24 Replies to “Riding Mass Transit Is Like Inviting 20 Incompetent Politicians To Drive Your Car”

  2. 20 incompetent politicians?
    I challenge you to find one competent politician.
    Of course what exactly competence is in political animals is wide open to interpretation.
    So competent in the sense of working for a productive civil society, versus divide and disparage to gain/hold power.

  3. This is the modus operandi of governments everywhere. If they told the truth about how much something was really going to cost, and how long it would take to build, most people would not support it. So what they do is low ball it, run out of money, then point to the big hole in the ground and ask for more money to finish the job. It works, and people never seem to catch on.

  5. They had a decent LRT from Kennedy Station to one stop past Scarborough Town Center for years. I used it several times. They couldn’t just spiff it up and put it back in operation?

  8. In this case it’s worse than normal, since they didn’t do any planning or engineering work before approving a 3 stop subway. Now we will get a 1 stop extension that costs an estimated $2.9 billion (actual cost $6.09 billion), with the money coming from who knows where.

  9. The funding comes from all over Ontario in the form of taxes, even though the majority of us will never use it. The Liberals consider Ontario to be exclusively within the GTHA. The rest of us are ignored.

  11. I intend getting out after my parents’ passing because even if Doug Ford is the next mayor, he won’t last forever. I’ve got a brother who has already gotten out for just that reason.

  12. Bid low and bill high. This is simply the way business is done, particularly wrt Government.
    A few years ago a few large Calgary Oil companies got together and decided it was time for a new Production Accounting System. The bids came pouring in and at one of the firms any bid over $10 million was automatically cast aside. (I heard this from a pretty good inside source)
    The winning company (who grew up on Government Contracts, and who was the builder of the Obamacare failure) won the contract with a $10 million bid.
    They delivered the new system two years late and at a cost of about $44 million, with some functionality still not ready.
    Once the companies are already into it for millions they are caught. Do they turf the vendor, write off millions and start from scratch or do they defend their initial decision and pony up millions more to a company who knowingly, I believe, low-balled the bid.
    The companies suck it up and open the coffers, proving the tactic works.

  14. Costs rose from $2billion to $3billion so the design could be done!!
    Unbelievable! Were they originlly going to to just push a dozer through and put big rubber wheels on the tain?

  15. So three billion dollars to add one stop to the Toonerville Trolley? At three dollars per ride, that’s a billion rides, just to pay for it, neglecting operating costs entirely, which I suspect exceed the fares in any case.
    And those rides should, by rights be only new rides, that is rides taken because of the expanded service area. Existing rides within the present service area should not be included in the accounting.
    I’ll bet it would be cheaper in the long tun to buy every commuter in Scarborough a Cadillac and lifetime free parking in downtown T.O.

  16. My favourite is Toronto Council in 1965 spending 4 months discussing extending the QUEEN STREET subway to Broadview. Of course there is no Queen Street subway but we still have the 44 member Toronto council wasting time and money.

  17. That’s about 30,000 Zip cars. It would be cheaper to buy everyone in Scarborough their own car.

  19. That is not a woman. That is Michael Moore. I’ve been right before.

  20. Remember when the original (funded) plan was an upgraded 4- or 5-stop LRT line for Scarborough, consistent with the area’s projected ridership and at a fraction of the cost of a subway, and then Rob Ford came along during the 2010 mayoral campaign and promised to end “the war on cars” by scrapping the Scarborough LRT plan in favour of a subway extension “to be funded by the private sector”?
    No, of course you don’t. Because a selective memory helps reinforce one’s chosen reality.
    YTL

  21. You have a point, but if you wear a hat, it won’t show. My point is, that be it subway, or surface rail, mass transit gives you less bang for the buck, in terms of asses moved per dollar spent, than do private autos.

  22. ?
    ok, seriously, Im confused by this apparent criticism of unfailing cost overruns.
    isn’t this the same scarborough subway championed by the champion of the right, one Rob Ford, (RIP) ? sooooo like, what gives? an arch conservative pushed and pushed for a project that E_V_E_R_Y_O_N_E knows will cost more than the price of the bag of goods.
    now it’s all fodder for criticism of current civic politishuns or what?

  23. *
    “andycanuck says…I intend getting out after my parents’ passing”
    andy, we left toronto 15 years ago, presciently the very same week the terrorists brought down the world trade center.
    we were right downtown and i was afraid my young son would be the only kid in his class who didn’t speak english as a second language. we ended up in hastings county on 60 acres of land, with lovely neighbours and a school with great teacher/student ratios.
    our house has doubled in value (at the time they said extra land was worth next to nothing) and we appear to have beat the baby boom retirement rush out of the gta.
    out here, for the average asking price of a home in toronto, you can buy two working farms.
    don’t wait too long… every second person i meet out here is a rat off the sinking toronto ship.
    *

  24. “don’t wait too long… every second person i meet out here is a rat off the sinking toronto ship.”
    Yes, and isn’t it interesting how the escapees don’t seem to bring their former life-long habit of voting Liberal with them? Almost as if they’d learned something…

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation