i think you have to ask the general public if you have this amount of money which buys you x amount of lrt or x amount of subway which would you choose. obviously people would choose subway if its dollar for dollar the same. but lrt pricing was about half the cost per km and was also at least twice as fast to be built.
The logic being, if both of those ideas cost exactly the same, three won't be this whole debate over partial- vs. complete-grade-seperated transit now would it?
Not exactly an apples to apples comparison - especially at the cost level, to say the least.
It's not apples to apples comparison, but we were already comparing the (different) costs associated with different mode of transit anyways. The point being, if we don't set the bar high, of course we won't get the "best" thing.
Here's an example, say if we have $5 billion to work with, is it "better" to 1) spend it all to build the DRL (partially?), or 2) spread it over to build some LRT lines around the city?
1 - give downtown area better access to reliable transit, at the expense of outer-city transit users
2 - more people having access to higher form of transit, but DRL will get pushed back for another decade or more.
Those who choose option1 probably believe further extension can be built when additional fundings come around in the future, while option2 assumes the opposite - no additonal fundings in the near future. We can't say which side is correct or not, it really depends.
If there isn't enough money right now, build it step-by-step. Sure, Queen's Park had already trimmed the funding for Transit City , but what does that tell us? Big transit plan never works/gets built in this city (network 2011, transit city, etc). It might be better to concentrate the limited resource to build one first-class trunk route (it can be DRL, or Eglinton)?