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Like it or not the streetcars would not and should not have qualified for stimulus spending. Thats not to say the feds should not be chipping in to buy them. But as economic stimulus the buy made very little sense. There zre other worthwhile projects. Any station revitalization, any bus fleet renewal or (even though I don't completely agree with the plan) the Gardiner East replacement would all come closer to qualifying as stimulus spending. And Miller will just have to keep negotiating with the feds for the streetcar buy.
 
I agree with you. I guess Miller never heard the proverb about putting all your eggs in one basket.
 
This would be a good time to request federal funding to demolish the dreaded Six-Points interchange and re-align the streets to finally give Etobicoke the urban and pedestrian friendly downtown that it needs!
 
This would be a good time to request federal funding to demolish the dreaded Six-Points interchange and re-align the streets to finally give Etobicoke the urban and pedestrian friendly downtown that it needs!

The prerequisite changes at Kipling aren't done yet.
 
I wonder if ATO upgrades would qualify for stimulus money. Reduced labour costs, increased capacity and increased safety (with platform screen doors). Might remove a lot of worries about over-crowding from all the Transit City lines and the Yonge and Spadina extensions.
 
I wonder if ATO upgrades would qualify for stimulus money. Reduced labour costs, increased capacity and increased safety (with platform screen doors). Might remove a lot of worries about over-crowding from all the Transit City lines and the Yonge and Spadina extensions.

No - I don't believe you can use stimulus money to fund something you had already started work on. Plus, ATO can't be finished by 2011.

The stimulus money requirements, in addition to being ridiculous (even if the streetcars weren't going to start production for a while, there would undoubtedly be an immediate positive economic benefit to Thunder Bay), seem to very much skew toward road and highway work. Anything requiring significant design or engineering time (ie. most transit projects) would not have qualified.
 
^ Have they started work on ATO? I thought it was just a future commitment. And I don't see why they could not finish by 2011. It not like it requires tunneling or something.
 
No - I don't believe you can use stimulus money to fund something you had already started work on. Plus, ATO can't be finished by 2011.
In terms of substantial completion date, one can tailor the amount of work, to match what can be done by then. The project could simply be to install ATO for 10 stations, rather than the entire system.

Heck take the Sheppard subway (please! :)). With only 5 of the ultimate 15 or so stations, it's not substantially complete even now ... but if you had proposed to build the first 5 of 15 stations, it would qualify.

It's difficult to find 2 or 3 large projects that are unfunded, and would be completed by early 2011. If the project is that big, it will take longer than that. The only way to do this is 500 to 1000 small projects. And that's going to be a nightmare to administer. It's a damn shame they just finished rebuilding most of the streetcar track in the city.

Oh well, perhaps they'll finally be able to buy new office furniture for city hall - have you been in there? The state of much of the furniture is shameful!
 
The new streetcars don't qualify for stimulus funding but if this were not a recession where all the talk is about stimulus the federal government would still be contributing to projects like this one. If they are not funding non-stimulus projects at the same rate as before then they really aren't providing as much stimulus as they pretend to be. If the city were to put off normal expenses until later to move up projects that qualify for stimulus spending they would be simply trading one job for another which is no stimulus at all.
 

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