Raise the Hammer

Bill Kelly Show, August 17th
Mayor Bob Bratina (Fed Building)
posted 8/17/2011 11:12:00 AM

On GO and LRT (6:20-4:00 remaining):

BB: "[Premier McGuinty] has an understanding of, what's the best thing that we can do for Hamilton right now that's doable and affordable and is in the ground and I'm pretty sure it’s GO, you know, the extension of all-day GO service through Hamilton down into the peninsula.... And that was all dealt with quietly in dignified conversations with nobody threatening anybody. They just want to know, what can we do that's gonna give you the biggest bang for your buck, and that we can do that's affordable, and that we can justify to every other city in the province – because they all want money for something. And so we shouldn't be begging for too much money for everything when we've got something that's simple, easy to define and that we know what the costs are. It's about $178 million to extend those trains."

BK: “You'd better be careful here. You're gonna be accused of turning your back on LRT again. You haven’t mentioned LRT once.”

BB: “Well, LRT’s fine. We’re gonna look at it, and keep ding our due diligence, and when everything is right, I’m sure there’ll be an LRT line, in some form. And that’s the other thing, of course, is that the LRTs that David Miller had scratched all over the city of Toronto in many cases didn’t quite make sense. So you have to do your due diligence, find out where that’s gonna work best. You know, Bill, who talks about Upper James? Look at the traffic horrors on Upper James. There’s very little congestion that I ever see downtown. I’m sitting in my office looking at Main Street right now – cars are zooming by. But Upper James, with all of those left-hand turns and right-hand turns, and all… what’s the transit answer or the congestion answer for that? And who’s looking into it? And so… how about Meadowlands, any time of day? So, I think we’ve got some smart people in our transit department. Don Hall is as good as they come. So we’ll apply good, reasonable thought to the issues that need to be dealt with in short order and then of course the longer-term vision with things like LRT.”


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