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Honestly, I wish we would say "tough cookies" to the suburbs and keep expensive light-rail in the inner city.
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I think this is backward thinking especially thinking towards the future. Ottawa's inner city is small and in many cases rapid transit is now being fed by the suburban residents and making it viable. We are smartening up in that we are creating rapid transit corridors in all new suburbs. This will reduce the cost of extending service substantially. This is the main stumbling block right now because it is so expensive to build light rail through the inner city because all we thought about was cars until the 1980s at least. A perfect example was the extension of the O-Train. The largest cost was to double track the existing O-Train line through the inner city. The cost of extending service to Barrhaven was really a pittance by comparison, because existing development was not in the way. If we want to change the car culture even a little bit, we need to start taking some novel approaches, which we are afraid to do.
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