text: This is an excellent post. Economics MUST be the rationale, not "it's free billion dollars", "it's investment." If all we want is jobs and "investment," give a thousand people shovels and have them digging ditches and filling them back up again. Even more jobs and "investment": let them use spoons. No, it must be economical; provide a return greater than the amount invested.
  A very large part of the LRT plan is track and ground work for the heavy trains, and to do that, upgrading the sewer and water lines beforehand (because it "needs to get done anyway"). What exactly needs to be done and when exactly given that it is functional today should be the consideration, but it isn't when everything is reasoned backwards from the "free billion dollars."