06-12-2015, 07:27 PM
(06-12-2015, 03:11 PM)Owen Wrote: ... 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.
I live pretty close to uptown Waterloo but I do hop on my bike to get stuff in downtown Kitchener, for instance banh mi. I'd suggest that Duke Food Block would be much more of a lunch destination than top tier restaurants.