04-22-2015, 01:23 PM
(04-21-2015, 05:29 PM)Drake Wrote: This train should have been built from Ainslie St to Victoria St station as phase 1. Cambridge needs that kind of infrastructure more than KW.
If I lived in Cambridge I would revolt with the intention of leaving this region.
The first statement isn't really born out by the ridership figures. (70% of iXpress ridership being north of Fairview Park Mall, and heaviest in the Waterloo to downtown Kitchener area.) And Craig's statement in the Record that Outhit so eagerly quoted ("I'm concerned about empty trains running up and down Cambridge") reveals his own opinion that the ridership figures don't warrant LRT in Cambridge (though he didn't think they warranted it in KW either.)
Like others said, you have to start somewhere. You can't talk about "need" without focusing on potential. The potential for LRT to shift drivers to passengers, and to focus development intensification, is highest along the KW portion of the central transit corridor.
Ironically, this is now the challenge Waterloo region faces as a whole with the rest of the province: where is the need and potential the highest for the upper levels to invest in, and how does WR get a seat at the table? Our region was quick out of the gate with a sound strategy, plan, and funding model. If Mississauga or Hamilton or Ottawa had been quicker, or more welcoming of higher-order transit, we may have found it harder to secure funding (even at the 2/3 level.) Now they have woken up, and so has London, and so is the elephant in the room, whose needs dwarf the rest of the province put together: Toronto.
Our edge, however, is that we'll have a line up and running years before anyone else, and we'll still probably have a plan ready for Phase II before some of these cities get moving. If Phase I shows itself to be successful, I think Phase II will be viable as a project with less uncertainty and risk, and able to duke it out for funding against the needs of these other cities.