06-12-2015, 03:11 PM
(06-12-2015, 12:17 PM)BuildingScout Wrote:(06-12-2015, 10:17 AM)Owen Wrote: This brings up my biggest issue with the LRT - "a trip downtown is a breeze away when the LRT is in place" ... for who??
30,000+ students/faculty at UW, 15,000+ at WLU, and the thousands of people who happen to work close to R&T Park, Northfield, and Uptown. I estimate the total number of people who could jump on the LRT and head downtown for lunch or after work dinner around 60,000.
... but why in their right mind would they (the 60,000) want to spend the extra time to ride past uptown Waterloo (5 min away) to come all the way downtown Kitchener? I love downtown Kitchener so I'm not trying to be a pessimist - but I don't see the logic driving all those people to take a ride on the LRT to come visit downtown Kitchener... to what... go for a walk? This goes back to my earlier point: Perhaps if we had some really enticing/attractive destinations downtown Kitchener - so perhaps once we have several more top tier restaurants (I'm talking 10+) and a nightclub/lounge/bar scene equal in calibre to what Uptown Waterloo has to offer - then perhaps it could actually draw a crowd from the other end of town, but I still think tens of thousands making the trip on a regular basis is a stretch. What would actually be useful would be if we had a transit system that allowed the average resident living in KW to ditch their car - and feeder buses are fine, but the reality is when you start introducing transfers from Bus to LRT (and perhaps back to bus again), a trip to work or shopping starts to become a 30 to 45 minute affair and a car is just more practical.