ION Phase 2 - Cambridge's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

But why would you consider supporting a Homer Watson route as NIMBYism?? 

Because it gets used to argue in bad faith. It's used to appear to people who are nominally pro-LRT but don't know very much about the project or pay much attention to it and thus do not understand why the NIMBY's proposed route is inferior. It is hoped that enough of those "soft LRT" people will say "Hey, if we've got this alternate route that won't do ${flimsyButUnexaminedDamageClaim} and is just as good, why not do that instead" such that politicians will feel that support for the better, proposed route is lacking thus not greenlight the expensive project.

It is a divide and conquer strategy done not get the alternate route built instead, but to try and make sure that nothing gets built at all.

We'd be running the LRT through an area where people live , work and are educated, not avoiding such areas. 

Sure, but not one where sufficient people living, working and going to school take public transit to warrant an LRT at this time. Maybe in the future, but not now nor in the near term.

At the moment Sportsworld is simply a failing commercial wasteland (though the LRT may help revive it).

And yet ridership through there is higher than ridership to lower Doon and Conestoga College.
...

I don't understand this argument. There are not sufficient people living, working, and going to school in the Highway 8 corridor either. In fact, there are fewer people doing that in the Highway 8 corridor than in the Homer-Watson corridor, many fewer.

The ONLY reason there are more people boarding/alighting in the Sportsworld corridor is because there is a bus interchange there which the LRT station will be nowhere near. As a result, the bus interchange station has to move (not that it's current location is of any value). Which means those boardings/alightings will move with the station. That station could just as easily move to somewhere on Homer-Watson, where the LRT would then benefit from BOTH the existing ridership as well as the increased jobs/population density along the corridor.