Mike Powell Fanclub

[...] Delays. Had we broken ground last December as planned, we’d be that much closer to having the buses removed from downtown. We’d be that much closer to having a mass transit system befitting a city of our size, let alone a National Capital. And we’d have insulated ourselves against at least 2 years of increases in the cost of labour, materials, and fuel, let alone legal and transaction costs. Now, I do not think that the first plan was perfect: it should have used what rights of way it had to create the first stage of the east west route, going as far east as Hurdman and possibly pushing west to Tunney’s Pasture. It should also have gone to the Airport. It is also unacceptable that, to this day, we can’t be sure what exactly was in the proposal because so much of it was kept from public eyes, leading to poor publicity and, in turn, people believing what they wanted to believe.It’s also a testament to the dysfunction of this city that I think many people believed that if they didn’t get their part of the expanded o-train they never would. That’s bad, in part because it discourages smart planning to meet growth, but also because it encourages a dangerous sort of IMBYism, where if it doesn’t directly affect your back yard, you are reactionarily opposed to spending money on it. Previously on the Mike Powell Fan Club: David Gladstone on transit planning; Clive Doucet on another O-train proposal [...]