilton partially as an economic development (ecdev) initiative too.

It MUST serve a good transit purpose, that said given Lower City Hamilton, it is pretty clear that it is also ecdev too. (Whether one says "ecdev doubling as transit" or "transit doubling as ecdev" is probably a matter of semantics and priorities depending on who you ask in the City).

The risk is that several in the city (again, some, not all) views it primarily as ecdev, but we must advocate that it must also be transit too, and that HSR bus must expand to fit the LRT. (Some in the city are grudgingly for the LRT mainly because it's a big ecdev project, others in the City are thrilled at the transit seismic changes it will help bring to Hamilton)

Side topic: There is going to be a HSR-LRT revenue shift due to LRT replacing one of HSR's most profitable (er, least-money-losing) bus routes, it will be critical that HSR-LRT work together to rather than trying to "compete for revenues" but to work together in a nicely meshed transit network. The LRT replaces one of HSR's most profitable bus routes which can affect transit politics. Buses redirected to other routes can be LRT feeders that could still have similar fare box recovery, if done properly, and the revenue loss is much ado about nothing. But it could be screwed up, and HSR average fare box recovery goes down (that would be bad). Andrae Griffith's earlier article is quite spot on in the need to leverage HSR to fit LRT. As residents of Hamilton we need to demand the best possible outcome for transit improvements, GO/HSR/LRT.

Comment edited by mdrejhon on 2016-02-29 13:06:49

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