A battle is brewing in downtown London over plans for the Shift rapid transit plan. A petition calling on the London Downtown Business Association (LDBA) to withdraw support for the transit plan has begun circulating among local merchants.
Downtown business owners say there hasn’t been consultation between the board and the merchants.
Restaurateur Mike Smith said businesses feel they aren’t being represented by the LDBA.
“The feeling was that LDBA hadn’t been saying what the merchants and the other stakeholders wanted,” he said. “We do not want this program as it is and it will be devastating to our business.”
Smith believes it isn’t just downtown merchants who have issues with the rapid transit plan.
“There’s residential groups that don’t want their front lawns plowed up and trees cut up to widen,” he said. “There’s commuters that don’t want Oxford Street to have two designated bus lanes and remove two lanes of vehicle traffic.”
Janette MacDonald, head of Downtown London, said the LDBA understands the concerns of business owners, but said she believes there is support for the downtown rapid transit system.
“Well, I’m not going to comment on the actual petition itself and what are businesses expected to achieve, what I am going to comment on is that we get where they’re coming from, we understand their concerns,” said MacDonald.
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“A lot of people support it. All of our tech companies support it, all of our restaurants support it, they want to be able to hire people from other parts of the city and get them into the downtown quickly, so they can see the end result. The end result is so far away, and the start of the project is so far away.”
The petition will be presented to the LDBA at a meeting later this month.
While the petition specifically mentions rapid transit, there are other issues at play.
Businesses are also upset about a proposed budget hike for the LDBA, the decision to hire a consulting firm, Live Work Learn Play, without their consultation and what they perceive as a lack of support from the top on other downtown issues.
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