[lrt's friend]

Everything tends to get dragged out these days. The planning process takes so long. Somehow, I believe it has as much to do with delays in spending money. Always spend later rather than sooner. Why couldn't the Queensway widening been started earlier? We have known that it has had to be done for quite some time.

You notice how fast things took place when the infrastructure program was going. Now that it is finished, everything has returned to a crawl. A perfect example is the Hunt Club interchange. If there was a firm deadline, it would have been completed long ago. Meanwhile, we have a stretch of road built during the infrastructure program that nobody can use. Same with the Armstrong-Strandherd Bridge. If the opening of LRT was dependent on it, it would have been finished. The worst example is the Wakefield railway line. If that line was in freight service, it would have been fixed in days. Because it involves a tourist train and the government is paying for it, it is taking years.

I really expect the main reason for not completing the Confederation Line in time for 2017 is that they didn't want to test the capacity of the system early on. It probably could not handle the crowds for Canada Day 2017 which would have given the city one big black eye and the credibility of the Confederation Line would be put into question. They probably would have also had to purchase surplus trains that they didn't want to invest in early on. Just like not investing in a Confederation Square station, and building a minimal amount of track in Phase 1, everything was designed to keep Phase 1 costs to a minimum.

I still recall the pleas from the city of Edmonton, to spread out commuting times because they didn't buy enough trains when Phase 2 opened a few years ago. Something tells me we will see crush loads on the Confederation Line as well soon after opening.

Budgets are more important than sound planning.