[Torture]

Originally Posted by CSharp

To me, with the economy the way it is right now, it would actually be best to build the arena over the Green Line. If Calgary wants to revitalize the downtown area and into the East Village and get businesses going again, there's no better way to do it and regain some money back afterwards. The Green Line doesn't add value to the City in any way and the City's transit system is and has always been very poor when you compare it to other major cities in Canada and around the world. The city actually needs to have a vibrant downtown to attract tenants and I think a new arena that can host top end venues will attract 10-20 times more people than it currently can. Once you get the new arena in place and it's generating revenue, then think about extending the line to the airport and finally the Green Line.

You won't find many economists that talk about economic stimulus from building arenas.

"The basic idea is that sports stadiums typically aren't a good tool for economic development," said Victor Matheson, an economist at Holy Cross who has studied the economic impact of stadium construction for decades. When cities cite studies (often produced by parties with an interest in building the stadium) touting the impact of such projects, there is a simple rule for determining the actual return on investment, Matheson said: "Take whatever number the sports promoter says, take it and move the decimal one place to the left. Divide it by ten, and that's a pretty good estimate of the actual economic impact."

Others agree. While "it is inarguable that within a few blocks you'll have an effect," the results are questionable for metro areas as a whole, Stefan Szymanski, a sports economist at the University of Michigan, said.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business...adiums/260900/

Public transit, on the other hand:

In a new paper set for publication in Urban Studies, Chatman and fellow planner Robert Noland of Rutgers University use concrete numbers to make the case that transit produces agglomeration. They report that this hidden economic value of transit could be worth anywhere from $1.5 million to $1.8 billion a year, depending on the size of the city. And the bigger the city, they find, the bigger the agglomeration benefit of expanding transit.

Simply put, city officials now have a much stronger argument for using taxpayer money to improve their public transportation service.

"These results could be dropped directly into a cost-benefit analysis," says Chatman. "It would show a higher benefits-cost ratio for rail investments, particularly rail investments in large cities with existing transit networks."

https://www.citylab.com/life/2013/08...ou-think/6532/

Or another:

Research findings in the 2014 APTA publication, “Economic Impact of Public Transportation Investment,” describe the increased economic productivity due to investment in urban transportation, especially when those investments are maintained over many years, as estimated in a 20-year scenario: “The impact by the end of the 20-year period would represent a ratio of more than $3.7 billion per year of additional GDP per $1 billion invested annually. This includes $2 billion due to the productivity effect of cost savings in the economy and $1.7 billion supported by a pattern of public transportation investment spending.”

What does that mean in terms of jobs? The study estimates an investment of $1 billion in public transportation would result in approximately 50,731 jobs.

https://www.providencejournal.com/ZZ...boosts-economy