[Brainpathology]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Brainpathology, I get your frustrations, and I agree with them, except that getting the suburban commuters to come in on trains rather than in cars will indeed benefit downtown in many ways that matter to urbanists:

• Less parking is required, which means less land is needed for parking lots AND that new developments can be built with smaller parking garages, which makes new development more affordable (freeing developers to either build more, or build at higher quality).
• Less traffic on city streets means more street space can be re-purposed for other uses, including better sidewalks, transit lanes for local buses, and bikeways.
• Development of a transit culture among downtown workers will make it easier to politically sell all future transit investments regionwide, including potential inner city streetcars.
• Reduced pollution will improve air quality for everyone.

You are absolutely correct of course. And those are all important points. They also sound like what you say after your team loses the super bowl, or Stanley cup etc. Good season, good team to come, better than a losing season; so much worse than it could have been. All of those things should be assumed in a project like this. It's clear that what we are getting is "well at least we have these advantages that all transit projects have."

That's inspiring.