(04-07-2025, 07:42 PM)neonjoe Wrote: Perhaps if we held out longer for full funding we could have had a better solution. But I believe we would have ended up in the same situation as Hamilton or London. The more time you give the project to simmer the more likely it will be canceled and restarted or completely watered down. We got something because we at least moved forward within the constraints at the time.
A fair point, but I think Waterloo Region would have pulled it off regardless. When you compare this region to Hamilton or London, there is much more relevance and importance to be found here. Yeah both those cities have large universities and a similar population, but this region had already had its engines ignited. There was a huge boom in technology and research already existing, but also snowballing and growing bigger and bigger even when the LRT was still being planned and but a dream. It was easier for us to get the province/feds to kick in what they could just because of the existing and future potential that the changes in the local economy were resulting in. It would have taken more arm wrestling, but I don't see why they wouldn't have provided more if we proposed the design would have subterranean or elevated sections. I mean they had their own teams of transit professionals looking over the project, it's not like they don't understand the value a more sophisticated design would ultimately provide.
A better designed rapid transit system would have cost us more, yes, but it would have resulted in better returns in the long run. The two things are tied together. If Toronto built a low capacity, slow light metro (like Line 3) in place of Line 1 and 2 of the TTC subway then Toronto would have not evolved in the great way it did. Because the ION can only be 2 LRVs long and its speed is limited by its physical design features, it can only ever carry X amount of people and have whatever its fastest possible headway is (5 minutes, I think? Or was 7.5 the best they can do?) before there is nothing more you can do to improve it. Yes it moves tens of thousands a day and that can be roughly doubled from whatever it is now, you are still going to hit the capacity sooner than later.
That's when the next generation will wonder why the hell us millennials and gen Zers were thinking when they approved the ION the way it was.