ION Phase 2 - Cambridge's Light Rail Transit

[Vojnik_Vahaj]

I honestly believe we as a society are close to new infrastructure never being built. The prices have been inflated like crazy for large scale construction projects, everyone needs to be consulted, everything needs to be studied to death. The fact that they are looking at a completely separate LRT for Cambridge and have a bus connect the 2 systems is crazy. I know they are even debating breaking phase 2 into a couple phases.

I do wonder though if continuous construction in multiple smaller phases may not be the way to go to keep costs down. Right now there is no 'local' institutional knowledge on how to build and maintain LRT systems, and so we end up farming out to consultants and massive one-off international consortiums. Can you imagine if 2 years after phase 1 had opened, we had extended it one stop to Freeport, then a few years later we tackled the Grand and got it to Pinebush, and then a few years later we extended it again to Dundas, etc.? All with semi-local trades that were also bouncing around to small chunks of Hamilton, Finch, and Hurontario? I bet there'd be value in that.

I remember watching and Alen Fisher video talking about how to lower costs.