By Randall Denley, Ottawa Citizen, February 28, 2017
City staff and most councillors seem supremely confident of the ultimate success of their ever-expanding light rail plan, but in reality it’s a gamble based on a series of assumptions. It’s an expensive gamble, too. If all the proposed pieces are included, the first two phases of light rail and some associated road improvements will have cost taxpayers $5.7 billion and that’s without rail reaching either Kanata or Barrhaven.
The key assumption is that far more people will ride transit trains than have chosen to ride transit buses. City staff say with their new Stage 2 plan in place, transit ridership will increase by 10 per cent by 2031. Two per cent of that would have happened without the service improvements.
http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/denley-heres-why-the-lrt-may-not-quite-be-all-its-cracked-up-to-be