Calgary Public Transit II

[outoftheice]

RE: Calgary Herald Article

Perhaps someone in the know can tell me why in the province where we have P3 ring roads, P3 schools and P3 healthcare projects, nobody ever talks about P3 transit? Look at the latest ring road deal, the province advanced about 30% of the project cost over the 2 years of contruction and the rest will be paid over the next 30 years. Why can the same not be done for the LRT in Calgary? The construction cost for a combined North Central/SE LRT is about $3.6 Billion. Using the same model as the ring road P3, that would mean the city and province would need to advance about $1.08 Billion over the project's construction period (which would probably run about 5 years) and the rest of the cost would be spread over a 30 year term. If I'm not mistaken, $1.08 Billion is about the same amount of money that is available if the City and Province's Green Trip funding is combined. Then, instead of the proposed compromise transit projects that are a mish-mash of everything, we will have completed the last 2 legs of a world class LRT network that will be more than capable to handle all the regional transit commuters required! Can someone please tell me why what seems obvious to me, doesn't even seem to be worth discussing at the political level?