Downtown project directory

[danbrotherston]

Thank you ac3r for calling out the emperor's lack of clothing.  It was clear that this project was about development over anything else when decisions were made to ignore the needs of those who might benefit from riding transit.  If this was about moving people, then there would have been a station put at the Albert McCormick Arena which is surrounded by medium density development. If the engineers had not been so focused on the shiny things, there would have been less crossings on the UW south campus and a crossing built in the Traynor/Vanier neighbourhood. If the plan was for ridership, the platforms would be have been built large enough to accommodate the anticipated crowds.

Fewer crossings on the UW south campus? Which crossing do you think could reasonably have been left out?

(actually there is one but I’m interested to see if you even know enough about the situation there to identify it)

Also, while the LRT is a city-building project, not just a way of moving existing crowds, the only way it can function as a city-building project is if it moves people. People aren’t moving into condo towers next to the tracks because they like looking at railway tracks but because they anticipate making at least some of their trips by LRT. So this whole “it wasn’t built to move people” thing is just asinine. If cities want to build something that doesn’t actually do anything but puts the city on the map they don’t built a $1G LRT; they build an entrance archway or a giant statue of Paul Bunyan or whatever for a lot less.

I'm not sure which crossing you feel is superfluous, but what is clear is that the whole area is poorly designed...in many respects. The lack of a direct access to the east side of campus from the station is unforgiveable--but also entirely typical for our LRT.

This thread is definitely treading the line between projects and trains though. It's almost as if these things are inextricably linked.