^ Have to think of projects as a system, not as individual parts which are compared to individual parts. The original proposal for a toronto airport link was Blue 22, a minimum infrastructure project that was proposed as a private, freestanding (it pays its operations AND capital costs) project. Increasing infrastructure spend for future capacity, rather than a single track, plus many grade separations increased the costs a lot. That extra capacity isn't FOR UP. A lot of the cash was politicians deciding it was also worth it to spend hundreds of millions more rather than have a single neighbourhood complaining forever that happened to be in a swing seat.
The YYC-Calgary-Banff project is an economic development play first imo, not solely a transportation project. An extra night of visitation by an international tourist/conventioneer generates about $1000 in spending, and international tourist spending is an export for Alberta and Canada, a foreign currency earner, which changes why we should do it versus evaluating as a transportation or business play.
A simple model of the Banff link only from CED:
Have to raise the numbers by inflation a bit:
That incremental spending is like if DHC was able to secure orders for 26 new water bombers a year, every year and sell them overseas. It is akin to oil sands WCS production increase of an incremental 48,000 barrels a day.
A very basic economic model, dividing that spending 40% hotels, 25% food, 20% recreation, 15% culture, results in 9.97 jobs per $1million of spending using Alberta's 2019 economic multipliers Simple Multipliers (Industries) Open Model – Direct and Indirect Impacts, or 14,357 person years of employment per year.
And that is only Calgary's number, not Banffs, and an only 5% boost in overall visitation to Banff (the moderate, moderate case).
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