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The choice for city council is becoming clear: Embrace a sliver of the hacked-up bus rapid transit network, or lose out on some of the millions on the table from Ottawa and Queen’s Park.

Portions of London’s contentious $500 million bus rapid transit (BRT) plan – routes that have been “unbundled” and rebranded by city staff – are the only options on a newly-unveiled menu of transit projects that city staff believe would check all the boxes for senior government funding.

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And based on the numbers – the non-rapid transit projects have much smaller budgets – at least two of those unbundled “legs” of BRT would be required to allow London to take advantage of more than $370 million from the province and the feds.

It’s a piecemeal approach that one expert calls “reinventing the wheel.”

Political scientist Jacquetta Newman at King’s University College said the political stalemate over BRT, and now the rush to pick alternative transit projects at warp speed, is frustrating.