[powderjunkie]

I know cross-posting reddit comments is usually pretty lame, but I don't think r/transit is a particularly toxic wasteland, and this sounds plausible and explains the present debacle (I'm sure the full/true story is more complicated, but no less interesting):

Spoiler!

So some fun facts about this from some knowledge of the green line file:

It wasn't supposed to be LRT, the city was looking for 500 million to build the green line transit way. With an election looming in 2015 the conservatives were looking to buy votes and said to the city "Well what if you skip the transit way and go straight to rail, better optics and bigger impact, also build the whole thing to the north too. You have until Friday." This was on a Monday, so the city did the best they could to estimate a low cost estimate and came out with $4.5 billion by guessing other similar projects and the west blue line and thinking there's no way they would get it so quick. They got their estimate in by the end of the week and Friday the feds were talking about their 1.5 billion for the whole green line.

This was way before talks of tunnels and much more at grade construction. The Green Line very obviously should have been built going north first, the ridership and ROI is already there. However at the time the north councillor just wasn't enthusiastic and didn't champion for the line like Shane Keating did in the SE. Now the city is stuck trying to justify a train to essentially nowhere with low transit ridership and using the excuse of the train is to build ridership while the north is ready for it now.

The whole thing is bungled, it's being oversold and we have no timeline or plan for a phase 2. They've even talked about phase 2 could potentially be going to Seton or only to 64th, not even close to the Northern Hills communities. I just hope that we still can make something happen and it doesn't get scrapped completely.