Friday, May 8, 2009

Tunnel ! True Cost ! Please !
Seems the seat warmers around the council table at City Hall will soon be voting on staff's proposal for a downtown transit tunnel, the city's transit committee having given its approval for the project.
The feds, who are expected to throw in big bucks to pay for it, aren't as enamored of Ottawa's version of the "big dig" and are demanding to see the exact price tag prior to loosening the purse strings. Can Dalton McGuinty be far behind ?
Ottawa ratepayers would like to see the exact price tag too. We know we're going to bear our fair share to build this monument to current council members. (Aside -- Lord knows this bunch is truly deserving of a monument, but a multi-billion-dollar project is rather over-the-top, wouldn't you say ?) We also know that in order to get projects approved, the public is frequently presented with cost estimates which bear little or no resemblance to what the actual cost turns out to be at the conclusion of the project. Overrun -- that's the word.
Politicians like to talk in terms of millions or billions of dollars when they talk about these big projects. Boggles the mind of the ordinary person. Politicians like it when the ordinary person's mind is boggled. Means they aren't likely to rise up in protest -- pitchforks at the ready.
Why can't it be simplified. Citizen Ellie would like to see the exact price tag explained in a way Joe and Jane Ratepayer can easily understand. How about something along these lines: in its first year, the tunnel will cost "X" dollars; the city's share is "Y" dollars; your property tax will increase by "Z" percent (on top of whatever it costs to keep the city running as per usual). The same formula could be repeated for the second year, the third year and so on. And it could also be used to explain to Joe and Jane Ratepayer what Lansdowne Live, another big project, will mean to their property taxes.
The simple and obvious truth is that these huge projects mean huge property tax increases. The money has to come from somewhere. Councillors would do us all a very big favor if they simply told the truth. Being able to forecast what one's property tax increases over the next five years are likely to be is very important for ratepayers on fixed incomes -- and there are a lot of these in Ottawa, as it's second only to Victoria in terms of number of retirees living within its city limits. Citizen Ellie, for example, would like to know in order to make an informed decision on whether to sell up and move to Smith's Falls where housing is cheaper and property tax is considerably lower.
There are still a lot of unanswered questions regarding the transit plan and especially the tunnel. Andy Haydon, respected former reeve/mayor of Nepean and later regional chair, doesn't think this is the cheapest way to go. He favors buses and surface light rail. That works well it a lot of North American cities comparable in size to Ottawa. Why couldn't it work here ? Can someone on council explain why it wouldn't work here -- and don't feed us the usual pap about getting cars out of the downtown core. (Aside: if the city is truly interested in getting cars out of the downtown core, people should be allowed to park their Vespas on the sidewalks -- like they do in Barcelona !)
Does Ottawa's population and OC Transpo ridership justify such an elaborate scheme ? OC Transpo can't meet its current financial obligations through farebox revenues. It requires a subsidy through property tax of over 50% of its operating costs. What happened to the plan to reduce the ratepayer subsidy and generate more of the operating costs through the farebox ? Gone with the wind ?
One excellent idea was brought forward this week -- one that's within the realm of possibility and should be considered in further transit plan discussions. That idea -- use the now mothballed Prince of Wales railway bridge across the Ottawa River (near Parkdale) to extend O-Train service to the Quebec side. The O-Train goes almost there anyway, the cut and the tunnel are already in existence and there's a railway right-of-way on the Quebec side. Fast way to move people from one side of the river to the other -- close to Place de Portage and downtown Gatineau, Tunney's Pasture and downtown Ottawa.
Citizen Ellie is counting on the feds to save us from fiscal disaster in the form of a tunnel under the downtown core. If the feds balk at paying their share of this foolishness, then the transit plan will have to go back to the drawing board for sober second thought where, it is hoped, common sense will prevail.
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