Comment 66681

By YYZ (anonymous) | Posted July 21, 2011 at 00:14:48

To put this in context, the LRT line envisioned is going to cost more than three times as much as the Red Hill Parkway, and it won't even cover the full "B-Line" corridor described in the BLAST network plan. How much would the full BLAST network cost at this rate? It's clearly in the billions, especially if at least one tunnel up the mountain is included. I'm certainly not convinced it's worth it. The Metrolinx BCA analysis showed that BRT could be built at a third the price for the full corridor (roughly $300 million) with a better cost:benefit ratio. Instead of building by bits and pieces, waiting on the province for funding for the next piece of our puzzle, we should be thinking of a transit NETWORK that would connect important points of the city as efficiently as possible. I'd rather see resources devoted to developing high frequency (<10 minute headway) routes along King/Main, Upper James/James St. and Mohawk Rd than this white elephant. Several large North American cities like LA and Toronto have had success with just increasing service frequency on core routes while cancelling under-performing, meandering local routes in recent years. Buses may not have as much sex appeal as trams but they get the job done at a fraction (1/3 in this case) of the cost. Take a look at what York Region is doing with VIVA if you want a local (i.e. GTA) example.

And please don't mention Ottawa as a counter-point if you're an LRT booster: they never built a proper downtown route for the volume of bus traffic coming in off the transitways (like building a giant freeway and having it end at a residential street) so obviously congestion is a problem and the cards were stacked against their BRT system from the outset.

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