Hamilton Hamilton Line B LRT | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

Amare said:
If you all thought having an LRT on the B-Line provided some good theatrics, just wait until the day you see an LRT proposed for the A-Line.

Trust me, we will never be seeing any kind of LRT on the A-Line and it's not just because of topography issues either. The topography issues can be solved 10x easier then the political theatre issues (ie: Lower City vs. Hamilton Mountain).

But in any case, we're still not completely out of the woodworks here. They dont plan on starting construction until 2023, and we'll have a municipal, provincial and federeal election before then. The provincial election is the bigger one to watch here because if Del Duca gets elected, we know how much he loves to interfere and play around with timelines. Heck he'd probably allow Hamilton to change their plans to a BRT if that's the city's "desire".
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The B-Line was a liberal plan, so del duca messing with it would honestly be the biggest episode of twilight zone for transit planning in the gtha. From Wikipedia, the original blast plan involved building the B line as LRT, and the A line as BRT before 2024, and by 2041 the A line would be converted to LRT, meanwhile the L, S, and T lines would be BRTs finished by then as well. Considering this was strongly supported by the Liberals, I would highly doubt Del Duca would do anything other than try to push that original plan as hard as possible (or not since as you said its Del Duca and anything can happen).

As for the federal elections, that will take place the latest at the tail end of 2023, and the chance that anything would happen to the funding at that point is slim to none. Unless a reelection is called, the money allocated for LRT is going to be allocated to LRT. Remember that it was Minister McKenna who set the restrictions on the federal grants, not Mulroney. Only the Feds will get to decide if that money can go to a BRT or not, and I highly doubt they're going to budge.

Finally the municipal elections, which are the only ones which realistically have any chance to blow the project up.
 
ARG1 said:
The B-Line was a liberal plan, so del duca messing with it would honestly be the biggest episode of twilight zone for transit planning in the gtha. From Wikipedia, the original blast plan involved building the B line as LRT, and the A line as BRT before 2024, and by 2041 the A line would be converted to LRT, meanwhile the L, S, and T lines would be BRTs finished by then as well. Considering this was strongly supported by the Liberals, I would highly doubt Del Duca would do anything other than try to push that original plan as hard as possible (or not since as you said its Del Duca and anything can happen).

As for the federal elections, that will take place the latest at the tail end of 2023, and the chance that anything would happen to the funding at that point is slim to none. Unless a reelection is called, the money allocated for LRT is going to be allocated to LRT. Remember that it was Minister McKenna who set the restrictions on the federal grants, not Mulroney. Only the Feds will get to decide if that money can go to a BRT or not, and I highly doubt they're going to budge.

Finally the municipal elections, which are the only ones which realistically have any chance to blow the project up.
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The thing is, Del Duca operates as if he's in the twilight zone. I mean, have you seen his previous transport plans and how they were drawn up and planned?

Truthfully, anything is possible with him. The reason we're in this predicament with the Hamilton LRT is directly as the result of both him and Wynne.
 
Amare said:
The thing is, Del Duca operates as if he's in the twilight zone. I mean, have you seen his previous transport plans and how they were drawn up and planned?

Truthfully, anything is possible with him. The reason we're in this predicament with the Hamilton LRT is directly as the result of both him and Wynne.
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Fair enough
 
Glad the Ministers didn't listen to him when they approved the funding.

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The LRT vs BRT/Transit Technology debate is just as tiresome in Hamilton as it is in Toronto.

If Hamilton is going to return to being a major Canadian city and attract massive amounts of investment to the city, it needs a complete and thorough transit renaissance delivered through investment in multiple different transit modes.

In addition to the B-Line LRT, I would like to see (a) the A-Line approved connecting downtown to the Mountain all the way to the airport; (b) GO stations every two kilometres all the way to Stoney Creek and additional stations in Winona, Grimsby, Beamsville, and Vineland; (c) the Mountain has a grid system, put BRT-Lite lines at every north-south and east-west arterial and connect it up. Allow intensification along the arterials.
 
WislaHD said:
In addition to the B-Line LRT, I would like to see (a) the A-Line approved connecting downtown to the Mountain all the way to the airport; (b) GO stations every two kilometres all the way to Stoney Creek and additional stations in Winona, Grimsby, Beamsville, and Vineland; (c) the Mountain has a grid system, put BRT-Lite lines at every north-south and east-west arterial and connect it up. Allow intensification along the arterials.
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Even the initial A-Line stub would be a big deal between the statement of intent it makes and connectivity with West Harbour GO. This was a much bigger loss than the Mississauga loop imo.
 
I do believe that transit projects should have a "disagree but commit" moment, and strongly believe Hamilton should just take the money and move on (I've had exactly the same position for the Ontario Line, the EWCE and the SSE, so I believe I'm being consistent in my view).

But then again I've noticed that I'm a satisficer vs a maximizer in many things, so...maybe that's it. I do think that attitude would help the region a lot in building transit.

(Apologies for the pop psychology link: https://www.psychologistworld.com/cognitive/maximizers-satisficers-decision-making)
 
I'm not crazy about the need for the LRT to have a GO connection right away. It would be nice to have and I wish there was an easy connection point but for now I think the city is wise to build the full B-Line route which will be the transit trunk for the whole city.

Hopefully when all-day GO does finally come, there can be a bus shuttle between Hamilton GO and West Harbour GO, via the LRT stop.
 
blaixx said:
I'm not crazy about the need for the LRT to have a GO connection right away. It would be nice to have and I wish there was an easy connection point but for now I think the city is wise to build the full B-Line route which will be the transit trunk for the whole city.

Hopefully when all-day GO does finally come, there can be a bus shuttle between Hamilton GO and West Harbour GO, via the LRT stop.
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I mean considering that RER is only going as far as Burlington, and West Harbour/Confederation will only have hourly service for quite a while (whenever that happens), it might not be the most pressing issue (if West Harbour was RERified then I would be throwing a much larger level of concern). However it still seems like a massive oversight not integrating what will be a really important and vital transit destination to your RT network.
 
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