Quote:
Originally Posted by tvp2003
That's great in theory, but given the cost, is it fair to say this won't happen until maybe 2050?!?
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This is the biggest challenge the City faces - long term funding for capital infrastructure. The Mayor's talked about it at length lately - the need for long term, predictable funding.
http://blog.calgarymayor.ca/2012/12/...or-nenshi.html
We will never, ever be able to build infrastructure of the order of magnitude of LRT lines unless we have a new funding arrangement in place with our Provincial and Federal Governments. The SELRT alone is $2.6 billion. The entire RouteAhead plan is $13 billion.
If the Province, for instance, simply made the Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI) program permanent and indexed it to inflation, we could take out a mortgage against the cost of building this infrastructure. There's no single ad-hoc grants (as it's largely done today) that will ever allow us to build the NC or SE LRT line.
The Mayor will be talking about this a lot over 2013 as the Cities of Calgary and Edmonton discuss City Charter with the Province.