I don't think community meetings should ever change policy directions, largely because the meetings only represent the people who had the means to attend those meetings. You see this reflected in the demographics of who attends these meetings: generally 65+ and white.
Hey, go easy on us older guys, I haven't hit that milestone yet (though I may look it). ;-)
My guesstimate of the demographics at these meetings would be more like about one-third crotchety old folks, one third organized residents' groups, and one-third transit geeks. I challenge your statement that there was no diversity. That's why there are meetings all over the city.
The residents' groups are the most articulate, but not necessarily the most enlightened. The transit geeks are the least articulate at the microphone. Everyone likes the free coffee and cookies - word gets around. If people in a democracy come out and speak, we should respect them for that.
As to the merits of what
@Palma reported,
- the backup power plant is overkill. Today was proof that power outages are inconvenient, but not that frequent, and not that crippling. Had Crosstown been running today, it would not have shut down, even without the generator. Multiple feed points is all it needs.
- the left turn recommendations in the EA are sufficiently extreme that they deserve full discussion. People don't have to be traffic analysts to look at the maps and go "whaaaa?". When you look at how left turns at major intersections are changed, it's not a local residents' issue - it affects through traffic.
I did a bit of back of envelope scribbling today. It's 6.6 km from Weston Road to the East Mall. At the projected speed of 28 kph, the travel time is 850 seconds between those points. There are 11 signalled intersections today, and the U turn lanes add more. The data in the traffic study suggested that it takes 31 seconds for an LRT to recover from a full stop at a red light. If you assume there will be more red lights, and use 31 seconds to estimate the delay at some percentage of these, it doesn't take many more lights before you eat up much of the 850 seconds. If you assume more than 6-7 stops, this adds dwell time. The left turns that are being converted to U-turns already have heavy volume. The amount of time that cars making U turns will spend crossing LRT tracks is significant, meaning that even with traffic priority there will be conflict with LRT.
It doesn't take much for the result to be a longer travel time. That makes the LRT a poorer performer.
Never mind what the residents think - if you want this LRT to succeed, you need to be very concerned about how feasible this traffic plan is. It could kill overall speed.
- Paul