Quote:
Originally Posted by Ironhorse
So it sounds to me like the city painted themselves into a bit of a corner with these LF trains because of a misguided / obsolete vision, and now is now too stubborn or embarrassed to cut bait and change to a system that has more integration possibilities with the other lines.
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In a sense yes, for the project as a whole (moreso than just the LF trains). Though tbf to the city most of the decisions were based on sound reasoning at the time (even if I disagree with a lot of the prioritization). A big factor in the early days being to secure funding with one unified project instead of multiple legs/components, which seemed messy and complicated. Of course now we are down to one stub of a leg.
LF trains aren't the end of the world, but they are limiting our opportunity to get best bang for our buck here. Everyone is bitching about the issues with 7th Ave, but instead of taking the opportunity to bury our busiest line (with lots of through-ridership in our new transit reality with a reduced focus on the core), we're giving the white-glove premium treatment to the line with the lowest ridership and lowest through-ridership. And then we celebrate that doing this means we don't have to bury the red line for another 50 years.
boogerz raises good points about the benefits of LF. But it's a negligible difference for nearly all of the SE stations (and it's 100% irrelevant for the many stations originally planned to be underground), until you get to McKenzie Towne and Seton. At this point it's probably cost us an extra two decades before that happens. And when working with a dedicated ROW you can mitigate the HF station drawbacks pretty well.