Yes. But as I said, most of that spending isn't "optional". We can't just close the highway and let it rot. It either needs to be demolished or maintained, and the marginal costs between the two options is much less than $2.2 billion. As I said, the original cost estimate had rebuilding the eastern Gardiner pegged at $1 billion, while demolishing and replacing it was pegged at $600 million.
So cancelling the replacement "only" saves you $400 million. Still a frig-ton of money, but not enough to cover the current annual deficit.
I could of course also go into how it wouldn't be possible anyway as capital funding is very different and cannot replace operational funding, etc...
I'm just generally annoyed by you, as well as several other people in the Toronto urbanism world, who constantly claim that cancelling the Gardiner would suddenly free up billions of dollars. It won't. I'm happy to debate whether or not it should be retained, but if we are going to do that, we need to make sure we are using the correct information.
@Northern Light That's a fair assumption, but it's assuming that the assessment growth won't occur elsewhere instead. It probably won't happen on a 1-1 replacement, but most of the growth that could have happened here will likely happen elsewhere in the city instead, negating some of that assessment growth. It's a hard question to answer.
