(54) Toronto council will meet tomorrow to decide how to fund the remaining portion of the city's planned $1.2 billion light rail purchase.
Toronto set to approve borrowing $834-million for streetcar deal Move comes just before deadline with Bombardier set to expire and days after federal government said it wouldn't grant stimulus funds for the project
Toronto on hook for extra $400M in streetcar deal with no federal funding
The City of Toronto says it will have to reallocate more than $400 million to pay for a new streetcar deal after the federal government denied funding that share.
- Terence Corcoran: Transit needs ideas, not money
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A good reason to tell Toronto to get lost By Terence Corcoran
W
e don’t know why Ottawa told Toronto to drop dead on the city’s plan to spend $1.2-billion on 204 new street cars. But if the Harper Tories and Transport Minister John Baird need some help defending their decision, there are lots of good reasons around — including a brand new report yesterday showing that public transit across Canada is something of a failing industry.
Even before that report — from the Conference Board of Canada, documenting how public transit is the home of rising prices and falling output — Ottawa should have had no trouble explaining why it may not want to be shipping small fortunes to Toronto or any other city clamouring for transit funding.
Above all, in Toronto’s case the money — $400-million of which was to come from the federal government — was going to end up promoting the expansion of the Toronto Transit Commission, Canada’s largest union-shackled, cash-draining, deficit-creating monopoly public transit operator. The union that routinely plunges Toronto and other cities into garbage strikes and service shutdowns also plays a role (along with the Amalgamated Transit Union) extracting fat wages, benefits and featherbedding work rules from the TTC.
Then there’s Toronto City Council and Mayor David Miller. In a dodge to get around Ottawa’s decision to turn the city down on streetcars, city Council will meet today to debate a plan to go ahead with the $1.2-billion purchase by, essentially, stealing money from other parts of the TTC budget, including future rebuilding, maintenance and renewal programs. Those 1950s mechanical turnstiles are certainly good for another 40 years.
The TTC, which is chaired by a city Councillor and controlled directly by politicians, suffers from chronic megaprojectism, runs perpetual billion-dollar deficits and is in constant need of federal and provincial bailouts. The latest adventure, known as Transit City, is a typical multi-billion dollar fantasy of streetcars, LRTs, automobile-suppression gimmicks and evasive references to any real financial plan.
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