Highway 7 - Kitchener to Guelph

[danbrotherston]

By this logic we should never invest anything in making driving better because it "reinforces the cycle".

The reality is that driving IS more convenient in a lot of use cases - regardless of how good your transit system is.  I lived in NYC and still had a car because sometimes its easier and necessary.  I just didn't have to take it to work or every time I wanted to leave the house.  And travel between cities that are 10-20km apart is never going to be easily solved by public transportaiton.

There's a clear need for a better transportation system between KW/Guelph, right now.  And its not a need that an LRT line can address.  So I don't think an acceptable solution is to ignore that need.

It *is* more convenient because we've *made* it so.  But investing in roads, and *not* transit for the past 70 years.

Nobody's suggesting we ignore that need, but dismissing an LRT line as "not suitable" because it doesn't fit every use case.  Yes, an LRT won't work for everybody, but right now the choices of Guelph to KW is 1) Drive it.  That's it. No other option.  Providing another option would work for some people, even if not everyone, and would reduce the demand for driving between the two cities.  Nobody's suggesting that the LRT go in place of having a road between the two cities.

And the suggestion that we should enhance the existing road instead of building a new and extremely expensive long term investment in continued sprawl.  I think is a valid suggestion.  It meets the short term need for improved driving without investing all our futures in continued unsustainable sprawl.

Of course, this is all a moot point anyway, the highway is being built, just as the LRT in KW is being built.  We'll have to live with these decisions for the next 50 years or so.