Northfield / 85 Exchange upgrades?

[ijmorlan]

Then, closer to the Northfield bridge, I also wanted them to put a platform for the tourist train between the freight track and the LRT tracks. “No space”. But wait, the entire area is surrounded by grass. So, expropriating a 4m swath of the adjacent property would be no problem. Now, maybe it’s not worth it — maybe the Region would feel the tourist train should pay, and maybe they couldn’t afford it — but the idea that there is no space, full stop, is absurd.

This would have been easy if it were only a 4m swath for a platform. Unfortunately, there was also a need to provide patron parking which required a much larger piece of property.   Since the LRT was announced, most pieces of property immediately around that location were targeted for development with its own parking requirements.  As a result, there was no room for a long-term parking solution.

Personally, I have avoided the Northfield/85 ramps since the directions that I needed were the worst to get on or off.

The parking can be anywhere and does not influence the track layout. Whereas now that the track has been put down with no space for a platform, it would be a huge project to change it later. My thinking was that the train platform would be extremely close to the LRT platform (just cross the southbound LRT track, probably by crossings at the north and south ends of the LRT platform), encouraging use of the LRT to reach the train.

In any case, my point is that the people at the consultation immediately jumped to a bogus reason why my idea could not possibly work, not that my idea had been fully studied (which is not the case; it’s just my idea) and should obviously be accepted.