{"id":10878,"date":"2010-05-05T12:30:27","date_gmt":"2010-05-05T16:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=10878"},"modified":"2013-01-21T13:12:37","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T18:12:37","slug":"lorinc-more-tunnel-vision-from-candidates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/05\/05\/lorinc-more-tunnel-vision-from-candidates\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Rossi gets tunnel vision too"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Another day, another subway platform.<\/p>\n

Adding his voice to the chorus of calls for subway expansion, mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi yesterday unveiled his own program, this one to be funded using the dividend of his plan to sell off Toronto Hydro and retire the city\u2019s $2.5 billion debt load.<\/p>\n

Standing on the Kay Gardner bridge south of the Davisville Station, Rossi said yesterday that he plans to invest $4.5 billion over ten years, with funds drawn from the city\u2019s operating budget. By paying off the accumulated debt, Rossi said the city would save about $450 million a year in interest payments.<\/p>\n

The announcement brought a swift put-down<\/a> from George Smitherman, who issued a release that said, \u201cTorontonians now have the right to question Mr. Rossi\u2019s competence to be mayor\u201d because of \u201cerrors\u201d and \u201choles\u201d in the plan.<\/p>\n

The annual savings, according to Rossi\u2019s proposal (dubbed \u201cTransit City Plus\u201d), should pay for the construction of two kilometres of tunnel plus a station every year, with the TTC relying on a continuous tunneling approach to save start-up costs.<\/p>\n

Rossi also said he\u2019d delay the Downtown Relief Line in favour of completing the Sheppard subway and extending the Yonge line up into York Region.<\/p>\n

Like Sarah Thomson<\/a>, Rossi wants private sector involvement in these projects to bring costs down, but he rejected road tolls as a way of raising revenue. Also like Thomson, Rossi\u2019s numbers are unrealistically optimistic<\/a> and fail to account for a range of associated budget pressures.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

His plan assumes subway construction costs of $225 million per kilometer, which is almost a third less than what\u2019s being spent currently on the Spadina extension into Vaughan. Nor does it not include the purchase of additional subway cars, the little matter of the TTC\u2019s $400 million a year operating deficit, and the fallout from mounting overcrowding on a Yonge line that will be expected to serve transit-starved 905ers. Finally, he hasn\u2019t factored in the loss of the Hydro dividend payment, which adds about $25 to $50 million a year to the city\u2019s revenue stream.<\/p>\n

Smitherman further pointed out that the Hydro sale would trigger a 33% transfer tax.<\/p>\n

Rossi\u2019s pitch also presumes the city\u2019s interest payments will remain negligible after he uses the Hydro proceeds to retire the debt. But according to council\u2019s long-term capital plan, the city will spend about $16 billion over the next decade on a broad range of infrastructure improvements (road\/bridge repairs, transit maintenance, water mains, etc.), adding $4.7 billion in new net debt.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s twice as much debt as we have today, meaning the city will again be faced with a very substantial annual interest outlay, except in a decade, we\u2019ll have no big asset to sell off in order to make that line item disappear.<\/p>\n

And thus we arrive at the wing-and-a-prayer aspect of Transit City Plus.<\/p>\n

Rossi, like Mel Lastman did over a decade ago, is talking about using the subway expansion to drive high-density development activity along the new lines. Eventually, the density will materialize, but not in the time frame Rossi envisions.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the Metrolinx psychodrama. The agency is expected to release a modified version of its Big Move plan on May 19 in response to the province\u2019s move to delay the funding of Transit City and Viva.<\/p>\n

Rossi yesterday would not rule out the possibility of asking Metrolinx to take over the subways whole cloth. \u201cThat\u2019s part of the discussion we need to have,\u201d he said, adding. \u201cWhile it\u2019s on the table, [the transfer] is not a foregone conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also hinted that he\u2019d be open to asking Metrolinx to re-allocate part of the $8 billion Transit City funding to the subways he\u2019s proposing. His gambit — and you\u2019ve heard this one before — is that if Toronto shows its got the intestinal fortitude to finance subway construction on its own dime, our provincial overlords will be sufficiently impressed that they\u2019ll give us a top-up if we ask nicely.<\/p>\n

But can Torontonians take that one to the bank? Hardly. Just look at what happened with the triple-promised LRT funding.<\/p>\n

Give Rossi this much: he\u2019s been willing to cough up a somewhat plausible financing scenario, unlike Thomson or Rob Ford<\/a>. But for someone who\u2019s fashioned himself as a number cruncher, his arithmetic still leaves much to be desired.<\/p>\n

photo by Kevin Steele<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another day, another subway platform. Adding his voice to the chorus of calls for subway expansion, mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi yesterday unveiled his own program, this one to be funded using the dividend of his plan to sell off Toronto Hydro and retire the city\u2019s $2.5 billion debt load. Standing on the Kay Gardner bridgeContinue reading “LORINC: Rossi gets tunnel vision too”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[94,309,2277,6245,666,426,2469,551,227,10726,1631,959,19,391],"class_list":["post-10878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-transit","tag-2010-election","tag-bank","tag-davisville-station","tag-george-smitherman","tag-kevin-steele","tag-mayor","tag-mayoral-candidate","tag-mel-lastman","tag-rob-ford","tag-rocco-rossi","tag-sheppard-subway","tag-thomson","tag-toronto","tag-usd"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: Rossi gets tunnel vision too - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/05\/05\/lorinc-more-tunnel-vision-from-candidates\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: Rossi gets tunnel vision too - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Another day, another subway platform. Adding his voice to the chorus of calls for subway expansion, mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi yesterday unveiled his own program, this one to be funded using the dividend of his plan to sell off Toronto Hydro and retire the city\u2019s $2.5 billion debt load. 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