I came across this piece:
I’m a big supporter of public transit and usually in favour of ambitious infrastructure projects. Still, this article raised some great points about how big transit builds are planned, justified, and communicated to the public.
It got me wondering, how do we strike the balance between building bold, future-proof systems and keeping projects practical and efficient? When is a project like this justified, vs LRT?
Would like to hear how others read it, either agreeing with it, or rebutting it.
It depends on what your goals are with the transit.
If you’re trying to connect existing, dense areas, then buses are potentially fine.
If you’re trying to guide future growth, buses are useless. Bus routes can change, train tracks can’t. Developers will build around train stations because of this immovability.
That said, if what this poster says is true, then LRT might have been the right choice not just for the UBC extension, but the entire Millenium Line extension from Commercial-Broadway all the way to UBC. But try convincing the car-brained of that… Doug Ford is a good example of someone who thinks it’s a good idea to spend 10s of billions on subway instead of 100s of millions on LRT.