Raise the Hammer

congratulations! your wish came true
We have vast network of public transit crisscrossing the city it is called the HSR. Buses running hither and yon.
I am not anti transit. Let me repeat that so you understand it, I am not anti transit. I am however dead set against spending tax dollars on new LRT within the city especially something as huge and expensive as a line from Eastgate to University Plaza. There are better more important things to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on than a transit line that will lose money every single hour of every single day. Building an LRT line makes no more sense than building a couple of concentric expressways around the city.

The rail trail Hamilton to Brantford (I believe) is a huge success as is the waterfront trail. Let us have more of that. There used to be a rail line downtown around Ferguson or Walnut. What happened to that land? Can it become a new bike pedestrian route? York Blvd. has a large median strip for a good length can that be used to make bike lanes? Why not a new bike and pedestrian bridge across the 403 north of King St? There are a lot of bikes going to Mac. Can we get them off of King and Main St? A new safe bike friendly route can (must?) be found? Even in City budget terms hundreds of million of dollars is a lot of money and there are better ways of spending it than LRT lines in the city.

What would happen if we abolished the current system of transit taxes and replaced it with a new system based on wealth? The 10,000 highest properties in Hamilton have to pay for a monthly bus pass and they are distributed free to people who need them? Or let them sell them for whatever they could get for them? There have to be better ways of doing this than what we are doing now.

How about some of that money is used to buy the land around the McMaster project on Longwood so the City can really control how the area is developed instead of fighting with different groups who have conflicting ideas. There is potential there for a large influx of good jobs. Look at Burlington they have a huge swath of commercial and light industrial sites on both sides of the QEW. A lot of well paying jobs. A lot of places paying tax dollars. That is what drives a city's economy.