Quote:
Originally Posted by GreatTallNorth2
Don't blame the city for wanting to build a great transit system.
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It has nothing to do with this particular issue being a requirement for a great transit system. If the plan for this rapid transit is so inflexible as to live or die dependent the location of a RT station being at precisely this location, then it's NOT a great transit system from the start.
The real issue is that the city will not give the developer assurances that they won't grab a portion of his land for a road widening to construct a transit station at that particular location. When the notional RT route was devised, they considered a station there along with the road widening required for it because it was/is a vacant lot at a major intersection, so in the eyes of the RT planners the required land at this desirable location is available by taking it from the owner as part of a future development agreement. Now that there is a developer, he is now saying that if he looses that much land to a road widening he does not have the space required for the building footprint needed to support the density that his business model requires to make his proposal financially viable.
The messages it sends are many fold:
1) The fact that the issue has seeped out into the public shows that it's still amateur hour in some places at city hall. If there are adults in the room, matters such as this don't see the light of day and get concluded behind closed doors.
2) It sends a message of an inability at city hall to think out of the box in order to solve problems. This represents a disincentive for the business community to invest in the future. Investors will not tolerate that any more and will instead move on with their money to a more progressive community.
3) It sends a message to all land owners along the proposed RT route that their lands may be undevelopable for many years
4)
Most importantly it places the city's largest ever megaproject (rapid transit) on a downward trajectory in terms of public buy-in from almost the get-go. Any RT project in the city will have to sell itself, and sell itself
hard in order to garner critical widespread public support. Projects such as RT in cities this size are a very tough sell to the public and local media due the extreme cost and marginal economic viability of such a system in a relatively small population base. Here now exists a situation where not even the EA for the RT is complete and the the potential now exists for the screamer headline: "
$300M Downtown Project Killed By Rapid Transit". Projects such this proposed RT get clobbered in the court of public opinion and the media due to the mishandling of issues such as this and frequently never recover. If the winds of public opinion blow hard enough the wrong way against RT, it will become an election issue next time and people will run for council promising to kill the project.
Then what remains? No downtown development,
and no rapid transit system.
For all of these reasons, this matter needs resolution quickly and quietly.
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