The Northwest "Hub" is difficult to serve and to connect the rest of the city in an efficient manner.
There's three large-area campuses (Foothills, U of C and SAIT) with the Children's hospital and McMahon Stadium thrown in as large-area-but-high-traffic developments. Crowchild, Shaganappi and 16th Avenue are the main transportation corridors, but not one of them is adjacent to all the destinations. SAIT and Foothills are both on 16th Avenue, but U of C and the Children's Hospital are removed from it. U of C and McMahon are on Crowchild, but Foothills and the Children's Hospital are removed from it, etc. Then you have the developing West Campus/District area and it further complicates things.
As Cuz notes, it's difficult for a 16th Avenue line to hit both the under-served Foothills, and go to the U of C while also connecting closer to Lion's Park or SAIT LRT stations. Any rapid transit line (existing NW LRT line, plus this new BRT line) basically has to pick 2-3 destinations of the 6-7 (FMC, U of C, SAIT, ACH, West District, McMahon Stadium) for a direct connection and the ultimate answer is to have one or two more rapid transit lines (say an BRT or LRT spur up Shaganappi) and a good circulator transit line (bus, streetcar or even gondolas have been floated) to tie it together.
In hindsight, the NW LRT didn't do a great job of directly connecting to the U of C or McMahon Stadium, but at the same time, if it goes to the middle of U of C campus, how does it then service the far NW communities as a commuter line? Same problem with Mount Royal University. Any direct connection to it will divert from the efficiency of serving SW commuters.
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