No to fixed rail in Hamilton’s centre
Rail is fine between cities, but not for within cities
Hamilton is in a good place now.
As a city, it thrived for a long while producing steel and providing everything made of steel to the rest of North America, from train trestles and automobiles to washing machines and air conditioners.
And then the world changed. Manufacturing moved away, people fled to the suburbs, every family had a car (often two), shopping shifted to stores and malls built on farmland outside the city.
For 30 to 40 years all the demographic, economic and technological natural, man-made and unstoppable evolutions favoured the suburbs and not the cities. Ghettos of decay, poverty and poor health developed in the urban cores. The waterfronts were lost to neglect and waste.
Politicians and planners sought ways to revitalize the cities, make them once again hubs of creativity and good communal life. And almost every large, expensive plan implemented made the situation worse. Each came with its own unforeseen (by most) negative consequences: One-way streets, suburban malls in the downtown, large highways separating the city from its waterfront, large blocks of subsidized housing, concrete kiosks ...
Some were fortunately stopped by community action: a highway through the bayfront and across Cootes; the Spadina expressway; downtown casinos. At other times old zoning rules impeded revitalization.
Few, if any, top-down large development plans have actually worked for the people who live in the city. Whatever the reason for this (planning for today and yesterday? planning from nostalgia? corruption? big business interests? lack of imagination?) it should give us pause. It should make us skeptical about any large project of social engineering.
The LRT falls in this category. First of all, a renaissance is already happening. The waterfront has been reclaimed. Populations are moving back to the city to be near services, entertainment and activities, and not be so dependent on the automobile. An arts, small boutique, entertainment and restaurant scene has developed. New industries and young professionals are arriving. The building of this fixed rail transit could disrupt this trend for years, even set it back forever.
And make no mistake. It is a very heavy fixed rail system. There is nothing “light” about it. It will be absolutely immovable no matter the population developments over the next 50 years. It is a technology and way of moving people through a city that is very outdated. Like one-way highways through the centre of town, it will take people more quickly through the town, out of the town, and it will divide the town.
It is not adaptable. The direction cannot be changed to suit short- or long-term population needs. And whether it is used or not, it will continue to cost a fortune to run and maintain.
There are alternative technologies today and many on the horizon. The populations and the jobs are not the same as they were in 1920, when a fleet of trolleys might take workers from their working-class neighbourhoods to big factories.
Once built, the revenues are unlikely to cover the fixed operation and maintenance costs, let alone the interest on a billion-dollar debt.
The technology for autonomous vehicles may be a few years away, but the technology for flexible and adaptable systems is here: smartphones with parking and transportation apps, data processing that allows for almost instant communication, tracking, diverting. This means with a system of electric buses of various sizes, routes, scheduling, and capacity can be modified monthly, weekly, even daily and hourly to suit demand. And today (unlike 1920) demand can be known instantly.
A fixed rail transport cannot do this. The route is fixed. The schedule must be fixed far in advance. The risk of getting it wrong is high.
The LRT (FRT) is probably the right technology to move people from one large urban centre to another, but not through that urban centre.
We have now many different transportation vehicles running on our roads with great flexibility for entering and leaving and routing. Whether the future will mean more bicycles, small electric buses, scooters, autonomous vehicles, hydrogen buses low to the ground, Ubers, taxis, or rickshaws, they can all run on asphalt.