ION Phase 2 - Cambridge's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

Are there NIMBYs who are opposing the Sportsworld alignment? I thought most opposition was to having it go near Preston/anywhere where people live. Sportsworld is a low density mostly commercial area.

Oh yeah. For every alternate route proposal I saw basically three groups of people.

One group were the people who honestly thought that the alternative was a better route and would have more riders. Usually due to lack of knowledge and usually were willing to have their opinions changed.

Group two were the limited NIMBYs who would honestly support and vote yes for it, just not near them. This group would usually admit they were wrong about an alternative route being better once shown the facts, but would say they were still against it in their neighbourhood.

Group three were the malicious NIMBYs—completely against it regardless of route. These were the people who would propose another route but not seriously. They would do it to try and fracture the pro-LRT side in the hopes to get them to fight and the politicians would see it as limited public support for the preferred route and get the project sidelined. A divide and conquer strategy.

Group 3 are the people who, prior to 2014, tried to push that Stage 1 after Mill St end up on Homer Watson Blvd.  and head down to Conestoga College. Why? "Because students", even though ridership to Conestoga was fairly low back then even without comparing it to the 200 & 7. (They're also the same people who think that UW+WLU students are/were the only riders on the then 200+7 and now ION, completely ignoring the riders head away from the Universities during the morning rush hour.)

Comparing Conestoga College, a post-secondary education with relatively poor transit service, and very good automobile access, with UW and Laurier which have relatively poor vehicular access but (prior to LRT) excellent transit service is completely unfair. I would in fact argue that UW's strong ridership is an argument that Conestoga's ridership would grow substantially if service was improved. Even pointing out that Conestoga College which again, has very good automobile access, but relatively poor transit service, has low ridership as a reason not to invest in improving transit service is problematic. The ridership today is poor BECAUSE the service is poor, not vice versa.

For Stage 1 ION it morphed into "Make Fairway a spur and branch off of Mill/Block Line to go to Conestoga College, and then got tacked on to the "run down Maple Grove Rd." or "run down the middle of the 401" faux suggestions.

Yes, both of those bad suggestions do avoid Preston, but they were being made people who lived in Galt and Kitchener.

Yes, the Maple Grove or 401 routings were terrible, for a lot of the same reason I don't like the Highway 8 routing in Kitchener.

The biggest challenge is the proposed map would orphan Fairway Station as a branch. I don't think that's a good thing, and I don't see a clear solution without quite obviously doubling back.

Certainly there is development opportunity there, but I don't think there's much real demand. The main source of boardings are transfers at Sportsworld Station and those could move anywhere, Sportsworld Station is exceptionally mediocre as far as transit goes.

And yet more ridership goes through there than down to lower Doon and Conestoga College.

Yes, as a feature of the existing infra, not as a feature of the demand or possible growth. For the same reason we argue against not building bike infra somewhere because "nobody bikes", this isn't the only (or even the best) argument. Again, we aren't building bridges over the river as a result of people swimming across.

There is lots of opportunity for growth on Homer-Watson, there is actually a few bits of density, but tons of car infra and very poor transit, improving transit could unlock a significant pent up demand. And again, the College could be a huge driver of trips, and transit could also help alleviate the housing crunch there. I think there are compelling reasons why Homer-Watson is a reasonable alternative. And I really don't think it would help solve the NIMBY opposition, there are lots of people in that area who would object as well.

Sure, some day. Just not right now, and not before the other possible corridors like Victoria/Highland or Ira Needles/Erb/King N. will need it, unless something drastic changes in the way urban growth has played out the last few decades.

The choice to go to Cambridge is absolutely political, there are almost certainly better routes in the city already. We are discussing the possible routes TO Cambridge only as a political artifact, nothing more.

Out of the two possible routes TO Cambridge through south Kitchener, I believe Homer-Watson is more compelling (with the singular caveat above).

That being said, there's really no reason to get frustrated by it, the fact is the LRT is (hopefully will) get built along highway 8, and there is zero chance of that plan changing to Homer-Watson at the moment.

But it can get put off. If the politicians feel there's no public support, it doesn't matter how solid the numbers showing it is necessary are. Or if the naysayers get more people like Lorentz or Harris elected as Regional councillors who have a history of ignoring public opinion on things like public and active transit and voting against it.

The people behind T4ST and individuals like Lee Ann Mitchell are still out there, even if they are not vocal right now.

I don't think a single person in this forum would oppose the current project, even if we speculate about other possibilities.

More, our world is an n=1 experiment...neither you, nor I, nor anyone will ever know whether Homer-Watson would be a better or worse routing...it is not something that is possible to know for certain.

No, but we can say whether it is a better or worse choice to go with right now.

"Right now" being the time after we've already decided and planned on a Highway 8 routing...nobody is saying that we should be trying to change the routing.  Of course, if this was an alternate universe, and they were planning on going down Homer-Watson, I would hope that you would be similarly supportive of the routing you feel is inferior.