News   Jun 28, 2024
Streetsville Centre Plaza Redevelopment Proposed North of GO Station in Mississauga
 4.4K     6 
News   Jun 28, 2024
GALA Developments Unveils Danny Danforth in Toronto's East End
 1.9K     2 
News   Jun 28, 2024
News Roundup for June 28, 2024
 675     1 

New Transit Funding Sources

TOareaFan said:
What if he found $1B (less than 1% cost saving on provincial budget) and the gas tax could be halved? What if he found $1B....and identified $500 mil or so of asset sales per year and the gas tax could be cut?

Is it not worth looking or should we just say "we need to find $2B...lets get it all from tax increases".

What if, say, more people in Ontario supported transit expansion than some other costly government programs?
Click to expand...

I just have a hard feeling he's going to find 1 billion or whatever in effieciency savings every year and also I wonder how other people outside of the GTA are going to feel about 1 billion or so of their money going into the GTA every year to fund transit.
 
Adjei said:
I just have a hard feeling he's going to find 1 billion or whatever in effieciency savings every year and also I wonder how other people outside of the GTA are going to feel about 1 billion or so of their money going into the GTA every year to fund transit.
Click to expand...

They would prefer paying an additional 10 cents a litre on their gas to fund GTA transit?
 
Adjei said:
I just have a hard feeling he's going to find 1 billion or whatever in effieciency savings every year and also I wonder how other people outside of the GTA are going to feel about 1 billion or so of their money going into the GTA every year to fund transit.
Click to expand...
If the GTA gifts him enough seats to form a government, he should tell the rest of the province to grin and bear it.
 
In Paris, they are paying for 200 kilometres of new subways through:

"...an increase in the tax on office space, a levy on every resident in the region, a contribution from the state-owned public transit operator and a user fee paid by the company that will operate the new system."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/in-paris-a-different-vision-for-subways/article12901813/

Only in Toronto are we supposed to pay for subways and other transit through government efficiencies. I wonder why other juridisctions around the world haven't found this genius idea.
 
Adjei said:
"
Even though both the HST and gas tax are collected across the province, residents outside the GTHA won’t be subsidizing transit in the metropolitan area, she said. They would receive their share of both the HST and gas tax to fund their own projects"

http://www.citynews.ca/2013/12/12/gas-tax-hike-recommended-to-pay-for-gtha-transit-expansion/
Click to expand...

Thanks....I had gone off and looked myself...so, here is another problem.

this quote from the star:

Its report, released Thursday, suggests two ways of phasing in the gas tax.

Its preference is for a 3 cents a litre increase in the first year, costing drivers about $80 a year more, adding 1 cent a year to a maximum of 10 cents.

In addition there would be a moderate 0.5 per cent corporate income tax increase and the redeployment of about $80 million in HST to transit building.

Once it is fully phased in the plan would raise between $1.7 billion and $1.8 billion a year for a dedicated, protected transit fund.
Click to expand...

So once fully phased in the funding plan (gas taxes + corporate taxes + re-assigning some HST) gets to $1.7B/$1.8B so fully phased in it does not get to the $2B....take away the 46% of the revenues (again the quote is from the Star) that will not come to the GTHA. 46% of $1.8B is $828mil so the amount available for the Big Move is only about $1B a year fully phased in. and fully phased in the plan falls far short of the $2B goal.

The key is they are proposing to phase the gas tax in very slowly (3cents to begin with and climbing by 1cent a year till it gets to 10).....so you are very very far from the goal and they propose to borrow ($8B) against the future revenues until they kick in so then some of the gas taxes and corporate taxes will not be paying for transit they will be paying debt costs (3% of $8B is about a 1/4 billion dollars per year). So the $1B a year becomes $750 mil net of debt charges?

I think they might have to find some efficiencies on top of this to reach their $2B a year goal.....or cut the amount of things they want to build.
 
Last edited:
TOareaFan said:
They would prefer paying an additional 10 cents a litre on their gas to fund GTA transit?
Click to expand...

If you read the report, it makes it very clear the tax is GTA only. The articles are doing a horrible job reporting on this, they are focusing on one of only 20 recommendations made by the report (the tax hike), and even then are forgetting to report on large portions of it.

Again, if you read the report they are also recommending spreading the projects out a bit, considering many of them such as the western end of the Dundas BRT, the northern portion of the Yonge Extension, and Lakeshore electrification are long term projects.

They are also proposing that Municipalities and The Federal government to start kicking in some cash. They correctly state that the province shouldn't have to pay for 100% of it.
 
Last edited:
innsertnamehere said:
If you read the report, it makes it very clear the tax is GTA only.
Click to expand...

That is not quite true.....they are province wide tax increases but the recommendation is that only those raised in the GTHA would be invested in the GTHA.....the balance would be returned/invested to the local areas for their own infrastructure projects (transit, roads, bridges....whatever the need is).

innsertnamehere said:
The articles are doing a horrible job reporting on this, they are focusing on one of only 20 recommendations made by the report (the tax hike), and even then are forgetting to report on large portions of it.
Click to expand...

While this is true, the 20 recommendations would fit nicely in a full page ad in a paper....perhaps if they want that full message out there that is the way to go.

innsertnamehere said:
Again, if you read the report they are also recommending spreading the projects out a bit, considering many of them such as the western end of the Dundas BRT, the northern portion of the Yonge Extension, and Lakeshore electrification are long term projects.

They are also proposing that Municipalities and The Federal government to start kicking in some cash. They correctly state that the province shouldn't have to pay for 100% of it.
Click to expand...

I think we need to look back....Metrolinx produced a plan, not a perfect plan but a plan, called the Big Move....at the time they said the "Investment Strategy" (which would have been better named the "taxation strategy" as that is what it is/was) would come later...it came and gave the province a menu of potential fund raising possibilities to to raise $2B a year for 25 years to pay for the $34 billion of items in the next phase of the Big Move.....it did not make decisions for the province in terms of what revenues to increase/implement but it gave them a slate of choices which would fully fund the Big Move.

Rather than make the choice the province engaged this new panel to make the recommendations on how to raise the $34B +.

It would, to me, that the panel either failed in its mandate or re-wrote its mandate because it comes up short in funding the $34B+:

1. As I noted above, their own math shows that they are likely going to net less than $1B per year.
2. As you point out, they now recommend that the province should not be bearing the full cost and that
a) The federal government should pay 1/3
b) "That municipalities in the GTHA make greater use of their borrowing capacity to finance local
transit improvements."
3. They want to conduct a full review of the Big Move in 2014

It would seem to me that this, effectively, kills the Big Move.......whether you/we/I liked any/all of the individual projects within the Big Move, we all had to agree it was a full fledged regional plan which, through the Investment Strategy, identified regional/provincial ways to raise the funds necessary.

Now we have an early review of the projects/plans combined with a funding formula that relies on 1/3 federal funding and municipalities willingness to borrow funds to contribute to the local projects within the plan.....RIP Big Move.
 
Metrolinx's proposal ingored political realities, the panel was hired to determine more of what was realistic in the political environment. This is still funding the Big move, they are simply recommending moving the review forward by 2 years. its not going to destroy the Big Move, it'll probably shuffle around a couple of projects though, and ensures that it matches land planning policies. They also still recommend 25% funding for local improvements (as it is currently in the Big Move), but it simply encourages other levels of government to kick in as well. i'm sure the province will take all the money it can get from other levels.

these are also recommendations, and as with Anne Golden report on amalgamation in the 1990's, it can be ignored by the province if they want to.
 
innsertnamehere said:
Metrolinx's proposal ingored political realities, the panel was hired to determine more of what was realistic in the political environment. This is still funding the Big move, they are simply recommending moving the review forward by 2 years. its not going to destroy the Big Move, it'll probably shuffle around a couple of projects though, and ensures that it matches land planning policies. They also still recommend 25% funding for local improvements (as it is currently in the Big Move), but it simply encourages other levels of government to kick in as well. i'm sure the province will take all the money it can get from other levels.

these are also recommendations, and as with Anne Golden report on amalgamation in the 1990's, it can be ignored by the province if they want to.
Click to expand...

That certainly is the "spin" but now the building of whatever is left of the Big Move (after the review) is dependent on the federal money...after all, the actual funding mechanisms recommended cover less than half of the targetted $2B a year so that federal money becomes a necessity.....also, asking/recommending/requiring local funding (via borrowing which is interesting in and of itself) you now introduce a new way of prioritizing projects. Transit goes to where there is a) federal support and b) a local willingness to borrow funds.

I am not gonna opine on whether this plan is better than the ML plan for raising the $2B year. All I can say is that this one does not raise $2B a year...it seems to raise less than $1B/year and ties us to that old method of hoping and begging from the feds for the rest. So, if their mandate was to find the best ways to raise the $2B/year, by definition they have failed.
 
The funding mechanisms cover 1.8 billion annually, just 10% is "required" from other governments, and they have set up "contingencies" to account for if the money doesn't come such as shortening the Yonge extension which that alone would save $2 billion.
 
innsertnamehere said:
The funding mechanisms cover 1.8 billion annually, just 10% is "required" from other governments, and they have set up "contingencies" to account for if the money doesn't come such as shortening the Yonge extension which that alone would save $2 billion.
Click to expand...

1.8 billion does not seems like a lot to be honest with you. We need more then that to build anymore LRT lines.
 
innsertnamehere said:
The funding mechanisms cover 1.8 billion annually, just 10% is "required" from other governments, and they have set up "contingencies" to account for if the money doesn't come such as shortening the Yonge extension which that alone would save $2 billion.
Click to expand...

they have stated themselves that $1.8B comes when it is fully phased in.....46% of that goes back to the non-GTHA regions and they introduce debt charges on $8billion they will incur in the early years before the full phase in.

so the "net" seems to be significantly less than we need.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top