Quote:
Originally Posted by para transit fellow
For me, the trouble with "good enough" would be that it is difficult to build the LRT underground (at a later time) while continuing LRT operations on the same routing above ground.
Edmonton did the hard part first. Calgary opted for "good enough" and fifty years later both the capacity of both the Red and Blue lines is limited by the capacity of 7 avenue to accommodate the interline trains and the north/south vehicle traffic.
Indeed, the Bearspaw feedermain was built "good enough" ...and again, fifty years later we are complaining how that was a poor decision.
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Your comparison to bearspaw is not valid at all.
Bearspaw was not built “good enough”. It was built using the acceptable material of the day. In fact they were using the new higher strength lower cost pipe with new steel grades. It would be a relevant discussion if the issue here was the adoption of new technology. The pipe was supposed to last 100 years it has not because the new specification did not consider the pipes susceptibility to corrosion over time. Many(perhaps all) jurisdictions made this mistake at the same time.
Better examples are things like Deerfoot trail, the SW ring road. SW ring road will be an interesting one. Originally designed so wide to accommodate another 8 lanes down the middle because they didn’t want to have to build a secondary ring road through reserve land in the future. By the time the ring road was under construction this was no longer a design requirement so it’s over designed even considering future needs. They couldn’t change due to the time constraints. But 100 years from now if a road is ever built there someone will declare they built it right.
Deerfoot on the other hand was under designed at places like memorial and glenmore and they are slowly being debottlenecked.
I think leaving the flexibility for expensive but possible future improvements is the right place to end up. Dont pre-invest but don’t hamstring yourself.