Shift: London's Rapid Transit Initiative

[haljackey]

Bleh! All this 🞵🞵🞵🞵 for nothin. Western approved it.

http://www.westerngazette.ca/news/wester...e00b9e0-e3ff-11e6-ae4d-336c2435b7c4.html

[tyeman200]

Originally Posted by haljackey

Bleh! All this 🞵🞵🞵🞵 for nothin. Western approved it.

http://www.westerngazette.ca/news/wester...e00b9e0-e3ff-11e6-ae4d-336c2435b7c4.html

So does that mean they actually agreed to all those conditions? Because if so, that honestly pisses me off. Where does Western get off telling the city what they can and can not do? If anything, I would tell Western to 🞵🞵🞵🞵 themselves, we're doing what we want, and if they don't like it, then 🞵🞵🞵🞵 off somewhere else. I'm so sick of Western, the biggest 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 NIMBY in all of London.

[kaiserLDN]

Sounds like they didn't agree exactly to the 15 points there was a bit of give and take. Also point 14 saying no LRT in the future well I think that can change if you don't have idiots in charge whenever that would be needed.

[kaiserLDN]

February 23 is PIC #4 for Shift and PIC #1 for Richmond St. utilities realignment. We should get a lot more details about this project in the coming weeks.

http://www.london.ca/residents/Environme...olders_Public_Agencies_2016-02-01_v1.pdf

http://www.london.ca/residents/Environme...nd%20Street%20-%20Notice%20of%20PIC1.pdf

[jammer139]

This article speaks to the hard reality that the proposed routes are going to cause great pain.

http://www.lfpress.com/2017/02/12/london...stem-are-too-narrow-for-the-lanes-needed

The estimates we've seen of $560M is far to low. Some major rethinking is required I believe.

Maybe some creative elevated portions aka the Detroit Peoplemover? Or changing the routes entirely. For this project to have a long term impact (ie: 100+ years) the planners will need to make some very hard decisions and a lot of heritage properties will need to be sacrificed. Can you say 1 BILLION dollars plus as a starting point?

[Pimpmasterdac]

Ive been saying for years the levels of expropriation required for BRT would be substantial. This should not be news, people will have their propertires taken for the project. Wellington & Richmond are too narrow, losing 2 lanes to BRT is a non starter, therefore properties will be needed. As always there will be winners and losers!

Originally Posted by jammer139

This article speaks to the hard reality that the proposed routes are going to cause great pain.

http://www.lfpress.com/2017/02/12/london...stem-are-too-narrow-for-the-lanes-needed

The estimates we've seen of $560M is far to low. Some major rethinking is required I believe.

Maybe some creative elevated portions aka the Detroit Peoplemover? Or changing the routes entirely. For this project to have a long term impact (ie: 100+ years) the planners will need to make some very hard decisions and a lot of heritage properties will need to be sacrificed. Can you say 1 BILLION dollars plus as a starting point?

[MrSlippery519]

I hope that counsel already were aware this was going to be a problem, the amount of money they have likely paid to "specialists" this should not come as a shock.

This is a massive project, no question there are going to be a number of people upset but at the end of the day zero concessions should be made. As the article suggests this needs to last for more than a lifetime so I am at least somewhat happy to hear that.

[haljackey]

Seems like the LFP just needed a story, this isn't 'new' news.

[GreatTallNorth2]

This is not the first time London has dealt with this type of scenario. Back in the 1970's the province wanted to build the 402 through the city and pay for it, except the city dithered, listened to the whiners and eventually the province say "ok, since you can't make it work, we will build the highway in a useless spot that doesn't help anyone".

So now if our politicians give in, which it sounds like some are already shaking in their boots, we might find ourselves with a BRT line in the middle of nowhere serving no one.

I say they up the budget and continue the line underground all the way to UWO.

[kaiserLDN]

City council will find a way to screw it all up. However I liked the tone that they are thinking about the future. When this first came out it showed 1 lane of traffic on each side of Richmond which I thought was very stupid. Now if I'm reading this correctly they are keeping the same amount of lanes that already there but adding brt down the middle. I really hope they do what's best for the whole city not just a few complainers that chose to live on a busy road.

[tyeman200]

Originally Posted by GreatTallNorth2

This is not the first time London has dealt with this type of scenario. Back in the 1970's the province wanted to build the 402 through the city and pay for it, except the city dithered, listened to the whiners and eventually the province say "ok, since you can't make it work, we will build the highway in a useless spot that doesn't help anyone".

So now if our politicians give in, which it sounds like some are already shaking in their boots, we might find ourselves with a BRT line in the middle of nowhere serving no one.

I say they up the budget and continue the line underground all the way to UWO.

I can't believe our city said no to that. I could already imagine the difference in this city if the 402 was built through London, not on the outskirts.

This is where council needs to stop catering to some people. This city is growing and we need to take action now, if we need to expropriate some properties then so be it. Sure some people may not like it, but that's life for you, you don't always get your way.

[jammer139]

The logistics and hard facts are now surfacing on these plans. Talk radio today had some interesting comments. Some local business owners on Richmond are saying they will leave rather then suffer thru years of pain during construction.

[database]

I can totally understand why they'd be frustrated. If I was a small business owner on Richmond, I'd probably feel the same way. However, I hope they hang on. They'll soon realize that RT in the core will be quite helpful to them.

As a patron, I'd stay downtown and shop around on my way home from work if I knew I'd be able to get the next bus home within a decent timeframe. However, my stop-ins to Grooves or City Lights or wherever are often thwarted because I get downtown just as my transfer bus home arrives, and I don't want to wait around another 30 minutes for the next one to come. If one came every 5-10 minutes, I'd be more willing to stick around and run errands, because I'd know I could get home whenever I wanted. As it stands, I feel like I'm being held hostage when I miss a bus downtown lol. Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way.

[Underground100]

Same here. Where I live right now, my bus (the 1A branch) is either every 30, 40 or 60 minutes, so I plan around it. Alternatively, I take the 3 and walk 15 minutes.

While I understand the downtown businesses concerns, I'd really hate for this entire project to be torpedoed over it. There have been businesses in the core that have walked out over minuscule construction compared to this RT. I could really use that tunnel.

Anyway, didn't Hyde Park (Road) go through 15 straight years of construction?

[haljackey]

An organization called Down Shift has expressed some concerns about London's rapid transit plan.

https://www.scribd.com/document/340101470/DownShift#from_embed

I think they're all valid points to consider.

[database]

Originally Posted by haljackey

An organization called Down Shift has expressed some concerns about London's rapid transit plan.

https://www.scribd.com/document/340101470/DownShift#from_embed

I think they're all valid points to consider.

Valid points for sure - I'm just surprised they're only emerging now. How long has the city discussed Rapid Transit?

I know it's a recent decision, but even some of the earliest renders depicted RT going past Covent Garden on King:

http://skyrisecities.com/news/2016/05/lrt-vs-brt-debate-underway-london-ontario-canada

[kaiserLDN]

It will be very interesting to see what happens at tonight's PIC.

[jammer139]

This whole thing is starting to look like the classic case of buying a fridge and realizing its too big to fit thru the door or fit in the space you planned for it. Or the sofa that doesn't fit thru the door. Another example is building a boat in your garage only to discover that you can't get it out until its too late and you have to cut the wall out to get it outside.

Don't understand the comment I heard that they had over a 100 meetings to discuss this Shift plan. How is that possible if none of the business owners along the route had no consultation. The Bud arena folks only had a say yesterday and the route goes right by them.

[HillStreetBlues]

From "DownShift":

"g.Cities such as Kitchener+Waterloo are now absorbing large legal costs due to lawsuits by devastated businessowners who have gone bankrupt during construction."

That's misleading. Some businesses have been contemplating legal action to recoup lost revenue due to construction. That's not unheard of for various types of construction projects. But to say that Waterloo Region is "now absorbing large legal costs" is wrong- nothing has been awarded. I'm sure there are legal costs involved in responding to mere letters from potential plaintiffs' lawyers...but "large legal costs"? Not yet.

"Most of the 1000-plus small businesses in downtown London will not survive the impact of prolonged construction and subsequent traffic chaos. This has happened downtown Kitchener-Waterloo, which has seen vacancies soar with the shuttering of local independent businesses."

I think it damages anyone's credibility to claim that over half of downtown's small businesses would fail as a result of the proposed construction. I think it likewise damages credibility to use phrasing like "traffic chaos." But a citation is really needed for the claim that "vacancies have soared" in KW, or that over half of small businesses in KW's downtown cores have shuttered as a result of Ion construction. There have been some, but not that level.

It looks to me like "DownShift" is just the same as the so-called "Taxpayers for Sensible Transit" group that opposed LRT in Waterloo Region with disingenuous arguments. I hope Londoners reject that kind of backwards-thinking.

[Dither City]

Group Down Shift London have created a Facebook page plus twitter somebody's already had go at them pointing out inconvenient facts. Form my own observations it's not very large group of people and businesses. They appear to have zero understanding of what the potential benefits of project are taking into consideration they would be one of biggest beneficiaries.

https://www.facebook.com/downshiftlondonontario/?hc_ref=SEARCH&fref=nf

https://twitter.com/downshiftlondon