$50 million for a pretty bike path while the city cries poverty when it comes to providing real transit, low income housing, addiction services, community centres, or financial assistance for the tens of thousands of children living in poverty as Vancouver has the highest rate of child poverty in the country, No assistance for the poor unfortunates in the Downtown Eastside but plenty of money for Westside bike enthusiast so they can leisurely bike back to their $5 million houses.
This is nauseating but, unfortunately, I'm not at all surprised.
Think I'll just walk when I'm in Halifax this summer, my god that is confusing.
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"Above all, Hamilton must learn to think like a city, not a suburban hybrid where residents drive everywhere. What makes Hamilton interesting is the fact it's a city. The sprawl that surrounds it, which can be found all over North America, is running out of time."
From what I gather, the Washington Metro is extensive but has pretty low frequencies outside of rush hour; in this respect Toronto's subway is far better because it has high frequencies on all lines at all times. Even at midnight on a Wednesday on the lowest ridership line, the Toronto subway still comes every 6 minutes.
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"It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves." - Friedrich Hayek
Washington suffers from multi-jurisdiction problems. It is easier to fund spurs and extensions than capacity increases in the core and for frequency increases off peak. Service could be improved a lot without much capital investment, besides replacing their signalling system.
Get ready to meet the 514 streetcar route. A report to be voted on by the TTC board next week recommends the introduction of new a streetcar line that would operate between Cherry St. and Dufferin St. This new route would provide transit accessibility for the Canary District, but also relief for the busiest stretch of the 504 King route.
There's been talk of streetcars on Cherry St. for a while, but it's close to reality now. Should the board approve the recommendation, service would get underway on June 19. The new route would be the third to employ the TTC's new low-floor streetcars, which have greater capacity than the vehicles currently servicing King St. right now.
That is good news - I use the 504 daily, and while frequencies are pretty good, the streetcars can get very crowded. Looking forward to seeing the low-floor models there.
Big big investment federally into transit. Any ideas into what projects are going to move forward now?
I have to assume Vancouver will put there's towards the Broadway line and Montreal already announced the blue line extension, but I'm stumped for other cities.
Malcolm, how was that list organized? It makes it hard to read and understand when it's not sorted alphabetically by Province, or better yet, by figure (% or $).
Malcolm, how was that list organized? It makes it hard to read and understand when it's not sorted alphabetically by Province, or better yet, by figure (% or $).
Malcolm, how was that list organized? It makes it hard to read and understand when it's not sorted alphabetically by Province, or better yet, by figure (% or $).
And secondly, what is a "tranche"?
The federal government did it. So west to east, with the territories last.
Tranche
Quote:
tranche
tran(t)SH/
noun
a portion of something, especially money.
So New Brunswick is getting 9 million out of that? I wonder how it will be broken up; we have 3 cities with Public Transit, and I'm sure all three would love to get a share of that pie. I'm greedy and think Freddy could use a good chunk of it, just to get over some of the big limitations in Freddy Transit in general (like the lack of Sunday service).
Would inter-city public transit also be funded from this? I'm wondering if Maritime Bus would want/get a chunk of this as well for the service between communities in the maritimes.
So New Brunswick is getting 9 million out of that? I wonder how it will be broken up; we have 3 cities with Public Transit, and I'm sure all three would love to get a share of that pie. I'm greedy and think Freddy could use a good chunk of it, just to get over some of the big limitations in Freddy Transit in general (like the lack of Sunday service).
Would inter-city public transit also be funded from this? I'm wondering if Maritime Bus would want/get a chunk of this as well for the service between communities in the maritimes.
From the allocation image:
Quote:
Funding under the program will be allocated to municipalities based on ridership
It will be interesting to see what city gets what. For example, Hamilton and Mississauga got full funding for their LRT system from the province, but London is awaiting funding from province and feds and is putting up $125 million of the city's money. Will Hamilton and Mississauga get additional money even if their system is already funded? K/W got 1/3 of their LRT funds from the feds years ago. Do they also get more funding?
Federal funding most always flows through the respective provincial governments. In Ontario's case with MetroLinx it will likely flow to ongoing projects in the beginning as work needs to be done (under accrual accounting rules) to be booked against their respective year's deficits, freeing up MetroLinx funds for other projects.
In the end it doesn't really matter which projects are funded, as long as the money either means more projects or faster implementation of projects.
Is London done the Enviro/Transit Enviro Assessment?
Depending on the rules in the end, the criteria of the program is also important:
Quote:
Funding will be provided to support projects that will deliver increased capacity, enhanced service or improved environmental outcomes.
I'm not really sure if the Kitchener/Waterloo LRT would have been approved under a strict interpretation of those criteria for example.
Quote:
Train to nowhere; How to tell if Harper's serious about balancing the budget
Taylor, Peter Shawn. National Post [Don Mills, Ont] 29 Jan 2010
Today is the day the taps are supposed to be shut off. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised that his government's massive $40-billion stimulus plan -- with its $12-billion in infrastructure spending and $8-billion for housing -- will come to an end now. Whatever hasn't been allocated yet gets taken off the table.
With the spending orgy done, Ottawa claims it will now turn its focus to getting the federal budget back in the black. Some observers see Harper's appointment of fiscal conservative Stockwell Day to the Treasury Board as a sign the party is well and truly over. We'll see.
Since the Tories have spent the past year as the most spendthrift government this country has ever seen, it seems a big ask for Ottawa to revert to tightwad status overnight.
Of course the biggest problem with going from spending to cutting is that it's far more enjoyable for politicians to make voters happy than it is to disappoint them. And even before the economic crisis the Tories were rather liberal when it came to spending on favoured demographics.
From a taxpayer's perspective, it's difficult to tell whether a switch has actually been made: There are significant time lags in reporting Ottawa's financial situation and the spin can often be confusing. So how will we really know if today's deadline marks a change in federal behaviour?
We need a quick method of checking the federal government's commitment to austerity. Fortunately we have just such a thing. It's called the Region of Waterloo Rapid Transit Project Business Case.
Waterloo Region, a municipality in southwestern Ontario comprising the cities of Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge, is home to a vibrant technology sector dominated by the University of Waterloo and BlackBerry-maker RIM. The population is around 500,000.
Like many smaller urban centres that dream big, local councillors figure the quickest way to grandeur is to build themselves a light rail transit (LRT) system. Last summer they voted overwhelmingly to approve an LRT on King Street, the region's main north-south corridor.
But like many big schemes, the LRT only seems like a good idea if someone else is paying for it. The region's plan for the $819-million tab is to ask the federal and provincial governments to split it. Ontario will pay the bulk, but Ottawa's share is a not-insignificant $256-million.
The business case justifying this proposal has been submitted to both governments and an answer is expected in a few weeks or months. Then we'll know if Ottawa is serious about cutting spending.
That's because by any practical metric, Waterloo Region's LRT makes absolutely no sense. If Ottawa approves this proposal, we will well and truly know its newly claimed commitment to fiscal prudence is a sham.
LRTs are meant to serve large metropolitan cities with high-volume commuter traffic heading to downtown employment cores. Waterloo Region lacks it all: population, commuters and a downtown.
As an amalgam of three distinct cities, Waterloo Region actually has no downtown core to speak of. Most RIM employees work in numerous buildings scattered across the suburbs, making them unlikely to take transit. By way of comparison, the smallest city in Canada with an existing LRT is Edmonton. It has a metropolitan population twice that of Waterloo Region and a downtown commuter employment base that's five times larger.
In order to justify its business plan, the region has heroically assumed transit ridership along the route will triple immediately once train service begins. This presumes more LRT riders in Waterloo Region than currently exist in Minneapolis, a city of three million people.
Oh, and another thing. Waterloo Region's LRT will be two minutes slower than the existing bus service. That's right, $819-million buys a new transit system that isn't quite as fast as what's already there.
The only thing the LRT has going for it is politics. Smaller-centre urban Ontario is fertile ground for the federal Conservatives and Waterloo Region boasts four Tory MPs. Significantly, the closest race in the last federal election saw rookie Conservative candidate Peter Braid shock longtime Liberal MP Andrew Telegdi by 17 votes in the well-heeled riding of Kitchener-Waterloo.
So it's no surprise Conservatives are keen to demonstrate their love for the region as often as possible. The day after municipal councillors approved the LRT, another local Tory MP, Gary Goodyear, claimed his government was ready to pay its share, no questions asked.
Yet it's obvious there's no way Waterloo Region's LRT request for $256-million can withstand serious scrutiny with fiscal prudence as a criteria.
If the federal government does come through on this request, it will stand as an instant and unmistakable sign that political calculations have trumped any claims to austerity. It will also open the door for other similarly sized municipalities -- Hamilton, London, Quebec City, Halifax -- to demand LRTs of their own.
The decision on Waterloo Region's LRT will set a precedent in many ways. Every taxpayer in the country should be watching this train's schedule.
- Peter Shawn Taylor is editor-at-large with Maclean's magazine. He lives in Waterloo Region and is a member of the local group Taxpayers for Sensible Transit.
Allocation based on ridership is a poor way of making sure that the money goes to the best projects or that it's shared somewhat evenly between provinces.
There are a few cities that have low ridership specifically because of past underinvestment in transit, and there are other cities that have higher ridership because they have more extensive systems that were previously funded much more generously by the federal government. This type of allocation just means that money goes to whoever got the most of it before, not that transit projects with the best value for dollar are funded.
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