Most Ottawa residents focus on this $35 million tab from the lawsuit and forget that had they built the line anyway they would have squandered $800+ million in transit expansion funds for a line that served hardly anyone. And since it hardly served anyone, OC Transpo would have still had to spend large sums of money maintaining almost the current level of bus service. So essentially, no reduction in operating expenses.
In my books, O'Brien made the right choice. Keep in mind that by the time he got elected they were going to run this thing at-grade through downtown. So essentially, they were going to trade bus congestion for tram congestion....all while still maintaining bus congestion in the core since the LRT would have barely made a dent in the number of buses running through downtown.
As for the final price tag. Just wait for it to become a political issue. There is developing anger in Ottawa over the fact that TO is getting Transit City completely paid for yet Ottawa is being told its plan is too expensive. And it's really not even that expensive. The overall 5-6 billion dollar pricetag is a 25 year regional plan that includes several transitways as well. It's more comparable to the $55 billion MO2020 commitment made by the province to the GTHA. The LRT portion is 2.1 billion. That's proportionally a lot cheaper than Transit City. The bulk of the price over the old plan increase coming from the incorporation of the downtown tunnel and underground stations, all of which is needed to actually reduce congestion in the core. If McGuinty turns it down, I can see a backlash forming in this town.
Finally, please tell me how you can justify spending money to duplicate an existing transit line, have the majority of its extended length run through completely undevelopable land to terminate at a sprawling suburb all while deriving no real benefit from reduced operating expenses? Yet you suggest O'Brien was anti-transit for cancelling this monstrosity? $35 million is a small price to pay to scrap this boondoggle. I will gladly take the hit on my taxes.
The lesson Toronto needs to learn is not to throw good money after bad. Don't build something just for the sake of building it. And don't build lines just because there's money to build it, if they don't make sense operationally. There's no use building transit lines that do nothing to reduce the operational burden. Transit should be built to attract as many riders as possible and move them as quickly as possible to where they want to go. I am deeply skeptical, lines like the Sheppard East LRT would do that. Who in Scarborough would go out of their way to take the SELRT? If you're on Finch, you'll stick with the Finch Bus to get to Yonge. Ditto for anybody on Lawrence. I fail to see how the SELRT will be a huge draw for riders outside the Sheppard corridor. And that's just one example from Transit City.
