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"Thanks for posting this because it's very insightful.  No wonder Bob Bratina is completely opposed to the LRT.  If he thinks Hamilton has too much bus service already, that explains a lot.\n \n\n\n\tI don't think his mindset is stuck in the 1970s though.  The 1970s was when a lot of places that had streetcars decided to keep them and started overhauling PCCs and looking for new vehicles which is why things like Boeings and CLRVs and Kawasakis started showing up at the end of the decade or the very early 1980s (SEPTA's prototype Kawasakis have 1980 on their builders plates and the production cars 1981) after being developed during the 70s.  Plans were made, construction took place, and the start of new LRT systems in Edmonton, Calgary, and San Diego all dated from within the 1970s and opened right at the start of the 1980s.\n \n\n\n\tBob Bratina's absolute hatred for LRT and distain for 'too much' bus service is more like post-war fantasy of the 1950s when paving everything in sight to provide even more roads for you to take your own private land yacht of a car out on was seen as progress.  That actually agrees with his 'build more roads' position he stated to you.  Thing is, building more roads in the locations he mentioned doesn't do anything to improve things along the LRT route since they're geographically separate locations and he isn't advocating buying strips of buildings and tearing them down to widen King and Main streets.\n \n\n\n\n\n\tI agree completely.  There was a newspaper article I read a few years ago where some city council meeting went lopsided over the LRT and it sounded like they wanted either the whole BLAST network to be built at once or reject LRT completely.  It was insane.  Constructing rapid transit is expensive which rules out any level of government dropping an entire four or five line LRT network on Hamilton all at once but the premise they had at Hamilton city hall was that if the whole thing can't be done in one shot, the next best thing was to rule out getting started.  It'd be like Toronto saying no in 1949, it only goes from Union to Eglinton, it doesn't go to Lawrence or the city limits, it does nothing for people travelling east/west, don't build the subway instead of getting started somewhere with something and then expanding from there over time.\n \n\n\n\tThe shortsightedness in Hamilton, on every single file I hear about, is astounding.  It's like the city takes pride in electing the most backwards, parochial, useless toothpick chewing bumpkin politicians that can be found.  Every time I read an article about the LRT, the idiots in the city hall come off looking like the biggest collection of fools found in the same seat of government.  Then you get Bob.  Former mayor Bob.  Vote for Bob because he used to call Tiger Cat games and run his mouth full of drivel on AM radio.  While we're talking about useless washed up media personalities in Hamilton politics, move up a level of government and you've got MPP Donna Skelley in Queen's Park.  She was one of the people CHCH cut loose when they did their tactical bankruptcy a few years ago; she wasn't on the list of people they saw fit to rehire.  At least Donna Skelley ran on a conservative ticket so she understands that when CHCH pulled a tactical bankruptcy so they could can staff with no notice and then stiff them by not paying out the severance they were owed, it was personal because it was just business, and Channel Zero screwed her out of what she was owed because it was the right business decision to make.  Conservative politicians live for screwing over the little people like this so Skelley's no doubt looking for any and every opportunity to throw them under the wheels.  Talk about birds of a feather, huh?\n \n"
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