ION Phase 2 - Cambridge's Light Rail Transit

[ijmorlan]

The stuff you want to get done, all of which I agree with BTW, will at best only shorten how long you are wasting money if you put an LRT in too early.

And I think my point is that, none of the people involved in this decision (e.g. politicians) care about that even a little. The people opposed to it will claim it's a waste of money no matter how many people use it (just like they did for phase 1). Those that support it do so because of the urbanization, not because of the costs. They wouldn't care if zero people rode it, as long as it delivered all the development/urbanization/countryside line benefits.

It wouldn’t deliver the benefits if nobody rode it.

The purpose of the LRT is to move people, end of story. But which people? Not necessarily existing demand. The same is well-understood for roads: when a major new subdivision goes in, nearby roads are often built, upgraded, or expanded, not in response to existing traffic but in knowledge that the subdivision is going in and with it more people wanting to drive places.

In the limiting case, projects like new bridges across the river are built based entirely on foresight. Typically the traffic level across the river at the bridge site is zero before construction.