(04-07-2025, 07:49 PM)bravado Wrote: I think we can all agree that Ion is not the kind of project that we would build if we had respect for actual transit principles, a normal cost structure, and a willing electorate. KW had none of those during Phase 1 so I'm happy that we got something at all.
While others may disagree, I think this post helps illustrate one idea I've talked about at some point in the past: they could have just not designed it with every station they did. Like, does it really need to go past UW or Mill? They could have just made a shorter line, designed it much more complex so as to be more useful and then continued to work on expansion plans. With a few years of running a smaller but better system, it would prove itself to locals and provincial/federal decision makers and so asking for more money to expand it over the years might have been an easier option.
On that note I can't even imagine what sort of long drawn out process it's going to be to ask the province and feds for billions of dollars to do the Cambridge line now. They paid for the majority of the costs of over 565 million I believe for the first line which was a good deal. But good luck asking them for a lump sum of billions upon billions of dollars for this almost fantasy like Cambridge extension now that our whole global economy collapsed due to an authoritarian and failed response to a pandemic, numerous horrible wars and terrorism and now 4 years of Donald Trump setting fire to the planet again. Phase 2 is either going to cost 100 billion dollars or 10 cents by the time they ever get to the point of actually proposing it. I truly doubt we'll see it built for another 20 years if we're lucky.