Personally from a development point of view I would rather have a built in population to feed an LRT line than trying to build up several new build TOD villages at once. We can't even get the next two phases of London built, and the next stages of the bridges, who is to say we could build out 4 or 6 TODs from scratch at the same time.
As for the argument of 'the TODs can help pay for the line' well that could be true, but it is no less true than on a Centre St line, you just use different mechanisms to extract the surplus. For Centre St, I could see a TIF-Plus, where you charge a higher mill rate on incremental property value increases on the line and surrounding areas until a certain amount is paid either to the city or a P3 partner.
Beyond construction costs, which we know the underground option is more expensive, there are other important considerations that don't usually appear in an analysis that should:
- cost to acquire ROW, station lands, and other LRT services in both corridors (especially the ROW will cost a fair amount more, same with stations, look at the tiny foot print of Canada Line stations above ground for example)
- other corridor costs including opportunity costs of limiting ROW for freight and future passenger rail (how many tracks can the corridor hold realistically? 6?
- Bus network costs (keeping the existing network south of 96th Ave vs reorienting to feed a Centre St subway)
- Corridor catchment costs? (does the nose creek line necessitate another LRT line in the central NW in the future that may not be required with a centre st option?)
- Capacity (big one, the capacity of a Nose Creek line that shares track from the Zoo on will run at at most half capacity of a subway, will that cause a need to build the subway in 30 years anyways?)
- TOD suitability: most of the land on the west side of Deerfoot in the valley has an airport noise note on the property files with the city, some may have height restrictions too
- Infrastructure reuse: will we need to build new schools in the TODS potentially instead of reusing old ones in old communities depending on the route?
- TOD modal share: do TODs near highways have a greater modal split to vehicle use? Transportation economics would say yes, but there are real world examples to examine as well
Now I think we all know the up front sticker price will be higher for a subway, but the long term costs could be lower, or within a window where the marginal cost is worth the marginal benefit (an example of the later would be the additional trenching that was later added to the West LRT). If the long term costs are lower, it would make sense to either borrow now to save later, or form a P3 to save without the sticker shock.
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