Raise the Hammer

1) turn off your ranting and disparaging remarks about council. insults just piss them off and they ignore RTH. 16 emails, only 3 responded with benign statements. only one detailed resonse through his own blog. what does this tell you?

I agree about disparging council. It gets us knowhere. Some of the comments they likely ignore - especially as you get further down to the bottom of the flat few where the grownups have left the room.

RTH is a blog. You need a lobby or action committee with respected citizens. look at what FOTEK or turtle- ponds group accomplished.

I don't think of RTH as a blog. Many well informed and well versed writers contribute to this site and I am not pointing at myself because mine are more opinion than any real hard journalistic facts. There is a blog section on RTH, but as a news source, I rank it high on my list of trusted and respect sources of information with the future in mind.

Hard breaking news is dead. Before a writer can even put pen to paper, someone on Twitter has already broken the breaking with a tweet and a pic from their smartphone. RTH reports but the research is indepth and the pieces spark true debate. Not all debate is constructive in this or any open space but as a whole, the debate is is valuable as the pieces themselves.

If council is not listening to RTH, than I truly think they are missing out on something very valuable.

I think both sides of this LRT debate are being covered here. The problem as this article points out, is that the arguments from the other side are circular like HSR ridership isn't high enough to merit LRT or businesses aren't calling for it.

The minute it's built it's benefits will be seen. Not only will it visiually bring us into the 21st century, but the numbers it will be able to quickly send across our city will have people wishing all buses would be sacrificed for such a system. Believe me, our HSR is not bad but I am on public transit 2.5 hours a day and I am here to tell you so many of our buses are old, dirty, and many older buses are poorly designed. I am tired of no matter what bus I get on, that more often than not we are all standing up and jammed like sardines at the back of the bus. Ridership will increase because there are more efficient and up-to-date transit options with LRT.

LRT isn't like getting an NHL team in Hamilton. We can't say get the attendance numbers up like they did in Winnipeg and they will come. Fill the buses and tell business to take advantage of the opportunities existing on the LRT route and then we will build it. That debate just goes around and around and if we don't get on board with this opportunity before us, we will never know. If we build it, ridership and business will come because this area of our city would now have the means to attract shoppers looking for convenience and comfort instead of waiting 15 minutes to a half an hour to stand on a smelly, overcrowded bus. Yes, many will ride it just to try out the big shiny new like others are ranting about with regards to the stadium upgrade but in both instances, they will like what they see with LRT and they will like what they see with the new Stadium District so except change and let's move into the future.

Nothing ever changed before because perhaps, the city was never this involved with the future of this community before? People can take their Not in Hamilton mentality and move to Toronto where all social services will be cancelled and there will be no police left to patrol the streets.

While Mr. Ford is sabotaging Toronto, Hamilton has an opportunity to be leaders and sell itself as a city on the right track. A city with the future in mind. A community that ranks social services and social inclusion in general in high regard. A city that prides itself most, in these last two points.

Comment edited by lawrence on 2011-07-14 11:41:15