[Whoaccio]

Re. 407 costs: That 100b number seems totally unrealistic. Highways built though Tokyo have lower land-acquisition costs, so I see no reason how something built through what (at the time) was farmland could be more expensive. I'm also suspicious you never see that number in any MTO documents, or mentioned in any of the contracts relating to the lease of the 407. The 407's audited SEDAR fillings only value their property & equipment at 2.3b. For the love of god, the ISS will cost only a little bit more in nominal terms (probably half in real terms), and it is in low earth orbit! The most likely explanation is that the MPP simply got confused about "millions" and "billions."

There is no way that the 407 land package cost more, in nominal let alone real terms, than:

135 Millau Viaducts
60-65 Space Shuttle Endavours
10 Next generation nuclear powered super carriers.
3 Three Gorges Dams.
2 times the total insurance claims brought on by 9/11
The entire ISS.

The entire Province of Ontario only has like 200 odd billion dollars do debt, and it is ridiculous to think 50% comes from the 407.

 

[rbt]

That just seems like an unbelievable number. At 200mil/km, we could have built about 500km of subway for the cost of the 407? We wouldn't even have to have arguments about DRL alignment - we could build all of the proposed alignments.

Government really doesn't see land purchasing as an expense though.

On the books, it is merely changing one asset into another which is equally good.

 

[Jonny5]

You know looking through the Hansard for more 407 information is really depressing.
Going through and seeing refernces to projects being built in Toronto now, talked about back then.
It's not just Toronto. This entire Provice did f___ all in the 80's and 90's

1993 ONTARIO BUDGET

To meet the demand for these strategic capital investments that create new jobs, I am expanding funding for Jobs Ontario Capital by $1 billion, to $3.3 billion over the period 1996-97.

Some of the major investments through Jobs Ontario Capital include the following:

-- Work on the Scarborough rapid transit extension, the Sheppard subway, the Eglinton West subway, the Spadina subway extension to York University and the Mississauga transitway;

16 years later, we're just starting some of them.

 

[golodhendil]

To own a car in Tokyo, you must first prove that you own enough land to park it (almost nobody has enough land there). Then there's a few other impossible hoops you have to jump through.

In short it's almost impossible for an average person to own a car in some countries, so transit has a captive market.

But the context of that statement implies that, even with increased ridership and policy changes or whatever else is done, Western transit systems will still never be profitable.
Ultimately, it hinges on whether the West is able to put forward less pro-car policies, which would admittedly be politically difficult. With the status quo, of course transit will never be profitable, but that does not mean it can never be.

 

[kettal]

The entire Province of Ontario only has like 200 odd billion dollars do debt, and it is ridiculous to think 50% comes from the 407.

It wouldn't be literally $100 B in the current debt. Even if the number was accurate, it wasn't one big $100 B purchase, it was carried over decades and inflation would surely be in the calculation. Perhaps it was bought incrementally with 'surplus' funds at the time? Again who knows if the number is accurate? I don't.

The fact that the MTO has no record of the actual accumulated investment is shocking. That's the sort of thing you'd want to calculate before, you know, selling it??!

 

[kettal]

But the context of that statement implies that, even with increased ridership and policy changes or whatever else is done, Western transit systems will still never be profitable.
Ultimately, it hinges on whether the West is able to put forward less pro-car policies, which would admittedly be politically difficult. With the status quo, of course transit will never be profitable, but that does not mean it can never be.

You're right, it can be possible. It's just the fact that profitability is non-existant at the current time in any cities comparable to Toronto.

Tokyo and other similar cities are exceptional in this regard. It stems from geology more than anything in human control.

 

[Whoaccio]

More to the point about funding the TTC, the obvious answers are fares and, to a lesser extent, ancillary revenue. Each user should pay something approximating their cost to the greatest extent possible. The TTC is already the beneficiary of large subsidies by having the City/Province/Canada pay all of its financing costs (these are typically 10-15% of most system's costs), so it should be able to fund the remainder out of operating revenue without too much stress.

Ancillary revenues are difficult to predict, and in any case I doubt they would be substantial. Ideally the TTC would make better use of its real estate holdings (Eglinton....), either developing properties themselves or liquidating excess holdings. You would think they could make money by designing future stations as components of larger shopping centers and charging rent, but I'm concerned this would just give the TTC an excuse to build Mirabel sized concourses to host a single Gateway News-stand.

Rather than focusing on revenue, the TTC/City should be focusing on costs. That is clearly the main issue to the TTC's budget woes, not a lack of revenue. If ATU 133's contract has a 3% guaranteed pay raise, that dooms the TTC to at least a 2% rise in costs every year without doing anything (no new hires, no new routes, no new programs) which is already above the recent CPI trends. Year after year that is so clearly unsustainable. It's not even like TTC employees are very productive, unlike the entire World their productivity has somehow decreased over the past two decades. Total workforce has grown significantly while passenger-Kms remained stagnant, fleet size dropped, and so forth. Nobody likes to talk about it, but this is why the TTC (and, in fairness, most NA transit operators) can never finance themselves. Their labor costs are inordinately high. Most studies indicate by at least 20% compared to private sector employees. At the very least, the TTC should explain clearly that guaranteed pay raises by definition imply ~70% of that raise will be reflected in higher fares.

 

[golodhendil]

You're right, it can be possible. It's just the fact that profitability is non-existant at the current time in any cities comparable to Toronto.

Tokyo and other similar cities are exceptional in this regard. It stems from geology more than anything in human control.

But geography (not geology; I don't think rock composition or plate tectonics have much to do with what we're discussing) is not really the major contributing factor to many of the cities. To take HK as an example, there is actually a very extensive road and highway network that isn't even all that much more congested than roads in NA, and most residential and commercial buildings in the past few decades do have ample parking spaces available. Parking/car ownership is expensive, of course; gas is expensive, sure; tolled roads, not out of line with most American cities but more than Toronto, sure. But these are human-controllable factors directly determined by government policies and taxation.
Ontario's policy to restrict sprawl is a good first step in creating urban areas that are transit friendly, though it still pales in comparison to the highly restrictive land use policies in places like HK.

 

[kettal]

I honestly don't know very much about HK at all. I know more about Japan.

The geology of Japan which makes most of the land undevelopable has brought the population of 120,000,000 into a narrow strip of incredible high density. If Japan was big and flat like Canada, things would be different. It's not that Tokyo doesn't like cars, they love them. But geography makes cars impractical for them.

 

[Paleo]

Another thing from the article in the OP that caught my eyes:

What is so fundamentally different between the "Western world" and the "Eastern world" that transit here can never pay for itself, even with increased ridership and improved management? (and disregarding the fact that it did)

Before or after the modern suburb was born?

 

[nfitz]

Perhaps Miller can finally deliver on his promise of implementing a congestion tax, to fund future expansion!

 

[GraphicMatt]

As much as I like congestion charges on an ideological level, I'd worry about their implementation in Toronto. Short-sighted business owners are already moving in droves to put their businesses near highway off-ramps in Mississauga and Vaughan. The last thing we want to encourage is more of that.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Ultimately, it hinges on whether the West is able to put forward less pro-car policies, which would admittedly be politically difficult.

It won't be this way forever. Politically difficult, I mean.

 

[salvius]

The MTO budget you use obviously excludes the capital costs of infrastructure.

Are you forgetting that Highway 407 cost over $100 billion in land acquisitions to contstruct?

So if we presume that 407 was the only road in the province (it's not), that would take 33 years of ALL gas tax revenue to build that one road.

(apologies for using the 407 despite it being a private operation, but I don't have the details for 401, 400, or whatever other highway. We can presume the costs were similar. If it makes you happier, feel free to deduct $3.1 B from the $100 B to take into account the sale of the highway.)

No, the numbers given are for the capital and operating budget. It does include both. See here:

http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/english/budget/estimates/2009-10/volume1/mto.html

and:

http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/pubs/results-based-plan/pdfs/2009-report.pdf

The 407 did not cost 100 billion dollars, one (ridiculously) wrong number in the Hansard by a (nobody) MPP who obviously made a mistake doesn't make it so.

 

[golodhendil]

Before or after the modern suburb was born?

Before the West became autocentric.