Students or nah, at least they are making a comprehensive proposal.
I just skimmed over their website and everything and a significant effort and forward-thinking proposal was definitely a thought-provoking read. Now keep in mind that I just skimmed through the proposal so if I'm wrong with some of my feedback, please be gentle
. However I think that there were a few short-sights that were failed to be mentioned:
1. It fails to make clear how much of the track is grade separated or grade-integrated. This is very important as it makes the difference between whether the system would function like a glorified streetcar or an actual rapid transit solution.
2. Now I get that there is a larger student population percentage than most of cities, however this proposal is very forward about serving the students and residents, and I personally don't think that it should be exclusively used for those demographics. And this is the only issue that I have with the proposed design in the peninsula; I would like to see the line dip into the core of downtown more to serve the people working, living, and wanting to travel into the core of downtown.
3. The railyard, IMO, is in a pretty strategic place. However thinking that residential TOD is going to develop around a railyard is a little uninformed. Railyards are pretty noisy and a lot of people will choose not live beside the railard because of the noise.
4. It's very interesting that this proposal compares itself to all of the LRT's in Canada EXCEPT for Ottawa's Confederation Line LRT. Most of that LRT is actually grade-separated so I'm quite curious about why this proposal would choose to compare itself to Edmonton's LRT (which a lot of people consider a failure) and not mention anything about the Confederation line (which is defined as LRT). This is just an interesting observation.