Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
Once all the interchanges are in place I wonder how close this will actually be to $500 million? $345 million now plus some interchanges and next thing you know the budget for any other infrastructure is totally spent....
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While it won't be $500M as described above, I'm fine with having limited money for other infrastructure for a few years if it means getting this piece done, and I'm probably the first person to declare that there is still an infrastructure deficit and things need to get built now.
There's some big time projects ongoing in most areas of the city. The southeast has the ring road, the northeast has the LRT extension, airport tunnel and Metis Trail work, the west side has the West LRT and the northwest has the Crowchild/Stoney work and LRT extension.
All that work will take us to 2014, with most of it ending in 2012/2013. Investment is a little light south and west of Glenmore, and in the north central areas, the SW ring road can change that. This would logically follow the southeast ring road work and involves provincial dollars. A different funding model will likely be used for the southeast LRT, starting sometime before 2017. When the projects in the northeast and on the west side wrap up, those areas will be pretty well set for quite awhile, allowing concentration to shift to other areas.
Anyway, I guess my point in all this is to say that even though there is still an infrastructure deficit, there is a pretty big package ongoing, and given the temporal sensitivity of the airport tunnel, I can stomach a couple light years of infrastructure projects if it means getting this one done and done right.