Raise the Hammer

it's awful pretty. it's also awful expensive but it can be done in stages. there's no reason why we can't go ahead and do this...oh wait, we're currently blowing a huge amount on an expressway for trucks blasting through the city and suburbanites. makes sense, non?

I don't know if the city can afford this. This is a Toronto/Ontario/Go Transit type project. The cost of their project was about $31.million Canadian per kilometre based on the mile high project. The red hill/link project cost the city about $200 million of the shared $475 million for that project. And people said we could not afford that. $200. Mil would only buy about 6 ½ kilometres of a project like this. It would be hard for the city to do this unless the other levels of government paid for a large part of it. But it would be nice to see it.
The first part of it though should be a line from the airport to the water front with a large terminal downtown to link into the bus routes and go transit and future east west route. This would insure that the new developments in that area are transit friendly from the beginning and people who move into that area would know and want to be there for that reason. The east west routes are already car trained and need an example on how to do it.

If Hamilton wants to get serious about intensifying, curbing sprawl, and reducing driving, it will get support from the province for sure, and possibly even the feds. Heck, the two levels just spent the past few years handing out gas tax money for transit projects, but Hamilton decided to play silly buggers and use the lowest census it could find to weasel out of having to spend all its money on transit.

Agreed this is awesome but not feasible in our current economic climate. Since we have so much unneccessary road space and so little congestion, it makes more sense for Hamilton to institute bus rapid transit city wide, with dedicated lanes and traffic signal priority. It's just taking some of the infrastructure we already have away from cars so driving becomes slower and transit becomes faster.

realistically, BRT is hamilton's future. LRT should be the priority, though. as has been stated, the feds and province would support its construction. in ottawa, $400 million is coming from both parties for an $800 million LRT project. the thing about LRT is that people will actually use it. there's no stigma related to taking LRT. it's been shown to increase ridership exponentially compared to BRT. calgary's been able to build a pretty cheap LRT system, so maybe that should be our model, not denver.

realistically, BRT is hamilton's future. LRT should be the priority, though. as has been stated, the feds and province would support its construction. in ottawa, $400 million is coming from both parties for an $800 million LRT project. the thing about LRT is that people will actually use it. there's no stigma related to taking LRT. it's been shown to increase ridership exponentially compared to BRT. calgary's been able to build a pretty cheap LRT system, so maybe that should be our model, not denver.