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By Mr. Meister (anonymous) | Posted October 30, 2008 at 02:52:36
People do not drive regardless of cost, that's a really silly statement, I don't know were you got that from.
The downtown core used to be a vibrant place. It had those horrible one way streets. It had the "green wave" you complain so much about and yet people flocked there for years. Why not now? Could it be the traffic is worse and people don't want to deal with it?
People have reduced their mileage because of the cost, primarily the cost of gas. Some people have started taking transit especially those on the smallest budget. Many of the things you alluded to really work in some places. England over 50 million people less than 150,000 square KM. Germany population over 80 million less than 400,000 square KM. Southampton England population 300,000 area 52 square KM. Dortmund Germany population 580,000 area 280 square KM. Huge traffic jams. How many people have no car? have no choice? Terrific rail infrastructure now look at us. Hamilton population 520,000 area 1,100 square KM. Southern Ont. population 12 million area app. 200,000 square KM. terrible rail infrastructure. It's difficult to take a train all the way to Toronto! Most of our tracks are owned by freight haulers like C.N. so the passenger trains rent time on the rails and still take backseat to the freight trains. My son took a train from Sudbury and the only reasonable thing was to pick him up in Toronto. His train was over 6 hours late because the train had to wait for freighters to finish on the tracks. He arrived in Toronto at 2:30 AM. How long before we try that again?
What's the cost of new tracks? Whats the cost of just appropriating the land? How does a population pay for it? Massive numbers of train commuters is pie in the sky wishful thinking. How long has there been talk of of a rail line in Hamilton? At a cost of $50 BILLION and that's the pre-build price what's it really going to cost? Once its built how does it hook up to anything else.
I'd love to see a decent alternative to always filling the gas tank. I live in the west end my son had basketball practices at Saltfleet high 25 min by car at a cost of less then $5 gas. how long by transit? 2 hours? (35 min from Westdale to Eastgate on the express bus if it's running} and how close does the bus go? how many transfers? what does it cost me $3? Even if they build the rail line from University Plaza to Eastgate it means a bus at this end and at least one bus at that end if not two. How long will it take? How many people with a car are going to take that trip by transit?
Perhaps the dominant traffic is the huge flow from atop the hill down every day how does the East West line deal with that? That will require another line. At what cost? trains up and down a 300 Ft. escarpment how well is that going to work? how fast will it be? In which direction is Hamilton's population going to expand? what direction can it expand in? South. So which line should we build first? How well can one line alone work?
In this day and age it's so "in" to talk about greener alternatives and people sure do. How many are going to use light rail once its built? How many more buses do we need to add to bring people to the train? If people start by car how do get them to park it (and where are the parking lots going to be?) and get on a train? People do it for Toronto because its a much longer commute and traffic's even worse. How much money will the new rail line lose? who is going to pay for it? Is there any transit system in Canada that's not losing money? I doubt it. Too many KMS. not enough people. HSR is talking about a fare increase, bet that lowers ridership. You don't need to like cars but you need to respect them.
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