This isn't "anti-streetcar". This is anti-government stupidity. This stuff angers me to no end. This stuff contributes to why we have a POS transit system in this city. How many Flexities could $58M buy?
$58 million is the budget to modify ALL of the stops in the city. Only a small fraction had recent work on them.
On Queen and Broadview they did this as part of existing sidewalk work. When you stood and looked at what they were doing, most of the work wasn't even at streetcar stops. There's a huge amount of this type of working going on all the time - particularly after winter we just had.
The late changes to the streetcar ramps was pushed hard by the Advisory Committee on Accessible Transit. The bottom line is that they didn't know what heights they needed the platforms to be at until after the work on Dundas and Roncesvalles was done.
Sure, in an ideal world, everyone waits until the other person does their work first ... but what always ends up happening is massive delays, such as you saw on St. Clair ... and more recently on Queens Quay. It's actually cheaper if you let everyone do their thing, and then sometimes you have to dig things up a second or third time. However you aren't sitting there paying for people to sit around not doing anything waiting.
Yes, we could spend more money and just do it once. But why waste money?
You don't see how it's completely irrational to pour and then break sidewalks within a few years?
No I don't. Only a small percentage of the concrete is being broken. Do you see how completely irrational it is to expect us to pay more money to do things slower and more synchronized just once?