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The change could also open the door to a three-km rail extension to Limebank Road.

Such an extension is beyond what the city can currently afford, but Watson and Swail said the city will work with the private-sector developers to see if partnerships can be found to accelerate the work, estimated to cost about $40 million (including the purchase of an additional train).

Depending on how the talks go, the extension could either be done as part of Stage 2 construction or exist as a standalone project to be completed down the road, Swail said.

The city is very interested in providing more rail service to the southern suburbs because those communities are growing fast. There was a time when those communities were eager to ride the rails, but council in 2006 cancelled a north-south LRT project, deciding instead to prioritize an east-west system.

Riverside South is adding more homes with a potentially high transit ridership. A community design plan approved last year projected more than 55,000 residents when the suburb is fully developed. In 2014, there were nearly 14,000 residents.

Ideally, the city would want to run trains to the town centre in Riverside South, but it would likely cost millions more and be unaffordable under the current plan.

As the city ramps up procurement of the Stage 2 work, it continues to hunt for improvements that won’t cost taxpayers extra.

The city has done a similar exercise with a planned LRT extension to Moodie Drive. The original westernmost LRT terminus under Stage 2 was Bayshore Shopping Centre, but transit planners did additional work to see if the trains could go farther west under the existing budget.