Tunnelling in this area is very possible. People always point to the water table to say it would be infeasible, but...we know how to make tunnels in any condition. It would have been costly, but if they tunnelled where it made sense (the urban core areas, mostly) it would have resulted in a much better truly rapid transit system rather than this Frankenstein amalgamation of street car + tram + light rail system that is objectively bad since it is trying to do numerous things at once whilst failing spectacularly at all of them.
If they put everything between like...Borden and Waterloo Park Station underground or elevated where necessary, it could be taken way more seriously as a transit system since it wouldn't have issues like not being able to operate in ice, or grandma crashing into it again. Unfortunately I think most people still see it as not only a waste of money for what value it provides (nearly 1 billion for something THAT slow and unreliable is lol) but also just a pointless novelty, particularly one that only helped property developers who were able to get in on the transit-oriented development philosophy the region/cities pushed. Like, even in major cities when people still choose to drive, they nonetheless understand the value of a metro system. The ION, though? I'd bet most people use it not because they choose to - it's "green", reliable, efficient, fast, safe, clean etc - but because of some sort of necessity such as a lack of car or inability to drive.
But yeah we dropped that baton, so oh well! The sparks look cool at least...
If they put everything between like...Borden and Waterloo Park Station underground or elevated where necessary, it could be taken way more seriously as a transit system since it wouldn't have issues like not being able to operate in ice, or grandma crashing into it again. Unfortunately I think most people still see it as not only a waste of money for what value it provides (nearly 1 billion for something THAT slow and unreliable is lol) but also just a pointless novelty, particularly one that only helped property developers who were able to get in on the transit-oriented development philosophy the region/cities pushed. Like, even in major cities when people still choose to drive, they nonetheless understand the value of a metro system. The ION, though? I'd bet most people use it not because they choose to - it's "green", reliable, efficient, fast, safe, clean etc - but because of some sort of necessity such as a lack of car or inability to drive.
But yeah we dropped that baton, so oh well! The sparks look cool at least...