09-11-2025, 01:49 PM
(09-07-2025, 12:59 PM)bravado Wrote:(09-05-2025, 02:20 PM)cherrypark Wrote: At this point just do the BRT for less, hope that GO to Cambridge gets approved, and live to fight for whatever Phase 3 would have been within KW.
If the policy of some is "let's cheap out on Cambridge so we can do the nice thing in KW later", then this Region is cooked politically. City-building for me, but not for thee. I can't adequately explain how insulting this is - as if a few bridges over flat, seismically-stable land is akin to building a new Ancient Wonder of the World. But I get it, wealthy tech and university people need their train and the more modest working people on Hespeler Road should just settle for a bus because they don't deserve the same as us. If only they took the effort to go to public meetings at 2PM on a tuesday like us! They don't deserve the same clean train as others because they made the mistake of trying to start their life and buy a house in the wrong year and in the wrong city.
All of North America can't do public procurement anymore. If Phase 2 is twice as expensive as it should be, then Phase 3 will be too. As will the next hospital, and school, and highway widening - but the bill for those doesn't really get local headlines so nobody talks about it - only transit. Fuck, they're keeping the bill for Highway 413 secret so we can keep fighting for the scraps in the transit world while the suburbanites get blank cheques for whatever they like.
To be clear - I would absolutely rather and advocate for getting a Phase 2 built and don't think Cambridge isn't deserving. I just don't see what the political path is when Cambridge council seems disinterested or even opposed and whatever costing is being used is making it seem like constructing a modern wonder. The skip this to get KW service later is more a worry that Phase 2 is becoming/will be such an albatross that the political will to do more beyond that will be toast for good. Would much prefer to be wrong.