ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Acitta]

Seriously? We had enough complaints about it during construction as it was. Do you think that people would have accepted cut and cover tunnelling along King Street, as you have depicted in the picture?

Oh no, we might annoy some more NIMBYs. Let's just opt for mediocrity instead so we don't have as many angry op-eds and Reddit meltdowns about things.

The point is this was a HUGE project that is going to outlive us. Instead of opting for the cheap, half-assed option we should have went all in on it. Proper investment and city building that would offer far reaching benefits for generations. Instead, we got this AliExpress light rail system that will very quickly hit its capacity. And Phase 2? Well, it's going to be the same issue - but worse. In 40 years I guarantee they'll look back at the ION the same way we look back at Line 3 Scarborough and say "what a waste of money, why didn't we just do it right the first time?". People still call it a white elephant because it is so incredibly mediocre.

Obviously there is no changing it now, but it's still a frustrating reality that the citizens have to live with. It makes it rather hard to have any faith in the direction of this region when there is such an apathetic, lazy attitude that persists in both the citizens and those who are making the decisions. I mean there's a reason why people call it a white elephant and it's not because they're carbrained anti-transit suburbanites that hate trains and buses...it's because we ended up with a cheap novelty instead of a real rapid transit system and is a huge reason why any Phase 2 - at least to Cambridge - is going to be a miracle if it ever happens before we're all dead.

We do not live in a paternalistic, authoritarian society where the people in charge can just build whatever they deem good for the people. It would be great if we could build transit systems with the speed and quality of what they have done in China, but I think that if we had that kind of government, then most of the commenters on this list would end up in a re-education camp for not showing sufficient deference to the authorities.