BurlOak
Senior Member
Read the link that was provided - http://www.metrolinx.com/en/docs/pdf/board_agenda/20100519/Five_in_Ten_Board_web.pdf - it provides both the $1.4 billion number in 2008 dollars, and the escalated number, in the year of spending at $2.465 billion. If you look at the cash flows, it's not two years of spending - the spending peaks in 2019/2020 ... that's 12 years of inflation, not 2 (for the peak spending year).
If you go run the numbers, you'll see that the document uses a construction price index of 4% (which is pretty typical). So then you can calculate the actual 2008$ of the $2.465 based on year of spending, and you get about $1.7 billion. So the price seems to have gone up from about $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion. At the same time though Finch seems to have dropped from $1.2 billion to $0.9 billion.
So if the escalated cost has now dropped to $2.3 billion, then the cost in 2008$ must now be less than $1.7 billion ... somewhere in $1.5 to $1.6 billion I'd guess. Or the money is being spent earlier (which isn't how these projects normally work)
But according to the TTC report to Commision (table on page 16), the LRT cost is in 2011 dollars, not escalating dollars.
so either;
1) they are comparing escalated dollars for LRT to current (or 2011) dollars for subway, just to make subway look better, OR,
2) the LRT cost has climbed to $2.3B in 2011 dollars.
Reading the TTC response, it is clearly written the second way.