Adjei
Senior Member
What a farce.
It is all politics and posturing....at the meeting a few weeks ago when the rookie councilor "tricked" the pro-5 and Metrolinx into admitting they would accept 1 alternative route they even went as far as to say that the alternative route could be studied/planned in a matter of months and be ready to be built by the time the route got that far....when he turned the tables and said (effectively) "well if we can consider that one alternative lets study some more"...they swiftly came out with the "well those will take 5 or 6 years to study and the money will be gone".....Wow. Just wow.
A 5- or 6-year long sideshow. Anything can happen in that timeframe, especially given that elections at all 3 levels of government will occur.
Even if one of these routes succeeded, it will have to come from a future/different pot of funding.
Ontario has already returned the Hurontario funds back to the Moving Ontario Forward fund, as repeatedly confirmed recently, and repeatedly warned over the last few months.
Brampton will have to do all the due diligence and re-apply, all over again. Hopefully Hurontario LRT will extend through to Brampton GO one way or another, but if that happens, that will be further into the future now, from a future fund.
I tend to agree with you (btw....we are only talking about $190MM)....even if not for political reasons that you laid out.....the province/ML have put a lot of weight on the importance of connecting the LRT to the Brampton GO station.....one thing they have never explained is why it is so important to them which route it takes from Steeles to get there.I think the province will in fact play ball with Brampton despite saying the Main Street route is the only route that the province will fund. Brampton has 3 Liberal MPPs, and is an important city for the party. If an alternate route is identified and costs a similar amount to the original route ($300-$400 million), I would be shocked if the province didn't fund it. Metrolinx and the province tried to talk tough to avoid another Scarborough subway-like decision, but look where we are. Yes, that money went "back into the pot", but it ultimately it is politics that decides where that money goes, and it is politically palatable to spend it in Brampton, for this round of funding. Maybe the feds (Brampton has 5 Liberal MPs) go half on the new routing, but Brampton will get a funded LRT, one way or another, before the next provincial election cycle.
I tend to agree with you (btw....we are only talking about $190MM)....even if not for political reasons that you laid out.....the province/ML have put a lot of weight on the importance of connecting the LRT to the Brampton GO station.....one thing they have never explained is why it is so important to them which route it takes from Steeles to get there.
That will be the next big point of discussion/debate/angst......when Brampton council hears "RT on Queen" I think they are thinking "LRT".....when ML says "RT on Queen" I have a belief they are meaning BRT.Yeah in the context of connectivity it is in everyone's interest to have the HMLRT connect somehow to Brampton GO. At this point, if Brampton city council can come to some sort of agreement on an alignment, I'd say it is in everyone's best interests that it gets funded. Also, through the HMLRT debate, it became clear that Brampton councillors also wanted to see a Queen Street LRT/BRT/RT. It would be INSANE to start on that project before having a completed HMLRT.
It is all politics and posturing....at the meeting a few weeks ago when the rookie councilor "tricked" the pro-5 and Metrolinx into admitting they would accept 1 alternative route they even went as far as to say that the alternative route could be studied/planned in a matter of months and be ready to be built by the time the route got that far....when he turned the tables and said (effectively) "well if we can consider that one alternative lets study some more"...they swiftly came out with the "well those will take 5 or 6 years to study and the money will be gone".....
...frankly, everyone at the table on this has treated the truth like playdoh so much that it is impossible to know who or what to believe.
Did not know that route was part of the EA....not what they said at the meeting ...mumbled something along the line of "minor variation on preferred route...easy to plan/time" (paraphrasing).Wasn't the alternate route discussed at that meeting the original one from the 2010 EA - up George Street. If so, then the five or six years worth of work has already been done for that option. Any new option on anything other than Main or George would require a whole new EA.
Now that the scope of the project is smaller, ending at steeles. Any chance the project will start earlier and finish earlier?
I really wish there was more thought put into phasing opening of projects. Having a segment open gives people a first hand look and gets them excited about it.It may finish earlier but probably won't start earlier. I'm not sure they've committed to a final phasing plan yet but at one time it was suggested that they would build the 407 (where the service yard is) to Cooksville section first, and once that was up and running they would extend the line to the north and south. Dropping part of the northern extension won't affect the first phase in any way.