The online uproar Thursday night was swift and loud following Andrea Horwath’s reported statement on Hamilton’s B-Line LRT project that City Council has the option of spending the $1-billion dollars on other local transit projects. Depending on your interpretation of her comments, she was either changing her position on LRT, providing an honest answer to a question – that being that the Province cannot impose its will upon the municipality -, or that she was changing her position on LRT in response to declining public support for the project. (I interpret it as an honest answer that municipalities are deserving of respect in local decision making) Horwath issued a carefully and strongly worded statement Friday morning stating “Should Ontario people elect me to serve as premier … Hamilton is getting an LRT, and there will be no more delays”. Horwath’s first role and priority is as leader of the Ontario NDP, a party which has a very good chance of forming the next government. She cannot afford to get drawn into a local issue quagmire such as Hamilton’s LRT; especially since other parts of the province have good reasons to be resentful of the Hamilton LRT deal – no other municipality is getting 100% no-strings attached funding for higher order transit. Hence, Horwath is not clarifying why she choose her wording Thursday at TheSpec. Political operatives affiliated with all three parties are telling me off-the-record that polling both for the provincial and municipal elections is showing that LRT is increasingly unpopular. I haven’t seen the polls, and I can’t confirm this information, but coming from all camps, I consider it credible. Even Mayor Fred Eisenberger, the current champion of LRT, is seeking to minimize LRT as a topic in his re-election campaign. Was Horwath’s statement on Thursday reflective of opinion polling in the riding of Hamilton Mountain? Is the NDP trying to thread the needle on the issue to avoid losing Hamilton Mountain to the Progressive Conservatives? We don’t know. The recent Metrolinx non-scientific poll of public opinion along the B-Line LRT corridor reveals a very real problem for Hamilton’s LRT project: public opinion. Normally, I don’t write citing non-scientific polls. In this case, I make an exception because of who conducted it and why it was conducted. Metrolinx conducted the survey to determine support for LRT projects they are building Only 59% of those surveyed in Hamilton support the LRT project, the Hamilton result contrasts with significant support found in other communities with LRT projects nearing construction or underway. This poll was conducted along the LRT corridor, where support for the LRT is believed to be highest in Hamilton. With only 59% support there, it’s reasonable to believe the LRT does not enjoy majority support elsewhere in Hamilton. How did LRT lose public support? Especially along the corridor? There’s been a noticeable shift in what I’m hearing on LRT in East Hamilton and Stoney Creek. People are telling me they’ve changed their views on LRT, with two themes being prevalent: Hamilton can’t even run buses, and the LRT means displacement. People are telling me they’ve needed to purchase a second vehicle in households were one partner used to commute to work by HSR, and they owned a single vehicle for necessary errands or a partner who could get to work efficiently by public transit. (An identified challenge that is not unique to Hamilton) In Stoney Creek, for example, during the Transit Crisis there were occurrences of 90 minute service gaps during rush hour, with 60 minute rush hour service gaps occurring enough that effectively public transit was no longer an option. People have to get to work, and while City Hall says cancellations amounted to less than 2% of all trips in 2018, this still equals five weekdays of the bus missing each year. How many jobs allow you to be randomly late five times per year? Now that people have come to rely upon their second vehicle to get to work, they do not see themselves using the LRT, they look at the construction as being very disruptive, and see the LRT as taking away lanes from cars. The HSR Transit Crisis has diminished both the HSR’s paid ridership count, and severely undermined confidence in public transit. Hamilton’s LRT has primarily been presented as a economic development project from the beginning; but it needed a strong public transit use case to gain and maintain public support. Some East Hamiltonians who rent are trapped; if they have stable housing, they cannot move without paying hundreds of dollars more per month for a similar sized unit.