Dan, I think you're missing my point.
If we accept that cars are necessary (or at least significantly more efficient) in a lot of cases - then we absolutely need to have infrastructure that allows them to be used. The mere presence of a road isn't enough to be considered a link between two places. It needs to be a road that has the capacity to serve the demand. So saying something like "the only difference is an increase in capacity" seems kind of silly to me. That can be a very meaningful difference.
If you want to claim that adding transit will solve the short-medium term capacity issue on highway 7 (possibly w/ widening the existing highway 7), I'm open to listening to that argument if backed up by numbers. But it certainly doesn't match my thinking of the situation (for all of the reasons I've outlined before).
And once again, NOBODY is saying we shouldn't have transit. You're the one trying to make this an either/or thing. And I don't think its reasonable to say that building new highway 7 will hurt long term transit options between KW/Guelph. We already have long term plans to significantly improve options between the cities. I don't even really understand what the transit option is you'd like to see - that isn't already happening and that isn't already possible now (like adding buses). Building a new rail link? We already have one, why would we build a new one? Improving the existing one? They're already working on that.
If we accept that cars are necessary (or at least significantly more efficient) in a lot of cases - then we absolutely need to have infrastructure that allows them to be used. The mere presence of a road isn't enough to be considered a link between two places. It needs to be a road that has the capacity to serve the demand. So saying something like "the only difference is an increase in capacity" seems kind of silly to me. That can be a very meaningful difference.
If you want to claim that adding transit will solve the short-medium term capacity issue on highway 7 (possibly w/ widening the existing highway 7), I'm open to listening to that argument if backed up by numbers. But it certainly doesn't match my thinking of the situation (for all of the reasons I've outlined before).
And once again, NOBODY is saying we shouldn't have transit. You're the one trying to make this an either/or thing. And I don't think its reasonable to say that building new highway 7 will hurt long term transit options between KW/Guelph. We already have long term plans to significantly improve options between the cities. I don't even really understand what the transit option is you'd like to see - that isn't already happening and that isn't already possible now (like adding buses). Building a new rail link? We already have one, why would we build a new one? Improving the existing one? They're already working on that.