Quote:
Originally Posted by ken0042
One idea I had for raising money for this project- what if they sold long term transit passes? Obviously this is just a rough idea but here's what I was thinking:
- 10 year commitment required. (not sure how you'd enforce that.)
- $150 per month. So slightly higher than a current pass, but you are building the new system.
- Ground get broken right away (figuratively, obviously some planning needs to occur.)
If you could get 100,000 people to sign up, that represents a commitment of $1.8 B over 10 years. Now I know 100,000 sounds high; I'm thinking that in addition to NC and SE users signing up, you could get others who might look at the long term value of the pass (by years 8-10 it could be cheaper than the future price), and those who may do it for the sake of wanting to be one of the builders of the new line. Maybe even set aside park and ride spots for these pass holders.
I know that does leave a shortfall, but hopefully you could get the province and the federal gov't to help cover some of the rest. Maybe also get some input from businesses (I don't know if there's a way to make this a tax deduction)
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10 years is a massive commitment for people to enter into. So much can change in a person's life in 10 years (relocation to another city for work, need to buy a car to drive the kids, etc) that I doubt many people would sign up for this. It wouldn't make sense for the NC/SE users to sign-up for this pass, because the LRT line would still take a few years to be constructed and they would have no use of it until then. Would users of the the other LRT lines voluntarily pay more to fund the NC/SE line that they may not have a need to use? Also of the people that would sign-up for this, some would likely already be users of Calgary Transit, so it would not be an increase of $1.8 billion in funding, but rather the difference in price between the $150/month pass and the current pass over a 10 year period, which would be a lot less money.
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