Rapid Transit

[coalminecanary]

Hudak will "fight gridlock" by putting a highway through all of his buddies' properties between along the mid pen corridor, at a lifecycle cost to taxpayers that could fund LRT in every city in the province.

[drpgq]

I'd be more concerned about Hudak, except that the Liberals have seemed to like promising LRT funding over the years without delivering and perhaps worse purposely not providing clarity to keep the carrot alive.

I do wonder if things had been different if someone other than Bratina had been elected mayor with regards to LRT. Eisenberger I would assume would have made it a priority but I wonder if his generally weak relationship with council would actually have set back LRT. Di Ianni if he decided to support LRT, his Liberal ties and his way better council wrangling abilities may have had us further along on LRT at this point.

[MalcolmTucker]

Until the city decides what it wants, it is hard to deliver anything. Look at the real progress in KWC, Ottawa, and on Eglinton.

[thistleclub]

Ottawa: 42.9% buy-in. $2.1-billion LRT with $1.2 billion contributed by senior government
Waterloo: 30.9% buy-in. $818 million LRT with $565 million contributed by senior government

We may have some bootstrapping to do.

[mattgrande]

Okay, so about the Mid-Pen highway (and I probably should talk about this elsewhere), but I've never had a problem getting to Buffalo (which, I believe, the mid-pen will go). Who is this highway for? I don't feel like we have much congestion on that section of the QEW, or Hwy 20, but I'll admit I'm not out that way much anymore.

[Beedok]

Thorold and Welland maybe?

[mpd618]

Originally Posted by mattgrande

Who is this highway for? I don't feel like we have much congestion on that section of the QEW, or Hwy 20, but I'll admit I'm not out that way much anymore.

Pardon me for stating the obvious, but... land speculators? Sprawl? Lots of easy money to be made there.

[Jon Dalton]

There's more use for the other end of the mid-pen highway that would go through Burlington to the GTA. Problem is they are smart enough not to want it. They realize the damage caused by sprawl but Hamilton just says 'give me more.' Highways create their own demand so there is no need to justify it. A highway through farm land will soon enough be surrounded by subdivisions and industrial parks and full of traffic. Then they'll say we need another one. Etc.

[Dr Awesomesauce]

It's a highway that would better facilitate business leaving the region for points south. And, yes, it would open up thousands of hectares of farmland for residential development. Super.

The Mid-Pen is such a boring topic. I can't believe we're still discussing it > shows just how pathetic we are.

[mpd618]

Originally Posted by Dr Awesomesauce

The Mid-Pen is such a boring topic. I can't believe we're still discussing it > shows just how pathetic we are.

You mean Hudak? Because it's his plan to build nothing new except one subway and lots of highways - the Mid-Pen included.

[bigguy1231]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Until the city decides what it wants, it is hard to deliver anything. Look at the real progress in KWC, Ottawa, and on Eglinton.

The city is already on record as supporting LRT and have been for a couple of years. But that is only if the province funds it 100%.

[MalcolmTucker]

Has the city initiated/finished its environmental approvals? My memory is hazy whether the last document I read was for the BRT proposal or not.

[SteelTown]

Yeah the EA has been completed.

http://www.hamiltonrapidtransit.ca/index.php/project-information/funding-proposal/

[thistleclub]

FWIW, Hamilton LRT gets the thumbs-up from Ancaster resident and Hamilton Centre Liberal candidate Donna Tiqui-Shebib:

@MLHPigott @RyanMcGreal I personally support LRT. If the city remains on board with plans, we will fund 100% of base costs for #HamOnt LRT.

"Personally" seems loaded, however. Doubly so when "Tweets from Donna marked DTS."

[Jon Dalton]

That's good. I was wondering if the Hamilton Centre candidate would back LRT or go rogue like the other two Hamilton Liberal MPP's.

[thistleclub]

Originally Posted by Jon Dalton

That's good. I was wondering if the Hamilton Centre candidate would back LRT or go rogue like the other two Hamilton Liberal MPP's.

Seven years along, it would be better if an unambiguous commitment came in a press release from the Minister of Transportation/Liberal Candidate for Toronto-Centre or, ideally, the Premier/Candidate for Don Valley West (failing that, an unambiguous commitment in person or, failing that, an unambiguous commitment via their social media accounts).

Tiqui-Shebib is a candidate, not an incumbent. More specifically, she is a candidate who turned in an abysmal performance in the last election, shedding 5,100+ votes and losing almost 40% of Liberal vote share compared to her predecessor in the previous election. (Moreover, this tweet isn't initialed DTS, suggesting that it's a campaign staffer's stance.)

But if Tiqui-Shebib can quadruple her 2011 showing, she can knock off Horwath, and the OLP would probably bankroll Hamilton LRT on the spot.

[Jon Dalton]

I wasn't suggesting that it means anything, other than a clean conscience if I do happen to vote for her. I'm also wondering if the NDP kool-aid is starting to wear off for a lot of central Hamilton voters. We keep electing them and get nothing in return but the greater chance of a PC government.

[thistleclub]

LRT and lessons to be learned from Hamilton's first flirtation with urban trains
(CBC Hamilton, Cory Ruf, May 27 2014)

A rapid transit plan hailed as a potential shot in the arm for the city, a provincial government promising to cover the lion’s share of the capital costs, an ambivalent mayor, and a council divided on the merits of the project.

It’s a made-in-Hamilton story decades older than the city’s current debate over LRT — and one that’s rife with teachable moments for local planners and politicians in the present day.

On the night of Dec. 15, 1981, Hamilton-Wentworth Regional Council rejected a proposal to build a $111-million elevated train line from Jackson Square in the city’s core to Lime Ridge Mall, the hub for what was then the southern fringe of the Mountain’s blooming suburbs.

The voted foiled the Progressive Conservative government’s plan to use Hamilton as a staging ground for the new Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS), a technology the province's Urban Transportation Development Corporation had developed during the 1970s.

The option this time is east-west, the technology proven, the option at ground level. So different in the details, so similar in some of the important questions. Now, 33 years later, those involved—​ for and against— still believe in the positions they held back then. Right or wrong, the decision begs the questions: How might Hamilton have been different if it had taken that step and what can be learned from how it unfolded?

For Lorna Kippen, the decision against the project represented a huge victory and the culmination of months of circulating petitions, holding meetings, ringing up councillors and writing newspaper op-eds. A Mountain resident since the early ‘60s, she chaired the Coalition on Sane Transit (COST), which was formed to scuttle the elevated rail plan.

“It would have destroyed whatever neighbourhood it went through,” Kippen told CBC Hamilton earlier in May. “In retrospect, the action we took and the results that we achieved… it’s definitely borne out that it was the best thing that could have happened at the time.”

Much of the group’s opposition to the ICTS system stemmed from the particulars of the proposal.

“One of our main objections was that it was an elevated system,” said Kippen. “And there were no other options being explored except for the elevated system.”

According to a December 1981 column in the Toronto Star, the tracks would have run along a 5.5-metre-high platform, itself held up by a concrete pillar every 30 metres.

“The system was totally inaccessible to disabled people and people with children in strollers,” said Kippen.

Mountain residents who lived on the route expressed concerns that riders would be able to peer into second-storey windows of nearby homes. Others charged the elevated waiting areas would be too hidden from the street and thus would attract urban scourges like drug dealing and offensive graffiti.

The cost and ridership projections were also sore spots for ICTS opponents. Staff with the Hamilton-Wentworth region said the Mountain-downtown corridor wouldn’t need rapid transit until the 1990s and later conceded that enhanced transit along the route wouldn’t been required until beyond 2001.

Unconvinced the ICTS technology was suitable for Hamilton — and that the operating costs wouldn't soar above the estimated $2 million per year (roughly $5.2 million in 2014 dollars) — many local politicians expressed their own reservations months before regional council voted to axe the plan.


Read it in full here.

[Dr Awesomesauce]

I have the sinking feeling I'll be reading a retrospective on LRT in Hamilton in 35 years.

[bigguy1231]

This is the same technology as the Skytrain in Vancouver. I don't remember Limeridge mall being the terminus. As far as I can remember it was supposed to go up Upper James to somewhere near the airport.