ION Phase 2 - Cambridge's Light Rail Transit

[Momo26]

https://kitchener.citynews.ca/2025/11/20...cambridge/

[Momo26]

Can we break this down. The number for 'increased development due to lrt' keeps getting used as a means of justifying its existence years after it was built. Okay awesome, tons of condos now crashing in value.

How much in new salaries did the lrt produce? How many sustained jobs? How many new businesses that have survived?

I want facts.

[ZEBuilder]

Can we  break this down. The number for 'increased development due to lrt'  keeps getting used as a means of justifying its existence years after it was built. Okay awesome, tons of condos now crashing in value.

How much in new salaries did the lrt produce? How many sustained jobs? How many new businesses that have survived?

I want facts.

You can't conflate the benefits of the LRT purely to the number of condos or apartments that get built along it, yes it's a significant benefit, but you have to consider how much farmland didn't get turned into endless sprawl, you only have to look at Oakville to see how much sprawl is happening when you don't allow density which in turn requires realistic public transit.

Take the Drewlo site for example it's around 500 units, if that was all SFH you now have acres of farmland turned into housing, you have kilometers of new roads that need to be maintained, you have that many more people driving long distances because they live on the outer edge of suburbia and now have to commute (and pollute) that much more. Now do that math for every building that got built along the LRT route and the benefits to society are quite clear.

The one thing with sprawl to remember especially for KW is 80% of our drinking water is groundwater, then minute be sprawl out to far into our recharge area we permanently reduce the amount of infiltration and thus decrease the size of the aquifer and screw over the drinking water supply.

[ac3r]

It still sucks, tho.

[bravado]

It still sucks, tho.