This is hands down my favourite transit project in Canada right now. Yeah, it was frustrating watching the 10 years of debate and planning but in the end the debate was worth it. The plan cancelled by O'Brien should have been canned and what is now being built is far superior. Yeah there are a few little quibbles I have but all were forgotten once they started construction.
What has been just as great is how much the debate around transit has changed in the past year with the build up and start of construction. The best example is the western extension towards Lincoln Fields. Before now, the debate would have been endless, trying to figure out exactly what to do (its not a cheap extension given its length). Now, they know the best plan is to spend the money, use tunnels, put it through the urban areas instead of along the river and get on with it. Yeah the NCC being the NCC helped them get to that decision but even then it was still relatively quick and painless (of course it isn't set in stone but it seems clear what will happen).
Even plans for the rest of the network are starting to change. With the most recent TMP a lot of smaller capital projects that would have helped create the grade separations and infrastructure on the BRT network necessary to make a future LRT conversion faster have been dropped in favour of skipping intermediate steps and going straight to LRT for a number of the segments. Now that the backbone of the network is being built you can see eyes lighting up and people wanting to really build on that and extend the network as quickly as is financially possible.
Yeah the city still has other transit challenges but this was the most important so with this in motion you can start to see the debate being set, slowly mind you, but still beginning, on interprovincial and regional commuter rail. It will probably be a decade before anything really begins on those fronts, but, with the huge challenges both of them have that isn't a surprise.