Shift: London's Rapid Transit Initiative

[K85]

fuck.

[jaradthescot]

Fuck.

I actually initially had this as the start of my post, then realised there was a new page. I noticed that the exact same sentiment has already been posted, but I can't think of any response more accurate.

Cue rambline; feel free to ignore this: for the past year I have been metaphorically shouting from the rooftops how lucky we are to have the current politicians in power who are showing signs of progress and allowing us to stay as a relevant city. Then this. I'd gladly give up most of the improvements to our city for the LRT to come back. This was huge. It might (I stress might) not be needed now, but it will be in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. And it takes 10 years to get up and running from start to finish. This was a must to keep students from Western (and presumably Fanshawe as well).

Anecdotally speaking, I actually used the incoming LRT as a selling point to convince a friend to choose London over Toronto for her post-graduation career. Obviously it was not the only aspect, but it was the one that gave London the edge. She is not an isolated case.

This government says that they are progressive and care about the downtown? LRT is the way to put this into action. Hamilton has LRT now. K-W has LRT now. Every city our size or larger has LRT. London't not going to get smaller (hopefully... with those in power who knows?) so this will only become more and more necessary. This says, straight up, that London is a small town. We are statistically smaller than Hamilton and K-W, our immediate competitors, but at least we could maintain we had everything they had. We had a case for us being a more progressive city if someone wanted to make it. I am just disgusted and fed up. I feel I could go on for another hour but my lunch is over...

tl;dr: Fuck.

[MrSlippery519]

FUCK

Honestly that is the most disappointing news to hear, I certainly understand the cost of LRT is a major factor but they are now suggesting a $500 million plan for full BRT makes MORE sense?

The added long term cost of maintenance of BRT and a big if they went to LRT down the road the costs would be ridiculously more than just doing a proper LRT to begin with.

[K85]

Been thinking about this for the past hour... and honestly it's making me consider moving out of London... I can't put up with this bullshit any more...

council after council seemed to ignore the fucking facts of what a city our size needs, vs what they want; they can't be bothered to strongly endorse a plan to their staff that would solidify that... 40km/h or less in school zones? full steam ahead!!! MORE NEWS ABOUT IT HURRY PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!! keeping our mediocre style city from actually benefiting and becoming a proper regional hub and leader, nah. fuck that idea, fuck the benefits, and fuck the citizens, those fucking fucks.

FUCK YOU LONDON

[jaradthescot]

I'm somewhat in agreement. I don't know. I love this city. I moved here from Hamilton, went to Toronto, but came back to London because I love certain aspects of it and always saw the potential of this city to become great. The one thing I have realised thanks to the LFP article (I don't think it's mentioned in the am980 one) is that this is the city staff recommendation which has not been approved or even discussed by the city councillors yet. I urge everyone here and everyone you know to message your councillors (I know I have) and tell them how you feel about this sudden change of direction. It is being debated this Thursday, according to the Freeps.

[go_leafs_go02]

Disappointed. LRT in London would bring the City so far ahead compared to even a few years ago.

[MolsonExport]

I hate this city. Sometimes I really do. Keep going for mediocrity, London, and you might achieve your goal of mediocrity. a millimeter over the current status.

wait another 25 fucking years? fuck you, London.

[Stevo26]

I'm also very disappointed with the news. It now appears that our city administration is progressive in name only. A big part of the problem is city manager Art Zuidema, who seems to be the puppet master in city hall, despite the fact that we have a mayor who is supposed to be the one who gets to call the shots.

In a democratic society, people like Zuidema are supposed to be advisors to elected officials, and implementors of what those officials want to see done.

Zuidema strikes me as a typical bean-counter who has no vision and will not take any risks, no matter how well calculated or defensible. While it's never a good idea to overspend on projects or overstretch your resources, under-spending, as bean-counters are wont to do if given free rein, always results in less than even sub-optimal results. There's an old saying that says the man who does things most cheaply usually pays twice over in the end.

People like Zuidema scare me, because they are actually dangerous to a city's well-being and future, as their obsession with penny-pinching means a city cannot ever progress beyond mediocrity. Indeed, people like him are the same kind of people who erroneously insist that austerity delivers prosperity. It is also disturbing to see that Mayor Brown does not seem to have more fortitude in his dealings with Zuidema.

The Wynne administration in Queen's Park says it plans to spend $130 billion over the next 10 years for infrastructure and public transit. Prime Minister Trudeau says he plans to spend $30 billion on the same thing.

Yet neither level of government can spare $1 billion to assist London in reaching its transportation goals. There's something horribly wrong with that picture, more so when you consider that Londoners played a large role in helping Wynne and Trudeau acquire their current positions.

[haljackey]

Not dead, just recommended to ditch by the city's top bureaucrat.

http://www.lfpress.com/2016/04/29/london...d-the-880-million-bus-rail-hybrid-option

No matter how you sell it, BRT is just bus service. There's a certain stigma about riding the bus, and that won't go away with dedicated bus lanes and higher frequencies.

Light rail or nothing in my mind.


I share this 'Fuck.' impression on the forum

...I've never written to a politician before, but I'm going to write to my councilor right now.
EDIT: Done.

[Stevo26]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

I hate this city. Sometimes I really do. Keep going for mediocrity, London, and you might achieve your goal of mediocrity. a millimeter over the current status.

wait another 25 fucking years? fuck you, London.

I'm with you, and I feel your pain. I'm originally from Sarnia, but London has never really felt like home, despite the fact that I've been living here for almost 25 years now. However, I've been away from Sarnia so long that it really isn't home anymore. More to the point, there isn't anything there to go back to, because most of the people I knew when I was growing up in Sarnia are either dead and gone, or have moved away.

Sarnia is a mediocre town, but it comes by that appellation honestly because it simply doesn't have the money to be more than mediocre, let alone even to try to rise above its station. Much of that is due to major declines in the petrochemical industry there and the lack of new businesses and industries to generate jobs and tax revenue.

London has the money to advance, but it's hobbled by nitwits who have no vision and would prefer to take the safest, least-controversial route possible. Anything to save it from having to spend any serious money on anything.

With the breaking news about the massively reduced expectations for the BRT/LRT system I think I can officially say I'm not retiring in London when I retire in the next five or six years. What's pushing me towards that decision is that it's starting to get expensive to live in London, and yet the amenities (or lack thereof) really don't justify the added expense.

Agreed, fuck London. Let it be the sleepy backwater it has always aspired to be. Just don't ask me to support that aspiration in any way, shape, or form. However, I must confess that even 30 years ago, when I was attending UWO, I could see then that London was already somewhat of a podunk kind of affair that would never, ever progress.

[GreatTallNorth2]

Well as much as I hate this recommendation from city administration, I won't go as far as to say London is a backwater because of this. Even if all we get is BRT, we will be getting a system that has dedicated lanes/ROW for much of the system, a tunnel that goes from Victoria Park to north of Oxford and a lot more frequency. We will lag Ontario cities, but overall it will be a good system. Quebec City and Winnipeg have BRT and I would not say they are backwater cities.

I want LRT just as much as anyone and I hope our politicians reject the administration's recommendation, but I won't be moving out of town if we don't have it.

[manny_santos]

This recommendation actually doesn't bother me that much, specifically because it leaves the door open to LRT later on. This looks more like Ottawa's approach - the first phase of their BRT system opened in the early 1980s, at a time when Ottawa-Carleton had a population similar to London-Middlesex-Elgin today. Now Ottawa is getting LRT 35 years later - but their population has grown far more than the London area is likely to in the next 30-40 years. At the same time Ottawa today has a high percentage of commuting trips being done on public transit, I believe the highest in Ontario outside Toronto.

What does bother me is how limited an area the BRT network is proposed to cover. Why doesn't it go to the 401? Why does it completely miss the southwest quarter of the city? If it's not going to have connecting express bus routes into those areas, the BRT will be of little use to a large number of Londoners or out of town commuters. I understand the city has a goal of intensification in the areas closer to downtown, which I fully agree with, but the southwest and northwest parts of the city continue to grow and they deserve good transit too. The current 5 Springbank service from Byron to downtown is pathetic; it takes as long as a TTC subway takes to get from Finch to Union Station.

On another note, it's hilarious seeing all the anti-transit activists on Facebook ("nobody takes London Transit so I don't want my taxes paying for it", or "London's too small and it's not growing", or similar arguments). I'd love to see them spend just 3 days in Toronto, their heads would explode from the constant complaining about the TTC and how the TTC could be better, and the constant talk from Mayor Tory and Premier Wynne about new LRT projects and the Bombardier streetcar delays.

[database]

Originally Posted by GreatTallNorth2

Well as much as I hate this recommendation from city administration, I won't go as far as to say London is a backwater because of this. Even if all we get is BRT, we will be getting a system that has dedicated lanes/ROW for much of the system, a tunnel that goes from Victoria Park to north of Oxford and a lot more frequency. We will lag Ontario cities, but overall it will be a good system. Quebec City and Winnipeg have BRT and I would not say they are backwater cities.

I want LRT just as much as anyone and I hope our politicians reject the administration's recommendation, but I won't be moving out of town if we don't have it.

I think I'm with GreatTallNorth on this too - I'm not a fan, but I'm also thankful that the business case isn't advocating for us to stick with what we have already have, which - with London's track record - could've been a possibility. I'll be in attendance on Thursday, and have already emailed my councillor who is also disappointed with the business case.

It's pretty easy to slag the plans because they're not exactly what I was hoping for, but I'm also quite amazed at how much the city has on the go these days. It's quite impressive when you look at where we were at only a few years ago...

BTW - I'm new here! I've been reading for a while, and figured it was time to finally register. Hello!

[MolsonExport]

Welcome to SSP!

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by GreatTallNorth2

Quebec City and Winnipeg have BRT and I would not say they are backwater cities.

.

Quebec City doesn't really have BRT.

[haljackey]

Event on the Urban League of London

Pints & Politics: The Right Rapid Transit for London?

May 4 at 5

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/pints-politi...&aff=esfb&utm-source=fb&utm-term=listing

[Blitz]

I get that it'll be better than what we have now but will this really be $500M worth of better? With the express buses now you can get from downtown to Masonville in only 12 minutes. I use London Transit once in a while and it's not that terrible as long as you are in the downtown or university areas. If more roadway is going to be used for bus lanes won't that amplify the already horrendous traffic problem London has? Just seems that it makes more sense to go for the LRT as opposed to messing around with the BRT business.

[MolsonExport]

Activists ramp up campaign to save light rail


I hope beyond hope, but we know how this is going to turn out in the end. It is London, afterall. Think small.

[jaradthescot]

Just keep pushing. That's all we can do.

[haljackey]

Helmer: Don’t let transit skeptics paralyze future growth

http://www.lfpress.com/2016/05/03/helmer-dont-let-transit-skeptics-paralyze-future-growth