How will it move you?
Today, city council is expected to vote on whether to move ahead with the light rail transit project — the largest and most complex infrastructure project in Hamilton’s history. In the final instalment of a series examining what the $1-billion project wi
LRT IS GUARANTEED to change the way you get around town even if you never set foot in a light rail transit vehicle.
Most project fans and opponents agree on this basic fact — even if they wrangle loudly about whether the change would be positive or not.
For transit users, LRT means a vastly more reliable ride — if not necessarily much faster — on the city’s busiest east-west bus corridor. The 11-kilometre Main-King line is also envisioned as the backbone of an eventual city-wide rapid transit system.
For motorists, LRT means big changes for westbound car drivers in the lower city — and a domino effect for motoring commuters from the Mountain and suburbs — because rail tracks require exclusive use of two lanes of King Street from Highway 403 to the Delta.
HSR planners expect to reallocate buses in a LRT world to provide parallel, milkrun service east-to-west (think Cannon Street, Dunsmure Road, Maple Avenue) as well as beefed-up service on the Mountain.
Long-term, LRT is supposed to kickstart a grand rapid transit future. Council approved a “BLAST” network plan with fanfare in 2007 that mapped out a series of interconnected express routes to link communities across the city, including Ancaster, Stoney Creek and Waterdown.
But a provincial decision to stop the east-west line short of Eastgate Square has angered some councillors, who rightly note the city’s original plan linked two major transit nodes and included Stoney Creek.
Ironically, another late change by the province — axing a short A-line LRT spur in favour of bus rapid transit from the harbour to the airport — also prompted blowback.
In theory, the new A-line BRT plan follows the council-approved map to the letter. But there’s no guaranteed cash for BRT and even LRT supporter Coun. Lloyd Ferguson expressed frustration about a surprise change he called “back of a napkin” planning.