The high cost of doing nothing
We are risking development, investment and progress over some short-term pain
Instead of focusing on building B-Line LRT, as city council once directed, there is a lot of unproductive time going into harnessing the energies between those trying to kill the project and those that want to honour our once-in-a-lifetime commitment to build a $1 billion city-building/transit solution/infrastructure project (yes, it can be all three at the same time — that would be called a winwin-win).
Having been a part of this matter for a long time, I can tell you plenty about LRT.
First, this will likely not be settled this week. Or next month. Or maybe even next year. I would love to be proven wrong, but unless a current stalemate is broken, with local and provincial elections in 2018, the politics of this project will seem interminable.
If LRT survives that gauntlet, we will be faced with real construction impacts for five years.
During that time, traffic will be described every day as a disaster, both in the media and around the water cooler. There will be businesses that will close during construction and, whether because of LRT or not, they will get much attention in the media.
In sum, the biggest infrastructure project in the history of Hamilton will require us to grin and bear it, necessitating a lot of hard work, patience, creativity and resilience.
But we will never have to travel farther than Kitchener-Waterloo to see that the hassle will be worth it.
That’s where you need faith that Hamilton, like the vast majority of cities in which LRT has been built, will achieve enormous, long-term benefits. I have faith. I certainly have my concerns about the impacts to the businesses along King Street, but these very temporary challenges can be mitigated; we know that in K-W, just two businesses were lost due to LRT construction.
Instead, what I’m most concerned about are the costs of doing nothing. Here’s what we stand to lose:
$1 billion dollars in committed provincial funding will go to another Ontario community (we do not get to spend it on whatever we want — the Minister of Transportation told me directly that these funds will be reallocated to another city “within 30 seconds”);
10 years and $30 million spent on planning will go down the drain;
$40 million that has been committed to future engineering and design work will be litigated over;
$300- to $400-million in infrastructure upgrades that the province will be paying for as part of the project (roads and sidewalks, water and sewer pipes, bridges);
$450 million in direct economic impact due to the funding itself (3,500 LRT construction jobs);
Hundreds of millions, if not billions, in intensifying development and economic uplift, and the tax revenue that those increases generate in perpetuity (being exceedingly conservative, even 1 per cent of a big number is a big number over a long period of time);
A city strategic plan and mission statement that aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on (politicians approved them, but apparently are not bound by them);
What little dignity we have left (this will be much more damaging than the stadium saga);
Our relationships with higher levels of government (who would give us money to do anything “big” again?);
Years of progress in reshaping our image and regaining our confidence;
The enthusiasm of the thousands of people that have recently been attracted to Hamilton: The Ambitious City.
In other words: the costs of doing nothing, which are a permanent drag on our future development, are immeasurably greater than the costs of building LRT, which are temporary and manageable.
I’ve said it so many times. This is, above anything else, about the type of city we want to be in the 21st century.
Hamilton’s business, labour, transit, environmental and poverty groups all support LRT. So do our hospitals, educational institutions, boards of education and anchor institutions that employ and serve tens of thousands of Hamiltonians. Developers and our top companies say LRT is motivating them to further invest in Hamilton.
While the populace might be split on their support for LRT, Hamilton’s leadership community is nearly unanimously in favour. These are the people and organizations that, along with an influx of forwardlooking newcomers, have played a significant role in bringing ambition back to the Ambitious City.
When the desires of those that are investing in the potential of Hamilton are ignored because things will get a little messy, what will be the cost of our complete demoralization when we end up paying for another Ontario community’s bold plans?