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Originally Posted by Roughneck
Incredibly cheap provided you ignore the construction and upgrade costs that go along with them. Throw a toll on to recover construction costs and you aren't coming back with 20 cents per trip. 20 cents per trip on Deerfoot wouldn't even cover the costs for it alone (albeit that's still a provincial responsibility for the time being).
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Transit is capital intensive in its own right. The City's capital budget for transit over the next several years is comparable to its capital budget for roads.
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Between provincial and municipal investment in roads we're seeing billions thrown around each four year budget. Hell, the city is spending $200M just to connect it's own roads to the provinces $3.2B highway.
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The Ring Road is expensive but it already carries hundreds of thousands of trips/day. The Green Line Stage 1 is comparably expensive, but will only carry 55000-65000 trips/day. A completed Green Line will exceed the costs of the entire Ring Road. And the Ring Road (and other roads) carry freight and goods, which transit does not.
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I'd be all for making the new communities subject to a similar levy plan to fund development as it would ensure none of them get built, because nobody would take the risk on the property taxes funding themselves over that time.
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Well, that's why the East Village levy area includes parts of downtown Calgary, including the Bow tower. That's the only way it's generating enough levies to fund and finance the many hundreds of millions of dollar in infrastructure upgrades and beautification for a community that will max out at just 10-12K residents.