Quote:
Originally Posted by GlassCity
I disagree. There's really no reason for cities that small to be building rapid transit. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver were all at around a million when they started building theirs.
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I'll have to disagree with you here too; These cities started to build their
metros at 1M, but we have to remember that they had RT in the form of streetcars and trams for almost a century before that. And although they definitely weren't rapid transit after the 1940s, until then, there were relatively few other road users (other than in the core) for it to be considered RT. And unlike the heavy rail which came later, these lines were built to both address existing demand
and structure the growth which would spring up later along the line.
Here's an interesting picture of Montreal's Rosemont neighbourhood as it was being built along the newly-installed streetcar line to nowhere:
I think that KW's LRT is more akin to a pre-war interurban streetcar line (whose purpose was to structure greenfield development as well as move existing transportation demand) than it is to a post-war metro (which were built to address transportation demand and, in Toronto and Vancouver, structure urban redevelopment).
With that in mind, I would consider that KW is building their line at the right time; as the city grows, its LRT will structure its greenfield development as well as its densification. The disadvantage is that, for the first few years, the seats won't always be full. But I think that's an acceptable price to pay for well-structured, long-term development.
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