ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[ZEBuilder]

It is true that it is not built to carry existing demand, which is still well within the range that can be handled by buses.

It is definitely able to handle the demand. The thing is empty half of the time, even before SARS-CoV-2 disrupted everything. According to Keolis the LRT only carries 25'000 people per day on average. In terms of a rapid transit system (and specifically one that is serving a region of over 600'000+ people! - Nürnberg, Germany for example, is roughly the same size as us even even denser yet it has 3 subway lines, 5 streetcar/LRT lines, 4 S-bahn lines and a million bus routes) it's so far an absolute failure in terms of ridership. Even that number is quite ambiguous since they only announced that in a recent press release in regards to the ION winning a national award. Will ridership go up? I have no doubt, but it's reaching veeeeeeerrryyy far to paint the ION as an astounding success.

With that statment I doubt you've ridden it in the morning then. I know last year before covid happened the train was packed once you got to Block Line station going towards downtown and that was at 7:30 yes it starts to trail off in the middle of the day but at lunch theres a fair amount of people on it whenever I see it. You can't expect it to have astronomical ridership values in its first year and a year where Covid complicated everything, and you also can't compare it to Nurnberg since it has a bunch more lines. Would you really expect them to have the ridership they have now when they only had there first line no because it takes time for people to see it as a viable option. The ION spurred lots of development which means there are going to be more people in the region and resultingly more people who will see it as a viable option which means ridership will increase it's just a basic cause and effect cycle. It just takes time for people to see it as a option but the ridership values you're evidently looking for will come it just takes time.