(03-13-2023, 08:02 AM)ac3r Wrote: Why are you okay with a faulty transit system? That relatedly fails in the winter, gets into accidents all the time and which has maimed a child and taken two human lives and traumatized the people who operate the trains as well as the individuals who have been in accidents or have lost loved ones?
What's so hard about admitting that it's faulty and should have been designed better so as to avoid this?
This isn't a "tiny amount of death and injury", it's regular occurrence. Dozens of accidents, two deaths and junk trains that can't handle a bit of freezing rain. You can't pretend it isn't if you want but it doesn't change the reality. And pointing at the obvious fact that road vehicles kill more people is meaningless. Of course they do because there's more of them, but the issue here is faulty trains and poor safety.
It isn't a regular occurrence. There's been a total of two fatal collisions involving the LRT (both within the train only corridors in Waterloo where pedestrians shouldn't be in the first place) and then there has been two serious collisions resulting in air lifting to hospital, one cyclist at King and Green and the most recent incident in front of Cameron Heights. That is a total of only 4 major incidents with the LRT. Now look at collision data, in the 5 years that the region has recent data for (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020). There were a total of 30 fatalities from car accidents, as well as numerous other people having to be airlifted. Since the ION was put into service in June 2019 (a total of 1361 days of service) there has only been 2 deaths which is roughly 1 every 680 days, compared to the 30 deaths from car related collisions in those 5 years which means a death every 60 days on our roads. So considering the number of trains running on the line daily it is safe, obviously there could be improvements yet the same thing can be said about roads and you aren't saying anything about that.
This is the first winter we've ever had substantial trouble with the LRT system so you can't justify the system being bad when it takes time to get more equipment, you can't just go to Walmart and het ice scrapper's for our trains, nor can you get the deicing machine they had up in Waterloo these things take time, next year if it's the same problem it's more justifiable but it's the first year we've had major problems so stop saying the system is shit.
It is hundreds of times better than having the 7 and 8 at capacity for hours on end, even the 22 was bad for numerous hours having all the kids from Cameron going to school and coming home from school and the kids from KCI doing the same. Yes grade separation and a subway would obviously be better but those cost incrementally more money and at the time we didn't have the ability to spend more money on it as has been said numerous times on this forum by numerous people. So just be thankful we have a half decent rapid transit system.