Of course, no we never hear of highway widening and extension projects being delayed, and
they quite numerous. Public transit is not a frill, but it continues to be treated as such.
Actually, they cut half a billion in highway spending from the 2010 budget from 2009 projections. Transit cuts are popular on the right; highway cuts are not.
Forget TC for a minute; think about projects a little further down the pipeline that are now in peril:
- Hurontario LRT
- Hamilton LRT
- Waterloo LRT
- Ottawa LRT Subway
- Durham Highway 2 corridor
- Lakeshore "Super-GO"
The Waterloo LRT was a bad idea from the start, Toronto grows by the size of Waterloo every
year, but Waterloo had several of the closest federal races, so if federal funds are going, provincial ones will come too, I expect. The rest are within the MoveOntario 2020 and Metrolinx's Big 15 and as such will be pushed into the future by a couple years.
Governments do not create jobs: for every job they "create", they destroy one in the private sector. Moreover, unintended consequences arise and resources aren't allocated as efficiently.
Checkout the broken window fallacy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
You are arguing a zero-net sum game. Hiring a new teacher doesn't destroy some mythical tutors job, it creates a teachers job. Similarly, by reforming PST into HST, they expect private sector companies to have a higher profitability and afford more workers. Were is this 'destorying' jobs beyond a few tax collectors? Government employment is set to decrease 5% by 2013.
http://sarahthomson.ca/
HOW ABOUT THIS... Im not saying that i think that she would eb a good mayor for anything other then transit...but for the next 4 yrs transit is what we NEED... If we make pressure on the future mayors then itll become a issue.. and become unacceptable...
Mon. March, 29th - 6:00 pm
Meet the Mayoral Candidates in Scarborough
Mayoral Debate - Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School - auditorium, at 3200 Kennedy Rd., north of McNicoll Avenue
If she is willing to listen to input, if she is willing to admit her initial platform is infeasible, then I would be willing to vote for her. If not, I dread her having power over taxes and the TTC.
So you prefer to continue with the status quo whereby we beg an Ontario Premier & Government for as in your example a 5 of the Ontario Income Tax
A % that on a whim could be changed or witheld
What benefit to Toronto or conversly to the Province of Ontario do you see from continuing to be a part of Ontario ?????????
Legal presidence set in the Quebec referendum says that no region has the right to unilaterally secede from the union (municipalities to proviencial charter similarly). Assuming Ontario is willing to let Toronto/GTA walk away, any Provience of Toronto would inherit a significant part of the provincial debt. In addition, I don't think politicians at City Hall would be any less politically short-sighted than the same politicians at Queen's Park.
We are consistently mortgaging our future. This demand, this protest everyone is making is a demand to invest billions upon billions of dollars the province and federal government do not have. We have culturally become too used to getting what we want, even when we don't have the money. For consumers, it's their credit cards. And for the government, it's been their central banks that will just run their printing presses to pay for everything.
When the government borrows money -- as anyone who is economically trained well-understands -- it created consumer price inflation due to an increase in money supply, and it necessitates future tax increases, which decreases productivity.
If we want a transit system that keeps up with demand, then we are going to have to pay for it out of real capital. Not capital pulled out of the government's ass and offset to a future generation to deal with the consequences. It's time we made the TTC profitable, and if that means making a Subway ride $3.75, then so be it. If that means instituting fare zones, so be it.
People need to learn to pay the cost of what they use. If the real cost of transporting someone across Toronto on transit is $3.25 (and by my calculations, that's about what it costs), then we need to make people bear that cost. At the same time, I have no trouble making gas taxes bear the lion's share of maintaining roads and highways.
Transportation costs money. It costs energy and labour, and fixed-link systems have high capital costs. This needs to be reflected in the pricing structure. And if that means more money out of your pocket, so you can't afford to buy lunch out every day and you have to bring a bagged lunch to work everyday: so be it. That's reality, folks. Things cost money.
And I live in Toronto, do not own a car, and this would hit me in the pocket book. But let's be very honest here. If they raised a subway ride to $4.00 a trip, I'd still take the subway. It would still be more economical than owning a car. Even if I took the subway twice a day, every day, it would be less than $300 a month. The cost of car ownership is far higher than that.
And you know what, if the higher cost actually improved service, facilitated expansion of the network, and took fiscal pressure off City of Toronto and the Province, I think everyone would be a winner. And if poor people are a problem, then I say we can institute a subsidy program for them, but not for everyone else. If you can afford the bear the cost, you should.
</rant>
I hate relativism. Europe's debt load mostly stems from reconstruction from WWI and WWII. As Canada was not bombed, we should be in a stronger position. Debt and deficit leach funds from programs and infrastructure for interest payments. Increasing healthcare costs, increasing debt and interest payments, and a proporationately shrinking work force means we don't have a lot of space for mistakes.
However, the GTA is set to increase by over 1.5 million people over the decade. The recession has interrupted a historic push to catch-up to growth over the last three decades and prepare for the next two. The 401 is pretty well accepted as both the widest (16 lanes) and busiest (sections of 420k AADT) highway in North America. The Lakeshore and Milton GO lines are running over capacity. The TTC is refered to as "Take The Car".
Economic development in the GTA affects 1 in 6 current Canadians and 1 in 5 by 2020. Transportation, after deficit/debt and healthcare, is where government can make the largest impact on our future spending-wise.
Eug, you just demonstrate my point. You talk as if the fare level should be a matter of opinion, of feelings -- a subjective whim. Instead of something that reflects fiscal and economic reality.
And saying that you're expressing those feelings as a non-regular transit user does not enhance the value of your argument in any way. Make an argument, and support your case. I don't suffer people who feel the need to make vapid self-qualifications for unsupported arguments.
The point about fares is that governments can collect money in different ways. Collecting a flat fare for 100% of operational costs per capita is a highly regressive tax pattern. By applying funding streams collected from the wider population base, costs are subsidized based on the advantages that such subsidization brings. For example, supply and demand would say that as price increases, demand decreases, assuming there is not suppressed demand, which there definately is at critical points and times on the system. As prices go up, more people use alternative transport (private vehicles), which would cost the City more money to releave congestion.
What is required is deticated multi-year funding streams. Any operational expenses that outgrow the combined set municipal, proviencial, and federal funding increases would result in a fare hike.
What exactly is the difference in paying subsidies to individual riders rather than to the TTC?
The Left-Right debate tries to shoehorn everyone into one scale. Reality is generally more complex that that and calling people Left-Right just a political tool to discount any statement as rhethoric without actually looking at the issue.
