We should be grateful for LRT funding gift

The billion dollars includes infrastructure

Stop the Train Campaign? Don’t you mean stop progress?

You sound like the blacksmiths revolting against the automobile. Stop ‘rapid transit’ for our children, a system used all over the world.

Stop the billion dollars flowing into our community from the provincial government, which traditionally bypasses Hamilton. You want to hand the money back to the province, on the gamble we will get some of it back.

You say you want money for infrastructure. Are you not aware that some of the billion dollars is already allotted to infrastructure? And you want more buses instead of rapid transit. What? Who would want more buses crowding and polluting our streets?

Stupidity! That is the best word I can find. It is defined as ‘behaviour lacking good sense or judgment.’

The Hamilton Spectator was more gentle in its editorial last week. It said, ‘Rejecting LRT now is a historic mistake for Hamilton.’ That, it would be.

I struggled for words to define this issue, like absurdity, irresponsibility or betrayal. I think about the incumbents who have been storming against this project for years. Why? Do they think they know more than all the studies and experts over the years who have arrived at this conclusion and decided to give us one billion dollars with no strings attached, while other municipalities have had to share in the costs e.g. Kitchener-Waterloo had to come up with almost $400 million of their own money? Even then, some incumbents remain cynical and continue to bash the project, and continue to do so, after we already spent more than $100 million on this ongoing project.

I wonder, do these opposing incumbents think they are smarter than anyone else, because they were elected to the city council? Or do they want attention or publicity, and simply want people to think they are extra cautious and know things that others don’t?

Are they betraying the trust that we have given them? Is it not their duty to move the city into the future? Is it not a betrayal to gamble with the billion dollars, and are they not afraid that this continuing controversy may cause the premier to change his mind and give the money to other deserving communities, some of which have much stronger representation in the legislature?

Think about the incumbent in your ward, and ask what he/she has been doing about this issue.

Is our inferiority complex so dominant that we don’t know a good thing when we see it?

We should be excited and grateful to the province and to those who pushed ‘rapid transit’ forward. Our children will be. I think ‘stupidity’ is the best word to use.