Light rail can win over critics

Any project that carries a price tag of $800-million is bound to have its critics. But history also shows us that critics can become converts over time.

Salt Lake City provides a perfect example and the Region of Waterloo has a unique perspective on that project. Andrew Hunt, now an associate professor in the history department at the University of Waterloo, was living in Salt Lake when the process of building a light rail system there was begun.

Hunt sees several similarities between the two projects.

"A grassroots opposition in the community that was taking shape in the form of letters to the editor of the local newspapers," Hunt remembers, comparing Salt Lake's $312.5-million project to ours. "There were even some marches, protests against light rail, letter writing campaigns, petitions and so forth.

In the Salt Lake example, the federal government was picking up 80% of the tab. Here, the federal government is picking up 33.3%.

Besides the cost of the system, critics also argued that existing transit in Salt Lake was underused. They pointed to near-empty buses in the city of roughly 200,000 people and claimed it just wasn't ready for light rail.

But Hunt says a funny thing happened once the trains arrived.

"Those people who opposed light rail in the 90's and said it would be very costly and not worth the money, well, many of those same figures have clamoured for light rail to come through their communities and protest now if it doesn't come," Hunt asserts.

Concerns over ridership were also quickly laid to rest, according to Hunt. Unlike the underused buses, the new trains on the light rail system filled up almost immediately. They were not (as some feared) ridden exclusively by the more affluent members of Salt Lake City and many of the system's former critics were among its early adopters.

"The protest against it now has really become a historical footnote. Just about everybody has forgotten about it," Hunt says.

It's estimated that Salt Lake's system, which started as a single, 17-mile (27 km) line from the city's core to a southern suburb, will eventually expand to ten times its original size. Ridership reached 60,000 people daily within months of the system's opening and today, light rail trains in Salt Lake carry a million people per month.