Highway 7 - Kitchener to Guelph

[ijmorlan]

ijmorlan, what numbers are you using?

I’m not conducting an actual study, just pointing out that superhighways are insanely expensive. I think it’s pretty obvious that upgrading the existing road to a high-quality four-lane road would be enormously cheaper than building a brand new superhighway on a new alignment.

Similarly, it is well known that the capacity of a lane being used as an LRT right of way is comparable to the capacity of an entire superhighway. It is hugely inefficient to move large volumes of commuters by highway.

But most importantly, I’m pointing out that the EA didn’t study this question. At least I don’t think it did. If I’m wrong, I’m happy to be corrected.

Another way to think of it: if we billed users of both systems to cover the entire cost of the systems, which would they choose? A highway whose tolls are high enough to cover all costs, or an LRT network whose fares were high enough to cover all costs? Right now of course the usual state is for a highway to have no tolls, and therefore free (or near free, if you want to count the gas tax as a usage fee) to use, whereas LRT and other transit normally have significant fares that cover a substantial fraction of the operating cost.