Unfortunately, I'm not surprised London trails at all. The Transit Commission has zero clue and foresight with regards to transit. I've been in London for just under four years now and the transit commission just couldn't be bothered with public transit in any way, shape or form.

If they put as much effort behind actually caring about public transportation, it would be an entirely different story. The other thing about the transit commission is that the leadership is really weak. Rather than step up to the plate and try to develop and come up with ways and means to improve public transit, they'd just rather sit back, not do any work and let public ridership take it out on the people who are the front line.

London needs someone to head up the transit commission who is a visionary and has foresight on how to make things improve. The only problem is that said person might get more press time than the mayor and that could cause some problems because we all know that she gets extremely jealous when someone gets more press time than her. After all, there isn't a camera or microphone that she hasn't met yet that she hasn't liked......

Aren't you supposed to be facilitating a grassroots discussion? Or are you trying to steer us in the direction of some already-decided plan?

Case in point. Your intro to the PP at WFR. You spoke as if BRT was already a decided issue, a political tactic to cut LRT advocates off at the pass. Just because Larry Ducharme and LTC are gung-ho about BRT and Council has warmly received those presentations without any critical scrutiny, is no reason for citizens of London to meekly surrender their right to direct the future of our city.

I do not accept your contention that London isn't large enough to start implementing some LRT now, esp. along those routes which we all logically know will be part of any future LRT system. And getting going on that now, before those corridors are even more built up, may well save us money in the long run.

Public transit infrastructure has to come first. Commercial/residential development and ridership would then follow. If we wait for ridership to reach your magic numbers we'll never have LRT, esp. in this city where they raise user fares every time the ridership numbers start to make some positive progress.

I say that this needs to be publicly debated.

[quote="smartmoves_team"][/quote]

Smartmoves_Team. please identify the membership of your team and who represents them on this site. Thank you.

Gee, why do you think LRT would attract people to London? There is no correlation. The upfront cost and large operating costs of LRT are difficult for a city alone, particularly one with low density in a donut shape. Sure, the feds or province might ante up the money, but you still need a large operating subsidy from government to run it. Even Toronto does not break even. only 35% of the operating costs of the bus system come from the fare box. Where do you think the money is going to come from folks?

What made LRT work in Calgary (which is a better example) is that they reduced the number of parking spots downtown so that 40% of the people going to work had to take transit. As long as there is ample parking at employment destinations (UWO, UH, Vic, downtown), LRT will not attract enough customers. And even with their expressways, traffic is hellish there at rush hour. Expressways are so 1950s.

Hey "in the know", do you work for the city of London? If so, what is your name?

And why would the city have to go it alone? Isn't getting people out of vehicles something that would have a positive impact upon the environment? And isn't that something that the feds and the province have a (supposed) interest in?

Besides which, we're already getting some limited support from senior government in the form of gas tax transfers. It's simply that City Council is pouring a lot of that money into road/overpass construction instead of upping it's contribution to public transit sufficiently.



Scrap the fare box. Everybody should be paying for the cost of public transit whether they choose to use it or not. That's how we pay for lots of other things isn't it? Like roads, government buildings, social services, salaries of politicians ... Read more here: http://bit.ly/8Ui411



Agreed. That is a logical strategy, along with road tolls (at least during peak hours) to catch the in-city workers who live outside the city to avoid contributing taxes to this city, and other things.

Dear fellow Londoners, I think the message that Smart Moves London wants to send to us is this: the city of London does not want LRT, even if it is free. You would have an easier time convincing Bill Cosby that he is a white man than you would convincing London Transit to change their mind. They have made up their mind years ago that a crappy version of BRT is what London needs and no one can tell them otherwise. If you want to live in a progressive city that plans for the future, forget about London. It has no capacity to really plan. In the long run, it will cost us severely - jobs, growth, culture, etc., but London has been on this path for decades. This is why we never built a nice highway in the city like Windsor, K/W, Hamilton, etc. This is why we have the 2nd highest unemployment and we are still doing nothing. It's hard to believe a city could be this dumb, but it is and there is nothing we can do about it.

Tall North:

I use to work for the city.

Even if someone other than the city would pay to build an LRT (questionable, it is still one tax payer), if you think someone else (another level of government? Same taxpayer) would pay to operate it, you are dreaming. Just like a nice highway makes a difference.

BHS: The members of our team able to log in under the username "SmartMoves_Team" are:

Dave Leckie - Project Director, City of London
John Lucas - Project Leader, City of London
Maged Elmadhoon - Project Manager, City of London
Glynis Tucker - Communications, City of London
Allison Cook - Transportation Demand Management, City of London
Jay Stanford - Transportation Demand Management, City of London
Shahna McNally - London Transit Commission
John Ford -London Transit Commission

A complete list of the Smart Moves Study Management Team is also available on http://www.london.ca/smartmoves.