LRT is this generation’s Red Hill Creek Parkway

After half a century of suburban expansion, focus is shifting

The debate surrounding Light Rail Transit embodies our generation’s Red Hill Creek Parkway. Involved are all the usual suspects: provincial legislators, city councillors, mountain folk and urban dwellers. Much like the Red Hill Expressway, LRT is seen as a vehicle of modernization and progress, a scalable approach that will efficiently move people in and around Hamilton, the GTHA and the province.

The only difference, this time there is an overarching, regional, national and global consensus that suburbia and automobile dependency is no longer sustainably feasible.

With a projected 3.5 million people expected to move into the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area over the next two decades, conversations like LRT are necessary to address inevitable growth. Unfortunately, in Hamilton, conversations like these have deteriorated into a cluster of misinformation, online vitriol and bogus reports.

As a result, any sort of big ideas surrounding federal or provincial intentions, future economic opportunities or the changing face and culture of Hamiltonians from baby boomer to millennial are lost in this local geography of politics.

Delusion over our landscape has a history in Hamilton. Yet it’s never been so blatantly public than now. In most cases, it has started at the top. On numerous occasions some councillors have expressed a concern regarding perceived favouritism toward the inner city. These accusations really boiled over when council approved the relocation of 350 HHS jobs from the mountain to the core. Most recently, these same councillors have suggested that traffic reduction, along with a greening and cosmetic tweaking of suburban streets, should take priority over other forms of intermodal transportation.

For a city with 21st-century world-class aspirations, this type of thinking represents a bygone era from the late fifties. Some history: After years of industrial urbanization, federal and provincial policies pushed toward suburban expansion. By the ’80s, inner-city Steel Town showed clear signs of rust. The ’burbs, on the other hand, Hamilton Mountain in particular, became the ‘shining city upon the hill.’ By the mid-’90s, thanks in large part to the Harris government’s “Common-Sense Revolution,” Ontario hit peak suburbia (that’s over 50 years of suburban incentives). In Hamilton, this looked like amalgamation, a neglected core and a four-lane expressway slicing through the Red Hill Valley. The last two, both intimately linked: Before the James North Revival, the Barton Street Art Village was a $5-million redevelopment project spearheaded by NDP government and City of Hamilton. The plan promoted “an artist’s village complete with open-air markets, garden apartments, studios, condominiums, a music hall and an international flavour.” For advocates of the tired street and inner city, this should have been the neighbourhood’s salvation. Instead, suburban expansion (and favouritism) via the Red Hill connected commuters directly to the Q.E.W. and ‘Linc,’ two high-density urban roadways orbiting the inner city. This continued to foster an out-of-sight, out-of-mind uptown response toward the core.

Now, a couple decades removed, both political and public opinion has shifted. The contemporary penchant for urban spaces and environmental sustainability has culminated in a rethinking of top-down policies like Ontario’s “Places to Grow” (2005), “The Greenbelt Plan” (2005) and the “Big Move” (2008). Across the GTHA, cities are reimagining their streets as places of art, culture and cuisine, but more importantly, innovative sources of environmental sustainability and green infrastructure.

LRT is the first step in a multi-year, multi-stage process to physically and psychologically transform Hamilton’s amalgamated communities. There are already signs of encouragement for suburban constituents. In Ward 9, bike infrastructure along major routes has increased in the last few years. Since July 2016, there has been some talk of complementing this network with a SOBI station at Valley Park, a main suburban community hub. Though small in stature, these steps possess the foresight necessary for creatively imagining and redesigning suburban streets in a way that can be integrated with the rest of the city.

Hamiltonians need to analyze LRT from a broader scope. This is neither an inner city glory project nor a revenge ploy against half a century of suburban investment.

Instead, LRT is a complement to the federal and provincial strategies reimagining the Canadian landscape and economy as one being driven by green innovation and infrastructure. This is the same future falling closely in line with the imagination of a millennial demographic, Hamilton’s biggest, who are determined to make their mark on this city, the province and the country.

We just need a new, progressive way of getting there.