All Statements of Support
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Courtney Matic says,
Hello Province- I expect you to keep your promise to fund LRT in Hamilton!
It supports the Provincial Places To Grow legislation, which directs new growth to happen within the urban boundary.
It supports the Greenbelt, which protects rural and forest land from development.
It helps build Hamilton's tax base, reducing the need for the Province to send annual transfers to Hamilton to meet its budget.
It alleviates pressure to close urban schools and build new suburban schools, saving the Province money.
It reduces air pollution and encourages more active transportation, which helps the Provincial health care budget.
It alleviates pressure to increase capacity on area highways.
Finally, it fulfils the promise that the Province first made to Hamilton back in 2007. -
Lachlan Holmes says,
I have to feel left out of the picture when it comes to LRT. Living downtown, congestion is bad. Intact I was hit by a driver not looking for pedestrians. LRT will allow me and my family to get to any end of the city. Stop the bus facility. Invest in LRT.
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Adam Morris says,
The light rail system is the way to move the city forward with clean, rapid transit. Councillors bickering over disputed 'facts' is ruining opportunities for all of us. Major cities across the US with comparable populations to Hamilton have used light rail and trams to great affect. DO IT. NOW.
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Rahim Malekzai says,
Hamilton needs LRT. Putting more buses on the road isn't going to fix anything, but make the problem worse.
Wait for a bus on King from 11 AM to 2 PM. You'll see two king buses back to back. At one point I even saw _four_ buses back to back because of traffic.
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David Wootton says,
To whom it may concern:
I would like to express my support for fully-funded LRT in Hamilton. To me,it is extremely unfair again to Hamilton when Ottawa is building its LRT with provincial funding, Toronto is being promised free-funded LRT, LRT is progressing in Kitchener and promised in Mississauga that it is stalled in Hamilton. When is this province going to realize that it's time to pay a little attention to Hamilton and that doing so would better prepare the province for the anticipated extra 4 000 000 people who are expected to arrive here! Would it not be in everyone's benefit to spread a little prosperity our way in the way of jobs and transportation so that all these extra people would not have to travel down the QEW and 401 to jobs in Toronto??? I feel that everything being in one place is holding our province back severely from realizing its full potential.
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Cory Serratore says,
As a recent migrant from suburbia (Burlington), and a previous resident of Calgary, a city that has benefitted from LRT, I request funding the Ten Year Strategy and the Rapid Ready LRT plan. The status quo car-oriented suburban development plan is not a sustainable strategy for a city on the cusp of urban renewal. An investment in a modern urban transit initiative is essential to the development of Hamilton as a city center and viable counter point to the unmitigated Toronto suburban sprawl. The economic and lifestyle benefits will extend to the entire golden horshoe.
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Sheila Kimmel says,
I'm presently researching cities for a move out of Toronto. Local transit is high on my list.
The plan for the eventual LRT service looked fabulous, but now it doesn't look like it will happen before 2050.
When I see Kitchener/Waterloo with their shovels in the ground building a LRT, I find it astounding that Hamilton, with its rate of growth, is dithering. Perhaps both the City and the Province are not serious about transportation.
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Catherine Rivers says,
We need to make sure we are being proactive in making transportation accessible and protecting our environment.
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Robert Cekan says,
If Hamilton is to live up to its motto of being the ambitious city, the call for provincial assistance to fund LRT has never been greater. Without LRT, growth in Hamilton will stagnate once again. Help us build a better, ambitious city!
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Elysee Nouvet says,
Dear democratic Representatives,
I am writing to mark my hope that the Province invests much more intensely in non-gasoline transportation options in the Hamilton area. The LRT is one of the proposed initiatives on the table. I would be equally satisfied personally with major investment in bike lanes and with provincial push for fast train in Windsor-Quebec corridor. Our reliance on the car is a national embarassment. Let's make some strides towards modernizing the Canadian and provincial transportation system please!Thank you!
Elysee Nouvet
Medical anthropologist
McMaster University -
Kathy Garneau says,
Premier Wynne et al,
I am a strong supporter of LRT in Hamilton. Hamilton is a vibrant city with a need for a strong alternative to the automobile. The time to build LRT is now. We need to build it BEFORE traffic becomes a huge problem. We need to build it to reduce the impact of transportation on global warming.
Let's get our City ready for the future today.
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Shelley Rempel says,
LRT is a very important initiative for Hamilton to facilitate sustainable growth and preserve natural areas.
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Lia Bronsard says,
The LRT in Hamilton is the perfect way to continue the delicate process of revitalizing downtown Hamilton, the heart of Hamilton. The LRT will transform the current "highway" system crossing downtown Hamilton without appreciation, to a comfortable transit system allowing people to profit of downtown Hamilton and showing our interest in attracting investment, residents and employers to Hamilton.
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DINA D'ERMO says,
This is an appeal to the province regarding funding requests for Hamilton, Ontario transit requirements. I would like to join the many Hamilton taxpayers in asking the province to fund both the Ten Year Strategy and the Rapid Ready LRT plan. It is many years in the making and many of us have been heavily involved in making the LRT initiative happen which would be an incredible boost to the economy and beautification goal of the City.
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Andrea Torchia says,
We need an LRT and to update our city. This would attract more businesses and commuters to the downtown core! It can only mean improvement on all levels!
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Norm Newbery says,
The need to upgrade Hamilton's Transit system to make it fast, efficient, frequent,timely and affordable is a must have.
The existing B Line and other buses that operate on King and Main Streets in the Undermount region of Hamilton are already overloaded during peak times...and the only way to efficiently handle this is by building an LRT. In addition bus lines need to be re-routed so that east-west transit service in this area can be taken over by the LRT. -
Ryan Plestid says,
My name is Ryan Plestid and I am a graduate students at McMaster university. It is critical for the province of Ontario to invest in a functional GTHA and outside of Toronto it is my opinion that no project is of greater importance than the Hamilton LRT.
The fact that the corridor currently services WELL over the recommended minimum number of customers along with the incredible potential that exists through the transit corridor make this project an investment as well as an obligation.
The LRT must be the priority for purely business reasons. If it is built the increased property taxes can allow the city to become self-sufficient. It is also of tremendous importance to decrease the uni-directional flow of traffic into and out of Toronto in the GTHA and having rapid transit in Hamilton will both create jobs, and make them accessible to all of those who live in the GTHA.
I will probably be gone from Hamilton when this project is completed but it is of great importance to me that it is completed. This city deserves rapid transit, and Ontario deserves the return on it's investment.
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Elizabeth Gray says,
I am writing to ask you to fund both the Ten Year Strategy and the Rapid Ready LRT plan. The people of Hamilton are eager for light rail and yet we have leadership who are dragging their heels and reluctant to commit on progressive decisions that benefit the community for years to come.
Just ask about our bus lane and Gore park fountain fiascos and you will get a sense of how despite expert advice, public interest and support, our city leadership can be weak on commitment. Unbelievably, our brand new bus lane was just removed, a decision that was initiated by a counsellor who saw it as taking up space for cars. We need your help!
This recent Ten Year Strategy is designed to 'choose without choosing' to undermine the LRT process by running out the timelines for funding and it is simply unacceptable.
Implementing a light rapid transit system benefits everyone. Most importantly, it would benefit the future of our city by supporting urban intensification, filling downtown schools, protect farmland and greenbelt, reducing suburban sprawl and make ours a truly livable, vibrant city for future generations.
Thank you for your consideration of this matter.
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Dave Knox says,
I believe LRT is the right choice for Hamilton as we continue to grow and evolve into a world class city. Not only would an LRT system benefit tens of thousands of residents in the city by providing an efficient and modern mode of transportation, but it would also contribute immensely to the city's image.
Hamilton has gained so much momentum in recent years, and there is no reason that I can see that we wouldn't make this investment for both our city and its citizens. -
Patrick Reed says,
I am all for the lrt system i think having a faster means through the city will be a much easier idea
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Brandon Curtas says,
The recent trends of Hamilton city council have been both exhausting and disappointing to watch. The actions by many city councillors representing a small percentage of the population has resulted in a stagnation of transit progress in the City of Hamilton. Their attempts to mis-inform, skew, and even deny what those with the technical background and education have concluded (that Hamilton needs LRT) while providing false dichotomies along the way is in abhoration to the process of lifting the city up through better transit programs. Please do not let the actions of a select few representing an even more few (relative to the population size) prevent you from funding LRT to its fullest extent.
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Patty Clydesdale says,
We need LRT in Hamilton to help stimulate economic development
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Matthias Feiner says,
LRT is a very part of an upgrade much needed to connect east and west Hamiton efficiently. Transportation routes through Central Hamilton should primarily benefit the people of Central Hamilton and attractive public transit is an important part of it. Currently the downtown corridor is used as major transit route for commuting car and truck traffic coming from the mountain and other parts of of Hamiton. Commuting traffic from the Mountain should not go through the downtown, it should be directed to the express highways such as Red hill Parkway, Linc, QEW or the 403. This would free up room for an LRT along the King Corridor. The Future for a Hamilton with LRT is much brighter, especially for younger people, who depend on an efficient transit system
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Erin van Hiel says,
We needed this fifteen years ago and we need it more every day. Help Hamilton grow!
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Azher Siddiqui says,
Dear Honorable Ms. Wynne and Mr. Del Duca,
This is to request you to please consider following through on your promise to fund the capital costs of LRT in Hamilton when you announce the next round of Metrolinx Big Move projects, in addition to, or in spite of, Hamilton councils request for funding to address transit deficiencies, which are the result of years of neglect on the City's part.
Unfortunately, there are councillors who despite all the good reasons and evidence in favor of it, due to some interest or another, have taken a position against LRT. It is highly debatable whether these councillors actually represent their constituents as most Hamiltonians see or at least can be convinced of the benefits of LRT when everything is considered: namely, that your government has promised to cover the costs.
Indeed, the question I and others are asking is why would anyone turn down this offer? Likewise, if your government chooses not to fund the LRT project as promised and instead suggest that this was because of council, it will nonetheless represent collusion and yet another Liberal scandal, which I can assure you will cost the party next time election rolls around. The NDP would definitely capitalize on such a failure and take many of your voters away.
Once again, I urge you to please do what is environmentally necessary, economically more beneficial, and ethically most sound, by following through on your stated commitment to fund LRT, regardless of whether you choose to fund the additional request for more funds or not.
Thank you for your attention.
Azher
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Bonnie Patterson says,
I supported an LRT system in Hamilton when I lived there (my hometown) and I still do offer my support. My daughter and many others I know living there would appreciate the LRT System.
Please, get on with it already!
*The following is an excerpt from Globe & Mail article of Aug.26,2009:
[In pushing against the city's intransigence, Freiburger learned something that outside money has long known: Hamilton can be difficult. "When we first came into Hamilton," Waterloo-based developer Hugh Hicks remembers, "other people told us, 'Stay away. Hard city to work in.'"
Even the province has had trouble in this town. In the late 1970s, the Bill Davis government wanted to give Hamilton a light rail transit system that would link its downtown and waterfront to the airport. The government saw it as a chance to test-market something it wanted to sell worldwide. But Hamilton was sure that if the province wanted to give it something like that, there must be something wrong with it. So it said no to a freebie that would have transformed the city. Needing a place to show off its system, the province wound up selling it to British Columbia for Expo 86. In Vancouver, they called it the SkyTrain.]
Don’t let the past short-sightedness from a previous time stop you from doing what is best for the city. What happened to Hamilton the Ambitious City?
I’m not letting the Province off the hook here either – Both Provincial and Municipal governments need to sit down and come to an agreement to get this done NOW, so that residents of Hamilton can enjoy an LRT system that is long overdue.
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Brandon Nelson says,
Please work together, all levels of government, to bring modern transit to Hamilton!
If you're not convinced, one visit to a similar-sized European city will show how dedicated transit infrastructure makes a city livable, walkable, and fun to visit! The green benefits are just gravy.
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Lee Edward McIlmoyle says,
Dear Premier Wynne and Our Provincial Government,
We have a cultural problem in Hamilton. Our City Council won't listen to City Staff recommendations on its many traffic and transit plans, because it has drinken too much of the Robert Moses Kool-Aid about cars being the prime mode of personal transportation.
We all know that vehicle traffic is needed for moving masses of people and products around. But there is an orthodoxy, bordering on religious fervour in this city, that states: Anyone who does not own a car is not a real citizen, and has no right of expectation to easy transport around the city. It's a conflation of Plutocratic thinking that those who have the most money make the rules, and only those who participate correctly in our economic hierarchy should have a voice. This is patently absurd, and yet the myth persists because our City Council will do nothing to reeducate the populace.
This series of blunders is getting so hard to take. Hamilton's City Council has been hijacked by a bunch of irresponsible politicians who have no interest in seeing our lower city recover from the neglect and poor management of the last twenty-odd years. There is a growing groundswell of support for innovative solutions to our population, transit and taxation problems, but due to shortsightedness and deliberate misinformation and confusion of the residents of Hamilton, there is still no proper consensus on things like the LRT portfolio.
Everyone knows we need to make changes, but no one wants to commit because they don't want to be seen as 'tax-and-spend'. Too many people in Hamilton have been conditioned to think all investment expenditures are equally bad in Hamilton, and will only endorse familiar old thinking like 'roads and houses first'.
The city's 'vision' priority is now set for filling potholes, of which we have many, because of the same mismanagement and shortsightedness that is going to lose us this golden opportunity.
Sadly, Hamilton has a fairly well-established history of investing in the wrong projects and doubling down on the future of urban sprawl and Single Occupant Vehicle road traffic. The dream of Robert Moses has been proven to be a mistake, but Hamilton City Council is set to commit us to at least ten more years of inactivity and deferral, and another attempt to revive and move this city forward will be swept out of our reach.
I'm tired of this. I've lived in this city virtually my whole life (except those three months I spent in Oakville; don't tell Hamilton, please), and for the first time in my life, I'm seriously considering leaving for good, because Hamilton simply cannot grow up and out of its infantile dependence upon cars.
So my ask of you this day is to please, commit to Hamilton's need for Light Rail Transit. Please do so in unequivocal terms, so that the myriad voices of doubt in our community will be reassured once and for all on this issue. Hamiltonians need to see that this is not chicanery; not more political smoke and mirrors designed to stick us with a tab we're so deathly afraid of that we won't even order dinner.
It's time for this province to move forward, and I think we can all agree that if Hamilton doesn't come along, the whole project is going to be weighed down by the same wasteful foot-dragging practices that have gotten us this far, which is to say, absolutely nowhere. Help us to help you. Many of us are determined that LRT is an essential part of the formula for our rebirth. Without it, new investment and urban intensification will stall, and we'll lost our core and the city will fall so deep into debt that it winds up bankrupt like Detroit; a fate no city should have to suffer in this country.
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Richard Zuccolo says,
Please fund Hamilton's Ten Year Strategy and most importantly the Rapid Ready LRT plan.
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Bryan Vogler says,
As a member of The City of New Westminster in B.C. I support public light rail..A mile from here the City of Surrey is going ahead with on the ground light rail. To bring Canada closer together as the first railway was chartered to, we to can do that.
This year New Westminster marks its 125th anniversary of public transit. In 1891 Van Horne of the C.P.R., James Hill of the Great Northern and Mr. Hornpayne to finace a deal the still stands today. We to can join the east with the west through buying into the same rail contracts for cars etc.
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