03-14-2016, 08:09 AM
(03-14-2016, 06:02 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: I have long thought that they should have started a mini service with just a single vehicle shuttling back and forth between UW campus and Uptown on a single track. I think that would have cut the legs out from under a lot of the nonsense that was spewed about LRT — there can still be differences of opinion, some of them even legitimate, but a lot of the outright incorrect facts wouldn’t have been tenable. Of course I’m aware the overhead costs for a single-vehicle service are rather large.
That routing, in particular, would be extremely student-heavy (I know our entire transit system is). Almost no non-students would ride it, and the LRT naysayers would quickly label it a "student shuttle" and, no matter how successful it would be, they would claim that people who can afford to buy cars just won't take transit.
I think the beauty of the Ion's routing is that it serves several different kinds of areas and populations. It's going to be great to see the diversity of ridership on different parts of the line, and prove that we can be a strong transit community.
I'm with you and Canard, though, that offering some service along the Spur would be great, even if it's just weekends or one day a week or whatever is feasible. It would be nice for potential riders to go check it out, see how fast it's going to travel and how comfortable it is, and get used to seeing it running.