[Pavlov]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

There seems to be busways sold all over as cheap to convert to LRT later. It didn't happen in Seattle, and it isn't happening in Ottawa. Unless you're going to O-Bahn the line, it is going to need a wider corridor, built to tolerances of human drivers. Who knows what vehicles we will want to run in the corridor 10 or 15 years from now, if we design to a requirement today we might find we don't want to build low floor lrt in the future for some reason. Or it might constrain us to one manufacturer, or one vehicle that wouldn't be optimal because we assume certain performance characteristics. Path dependence can in the end be very expensive.

To be honest, if we have a defined plan on what we want, why should the city we wait past when the next batch of engineering studies are done? Tender the project, borrow the money either traditionally or as a P3, and raise taxes to pay for it. Put it to a referendum and it would pass.

This. I think people in Calgary recognize that the C-Train is a huge advantage, and that the more we invest in it (generally speaking), the more we capitalize on that advantage. Its a good, established, and ultimately safe investment.