I don't follow the Hamilton scene that closely but is something happening that would suggest to you that Hamilton is going to see significant growth? Between 2006 and 2011 the Hamilton CSD saw growth of 3.1% (less than 1% per year).
As for people moving to Hamilton...yes there has been lots of talk/anecdotes about people moving to the Hammer because of the lovely, large single family dwellings that can be had for cheaper than anywhere in the GTA (even lower, I hear than my poor old home town of Brampton)....but that has been going on for a while yet it has produced pretty anemic growth rates.....suggesting, to me, that those people moving into Hamilton to take advantage of those lower prices have, in large, just been replacing people who are leaving Hamilton for whatever reason.
Don't forget Hamilton commuter growth is faster than Hamilton population growth; consider old steelboom-era pensioners dying off and being replaced by Toronto commuters.
The anemic growth rate is starting to accelerating a bit, thanks to the multiple new condo towers being built for the first time in Hamilton (a recent phenomenon), as well as slow density increases. Also, a lot of poorer boom-era Hamiltonians, as they retire or die off, are making way for richer Torontoians, causing a mix that needs careful growth to address without upsetting both groups, the tricky mixed-income situations. Which, delicately speaking, Hamilton needs to carefully address -- there's the people who want to kick the poor out, while there's those who believe in a mixed approach, etc. The ying and yang of gentrification, of course. But there's plenty of room for everyone, shifting within city, with the enlarging downtown core. It is not as fast a growth rate as Toronto.
Along with several condos under construction downtown already, there's about a dozen condos on the drawing board now, which will show up on the population-growth radar eventually, contributing to population spike within walking distance along the B-Line route. Every single one of them is within a short walk of the B-Line. The population growth within walk of B-Line exceeds average Hamilton-wide population growth.
The population decline of disadvantage Lower City has long been arresting itself and rebounding. Certainly, it is token growth compared to Toronto's gangbusters condo boom. During house hunting, when we were checking neighbours near houses we looked at, renter neighbours "we noticed more families moving in" -- multiple anecdotes -- has happened recently in the Lower City in the housing within a kilometer of Gage Park, even in the poorer lands near Barton Ave (what many real estate agents often said it was an "undesirable place to live"), and probably has not yet shown up on census. (2016 or 2021 census shall be interesting, probably a small uptick in growth rate but a slightly faster small uptick in average salary per resident.)
Also, people around here are remarking that the former welfare/pensioner renters (from boomtown Hamilton era of yesteryear), growing old and passing away or unable to live alone, have slowly been making way to families raising kids, commenting how the prostitutes have disappeared off several streets and retreated to a smaller area (into a smaller problematic area), and some of the formerly-tougher prostitute-travelled areas now have kids playing on the streets today during daytime, in classic old suburbia that our parents enjoyed in the 20th century heyday, but is much harder for today's struggling middle class inside GTA and Vancouver.
These multiple factors (more kids being raised now in Hamilton, rising incomes of the average Hamiltonian due to influx of Toronto commuters, and density increases via new condos now being built), combined, is gradually lifting Hamilton's total taxpayer and active worker base, including by rising average incomes, and active workers actually have a demand for better transit opportunities. And Mac students too, a frequent user of Aldershot GO midday trains. There is also talk of the creation of new employment lands in the wake of U.S. Steel's eventual departure, which will provide local work growth opportunities (Hamilton is starved for new employment lands).
Hamilton needs to address many problems, and there's been lots of disappointments over the many decades (whether it be the Eaton Centre bankruptcy, not getting an NHL team, the steel employment decimation, etc) but many factors are converging right now to make this a sustained turnaround, and there are actually now finally desirable areas in the Lower City to live, and rapidly expanding from there. The infrastructure is showing increasing strain, and within a few years, they'll be forced to expand the GO stations one way or another (expanding existing stations or adding new stations).
Clearly, the province figured that adding new stations was the best bang for the buck, considering it is congruent with expansion deeper into the Niagara Pennisula, even if JamesNorth piggybacked off PanAm to get started. So it's not just Hamilton commuter growth (MUCH faster than Hamilton's population growth) that the province is after; it's also the purpose of extnesion into Niagara Pennisula, something not feasible with the Hamilton downtown spur.
