Raise the Hammer

See, this is the problem. If you can't explain the need in a 30 second elevator pitch then odds are we don't need it. I haven't yet heard the convincing argument for LRT and I don't drive. I'm a cyclist and a pedestrian and a transit user and I'm waiting to hear the reasoning behind the LRT. It's one route. Correction: one line on one route. For a billion dollars. On rails. With no information on who will run and operate it. And why? I commute daily to McMaster and have never experienced an issue. Yes, I've seen a flyby. Guess what? Next bus is 5 minutes behind. Sometimes less. And buses accommodate bike lanes. The LRT will remove bike lanes. Seems pretty straightforward to me. The proposed plan isn't worth a billion dollars. It just isn't. Especially with HSR ridership DOWN. It doesn't solve a problem that's worth a billion dollars. And that's just the initial outlay of capital. Again, no mention of what the ongoing expenses will be or who will foot that bill. Let me put it in a simpler way: if we *really* *needed* a rail line there wouldn't be this much discussion or debate. People would be screaming for it. Instead they're screaming for repairs to existing infrastructure. Fixing our sewers isn't sexy and shiny like a train but people seem to understand that we need it done. And don't give me the "LRT will fix the sewers too." It won't. It'll only help replace those sewers directly on the route. The backlog for Hamilton's sewer repairs is $3.3 billion dollars on its own. Finally, no one trusts the Wynne government or Metrolinx. The whole thing is rotten and corrupt from top to tail. All this talk of 3Ps is also troubling. Story from 2015 saying our backlog is over $3 billion: http://www.thespec.com/news-story/5518058-hamilton-the-unaffordable-city/

Comment edited by JimC on 2017-03-23 19:56:53