GreatTallNorth2 wrote:
When reading over the materials on this website, I am appalled that our city politicians and planners are not talking about implementing Light Rail Transit sooner. Kitchener/Waterloo has been approved to build a light rail system and they will be BUILDING this system around 2012-2013. The entire system will be PAID FOR BY THE PROVINCE. Why is London not planning and demanding the province pay for a similar system in London pronto? Unfortunately, it is due to a total lack of vision and leadership at City Hall. What is London's excuse? Planners and politicians say that London is not large enough for LRT. That is a load of rubbish - Kitchener is no bigger than London is and they are getting funding for LRT. Both Calgary and Edmonton were building their light rail transit systems when they were the size of London. London planners and politicians simply have no vision whatsoever. They are basically refusing to take the same money that Kitchener/Waterloo is being handed. When we finally wake up to the vision of Light Rail, there will be no money handed out to build it and it will cost twice as much to build the system. Doesn't this sound like the same dithering our city did years ago when we had the opportunity to build a good in city road system? We lost and Kitchener build their excellent highway system. More dithering is London's loss.
I agree with your contention that London's leadership lacks vision. And, no doubt about it, our city government dithers over everything, because the politicians feel they are so hard up for votes that they can't afford to annoy anyone. So they end up not making a decision in hopes that this will create the fewest waves, with the end result that when they finally do get around to making a decision, nobody's happy. In a nutshell, London's problem is that it is reactionary rather than proactive.
It's myth that you need a population of at least 500,000 before you can build a workable LRT system. Even if that were true, London would already qualify because its census metropolitan area (CMA) population is at least 400,000, if not closer to 450,000.
In many parts of Europe, cities as small as 100,000 are building LRT systems. While it's true that Europe resembles the K-W area in the sense that it's comprised of lots of nearby population nodes, there are also areas that are a little spread out.
What's happening in the smaller cities building LRT systems is that they are expecting rapid population growth, rather than just standing pat and accepting projections of low growth.
They know that the statistical projections generated today may not necessarily be valid five, ten, or fifteen years from now. In short, they are anticipating the future rather than allowing themselves to be put in the position of having to react to it and not having the resources needed to cope.
Cities like these also know that by building LRT systems now, they stand a better chance of being effectively linked in with a growing regional economy rather than being left behind.
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