Raise the Hammer

baloney. Terry Whitehead spoke to the Hillbilly Heaven guy himself. The bus lane is a total disaster......

I moved to Hamilton a few months ago because of the potential. But I work in Toronto. If LRT and the changes it bring don't happen, I will leave Hamilton and move to Toronto. Thank you Council.

This is an intriguing line of thinking. And I understand what you're saying completely.

But there' a problem: Even if Hamilton got everything it needed for LRT, even if it got the cheque cut tomorrow and work began on the initial work next week, it will still be years before it's in place. Conservatively five years. Maybe longer. (This amount of time does not include delays caused by potential lawsuits filed by businesses along the route.)

Are you willing to wait that long?

And the 'changes' you refer to, assuming you're talking about economic development with all its ancillaries, they'd happen much after this five, eight, ten years.

Again: Are you willing to wait that long?

Comment edited by ItJustIs on 2015-01-15 23:34:22

I have literally considered selling my house (I haven't even owned it for a year) and moving back to Toronto after the bus lane "debate" I saw on Wednesday. I wonder if downtown property owners have a leg to stand on to sue people like Terry Whitehead for damaging our property values with their stupidity.

Comment edited by Cultosaurus on 2015-01-16 07:33:29

Precisely. The minute they start building that LRT people are going to take notice and the value of property near it will go up.

It took 40 years to build the Linc and the Red Hill Creek highways. By the time they were done, the world had changed dramatically. Who knows what the City would look like if they had been built on time. We may have had a far more vigorous industrial base etc.

Ryan is correct. Sitting around and doing nothing, not even fixing the roads we have is very discouraging.

In K-W, investment and building started ahead of the LRT. Once the announcement was made, everything changed.

It's not about waiting. Hamilton is attractive because of its potential. Building LRT would be symbolic of that potential beginning to come to fruition, but there are many many small changes that the city can start working on ---such as two-way conversions, cycling routes and greenways, this bus lane, and more like it, reducing urban sprawl, changing zoning bylaws to encourage density and mixed use, defending heritage --- which would actually result in the most tangible changes in Hamilton. Council has shown itself unable and unwilling to consider these changes, challenging them with stupid and insensitive, unsupportable positions. They have shown themselves unable to imagine the case for building a better city in even the smallest incremental stages, let alone the kind of large organizational re-orientation that is necessary to make better city-building the natural outcome of their work.

LRT is very much symbolic of the issue, because most experts think it's a no brained (including metrolinx) and the province has even offered to pay for it, but the leadership of this city has responded negatively to even the idea of it. They say that they don't support it because it's not a sure thing, even though they are the ones who have to make it happen; however, but they have responded similarly to many other ideas, small and large. When you look at the silliness of the debate over this TOL, or the cannon cycle track, its hard to have any faith at all in Hamilton council. Hamilton is a great city, but it needs to change. The status quo is not acceptable in the long term.

Comment edited by AnjoMan on 2015-01-16 09:02:51

Yes, I'd be willing to wait. For me it's just about the movement towards realizing potential. The drive towards change and improvement. If I see it's not happening in my lifetime due to the dithering idiot council that seems bent on blowing a once in a generation opportunity, I feel it's better to move out. Might as well move to a place where my taxes come back to me in some form, like Waterloo even.

If not having LRT would make you leave Hamilton, why did you come in the first place? It would be a devastating blow but many of the things that already make Hamilton an amazing place to live would still exist. I can't think of a reason to ever move back to Toronto myself because all of the reasons I left probably won't change in the next 20 years.

I can't believe you're so naive as to believe this is just about the bus lane. Hello!

Just to clarify...

"I moved to Hamilton a few months ago because of the potential. But I work in Toronto. If LRT and the changes it bring don't happen, I will leave Hamilton and move to Toronto. Thank you Council."

This is what the poster said. And in response, I asked my question. To them. It wasn't a baiting query, to get people to defend the benefits of LRT or the (forecast) development changes. Which is what has ensued.

I was, in truth, trying to gauge their attachment to a notion five or ten years off. I don't care what city you're talking about, what neighbourhood you're talking about, in the main people do not plunk down a few hundred thousand dollars as a bet that the area will substantially be transformed. (Please note that I'm not talking about investors who flip properties after 'gentrification' has jacked up property values. Different kettle of fish entirely.)

In fact, it's reasonable to look at what I said this way: "If you don't think that Hamilton is a sufficiently great place to live right now and will only think so when substantive changes take place, then I'm not sure that Hamilton is your kind of city, period."

I think it's of value to remember that whether or not we get LRT, Hamiltonians will still be here. Life will go on. Resurrection of the downtown will unfold, albeit not in the way many here would prefer. In the end, this should be the fundamental focus. Once again, we're at risk of placing all our bets on something, when in reality, we need to continue to contribute to the city's transformation, regardless of the eventual outcome of The Battle of LRT.

While it's easy to point the blame at City Hall, it's my belief that amalgamation has really staggered the progress of this city. You have a city with areas that have very different needs. I am generalizing here but, the majority of the mountain, or Stoney Creek don't care about that because that's not how their communities are set up. It's designed for cars. I think we have some forward thinkers on council but there is just to many different needs for different wards. We've watched it play out with the stadium and the velodrome. It's a real shame we can't find any middle ground on anything.

Hamilton is not great 'as is'. It's people with that kind of attitude (i.e. Status quo is good enough) that hold the city back from exploding with greatness. Hamilton has great potential to go from being one of the worst cities to one of the best cities. It's not there yet, and lack of transit investment will ensure it never gets there. I'd rather live in a city where positive changes are taking place. Even Brampton-Mississauga are ready to get LRT.

I agree with this and believe it's why a roadshow on the pros of lower City urban intensification needs to be taken east, west and up the mountain to explain things. A revitalized core will benefit those others areas in ways (like increasing the tax base with minimal infrastructure costs) in ways that I don't think have entered the conversations, for the most part, there.

Hamilton has high taxes because it keeps building sprawl to placate the developer and car-culture special interest groups, so I guess I agree with you. We can't afford (and the suburbs are very far from paying their fair share of) the taxes this continued course of action will engender.

Right now I am giving serious thought to K-W simply because their LRT is being built and they have managed to control the status-quo-trolls from holding them back.

And the bus lane is just the current issue before Council.

What about the conversion of one-way streets that have already been approved? What about future conversions. These are non starters with most of the Counsellors since their constituents benefit directly from the status quo.

How many cars come down the mountain in either the east or west end to traverse the lower city or exit the 403 on York, Main or Aberdeen to do the reverse? Why not cross the city using mountain streets? Because it's quicker in the lower city because of the one ways and synced lights.

This convenience comes with expense.........quality of life, lack of neighbourhood vitality, lost taxes etc. etc. but the "majority" don't care. The overnight conversions of the 1950's should either be undone or rolled out to the entire city. To do otherwise is simply unfair. Why should only part of the city have to tolerate what others don't?

if not for my job, I would have left a long time ago. TO, Montreal, Van, Portland, Seattle etc......

Interesting... my job is in Seattle and I'm still an intentional Hamiltonian.

This city has made great strides in the years that we've lived here. We can make more strides, but we need more than anything right now is to make sure that the weak minded trollish members of council aren't permitted to wreck the progress we have made. It's going to be a long 4 years with some of these childish, selfish, self-absorbed... I don't even know what to call them... councillors.

I'm very impressed with the behaviour of the two new lower-city councillors, perhaps they'll be able to outwit the unarmed and continue cycling out the incumbents who prefer the 'glory days' of their youth rather than the progressive future that we owe our children.

bq. If this city continues to make their decisions based on 'special interest group' pressures and desperation we might as well all move because no one will be able to afford the taxes

That is literally what we are saying. If hamilton continues to make decisions based on the 'special interest group' of 'driver', I don't want to live there.

"If you don't think that Hamilton is a sufficiently great place to live right now and will only think so when substantive changes take place, then I'm not sure that Hamilton is your kind of city, period."

Good luck with that approach.

Every urbanist issue we've been fighting over in the past year has been penny-ante stuff. The bus lane, and the Cannon bike-track altogether cost under a million dollars in capital costs. Yes, that's a lot of money, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to the taxpayer's big line-items. $100 million on upgrades for highway 5. Hundreds of millions in road maintenance. $150 million on that stadium.

Bikes are cheap.

Now, when it comes time to argue over buying more buses and hiring more bus drivers? The LRT? That's where we'll get into some hard conversations about cash.

But when it comes to bus-lanes and bike lanes?

Just admit you don't want to slow down for Those People.

What if the same process happens after the Cannon Cycle Track pilot? it could disappear so easily by the misguided votes of a few ininformed councillors.