Raise the Hammer

"..... help to concentrate economic development downtown, "

All day GO train service at James North would have a much bigger impact.

It seems from other posts, that many agree with me that we are fairly satisifed with the way all-day GO Transit into Hamilton already runs. It's a way to get people out and then back in again at the end of the day. How is that helping economic development downtown?

There are 10's of thousands of cars parked at GO lots from Niagara to Toronto and beyond. Sure, it's better then them all stuck in traffic on the 401/QEW/407, but for the most part it's kind of a band-aid solution. Cities need to work on creating more local jobs and if they have state of the art transit like LRT, that can help promote that.

I know they are working towards electrifying GO transit but as it stands now, they are smelly and loud vehicles. Ever stand beside one on the platform as they screech to a stop. The brakes reek, and the stops along the way are all covered with large areas of heat emitting blacktop.

If companies could look at their employee-base, where they are commuting from, and either re-allocate them to regional offices or let them office-share between where they need their employees most, and an office more local to them to help us solve traffic problems, or not just give them laptops with VPN access but let them work from home once or twice a week so that they are not only 1. not on the highway/clogging up transit, 2. buying their coffee, lunch, etc. in their own cities and able to support their local econmoies.

GO is great and all. I use it every day, but there are more greener solutions than just expanding GO. Trains do need to make their way to Niagara no doubt about that, but if we had to choose between LRT and GO and everyone says we don't, than I chose LRT.