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New Transit Funding Sources

What are you talking about? How ill-informed are people on here? Wow, do some at least cursory reading about cost of living in Ontario. Soon only the one percenters will be able to afford to live in Toronto. The average price of a house in Toronto is almost $1.3 million (CAN): http://www.citynews.ca/2016/06/03/average-house-price-in-toronto-continues-to-rise-to-1-28m-in-may/
The median home price in Boston is $505000.00 (U.S.). The median home price in Chicago is $190000 (U.S.). See this Huffington Post Business Report dated April, 2016:

Canadian House Prices 40% Too High For A Reason, The Economist Says
The Huffington Post Canada | By Daniel Tencer
Posted: 04/01/2016 1:53 pm EDT Updated: 04/02/2016 12:59 am EDT
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Vancouver's house prices are soaring because it's one of a handful of "globalized cities" that are attracting more than their share of talent and money, The Economist says. | Stuart McCall via Getty Images
The Economist magazine has been saying for years that Canadian houses are overvalued. Its latest outlook offers the largest estimate yet: Houses in Canada, it says, are about 40 per cent too pricey, relative to “fair value,” or what people can afford.

But this time, the magazine’s latest global housing outlook offers an explanation for why Toronto and Vancouver, in particular, have seen runaway house price growth in recent years, while other Canadian markets have stagnated or even seen falling prices.

“Globalization has created a handful of metropolises that attract people, capital and ideas from all over the world, almost irrespective of how their national economy is doing,” The Economist writes. “House prices in such places, unsurprisingly, outpace the national average.”
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In Europe's major capitals, house prices are growing at twice the rate of national averages.

In Canada, this is translating into an ever larger concentration of jobs, and people of home-buying age, in Toronto and Vancouver, even as the economy in many other parts of the country stagnates.

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House prices are soaring in Toronto and Vancouver, but are stagnating or falling in the rest of the country. The situation in the job market is similar. (Chart: National Bank Financial)

“The working age population is growing about 70 per cent faster than the national average in Vancouver and Toronto,” National Bank economist Stefane Marion noted this week.

These two cities now account for an enormous share of Canada’s economic growth. While nationwide job growth amounted to 0.9 per cent over the past year, Toronto added 5.5 per cent new jobs and Vancouver added 4.4 per cent new jobs, Marion noted.

This same pattern can be seen worldwide. As the average house price in Canada passed the half-million-dollar mark last month, British house prices topped the GBP200,000 (C$370,000) mark for the first time. Thanks to London's popularity among billionaire home buyers, prices in southern England are now twice as high as in northern England.

“Between 2002 and 2012 the typical London home sold for seven times the city’s average annual salary. That figure has since risen to 12 times,” The Economist noted.

But living in one of these “globalized cities,” as The Economist calls them, is no guarantee that the price of your home will go up forever.

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Globalized cities can, and do, see house-price crashes. Silicon Valley’s tech boom didn’t stop San Francisco house prices from falling 43 per cent from 2007 to 2009. London was already the world’s favourite place for the wealthy to buy homes in 2008, when its house prices fell by 15 per cent in a year.

“As property developers from Las Vegas to Limerick will attest, when supply does eventually respond to soaring demand, property prices fall,” The Economist notes.
 
My point in the above post is that we have to be very careful in paying for things in Toronto that we aren't making the city a more costly place to live and work.
 
Yes we are ill informed for wanting to stick to what was being discussed instead of going off on a tangent.
 
It's just as arguable that harping on about hydro is going off on a tangent. Okay hot shot, how do you propose we pay for transit?
 
Road tolls ONLY on new highways (including a right of way for transit in the build). Where do you build them? Underground. It means you don't have to worry about land acquisition. Tunneling can be costly, but our road tolls are among the highest in the world. The demand is there for sure.
 
I think road tolls for new or expanded highways are good, but really to just help pay for themselves. That would leave some more money for transit, but I doubt it would have a major effect, seeing as highways are not exactly cheap to build and operate either.

I'm not absolutely against a downtown congestion charge, but I think it would have a big effect on angering motorists. This would stack with the fact that we're continuously removing road space from cars downtown for expanded pedestrian, cycling and transit infrastructure (which is a of course a good thing). This has the potential of pitting councilors against each other, and making things more political than they already are. Even seriously proposing a congestion charge could do more harm than good. Although maybe after the next election, when we're supposed to have a few more downtown wards, this may be possible, but somehow I doubt it.

I would rather make transit and cycling more attractive without pitting motorists against it if they feel like they're paying for all of it (despite whether that's true). I think in the end it's going to come down to property tax increases, which affect everyone, not just motorists, and fare increases, which can be ok as long as there is an actual improvement in service (my ideal would be fare-by-distance, which I've harped on earlier). Things like integrating stations into larger developments can also help, and I wouldn't be against a sales tax hike, even if just in the GTA. I would be alright with a 2% Toronto sales tax, and maybe 1% in the rest of the GTA, purely for city infrastructure. Despite being higher, it was also much easier to calculate 15% tax in my head, than 13%...
 
In much earlier posts I cited the annual profits of the 407. Suffice it to say that if all of those profits were exclusively allocated to transit since that highway's inception, we'd have ST and the DRL up and running. Funny thing is, the land acquisition required to build that highway probably outstrips what it would cost to tunnel a similar highway.
 
In much earlier posts I cited the annual profits of the 407. Suffice it to say that if all of those profits were exclusively allocated to transit since that highway's inception, we'd have ST and the DRL up and running. Funny thing is, the land acquisition required to build that highway probably outstrips what it would cost to tunnel a similar highway.
I ddn't know they published their profits.
 
I ddn't know they published their profits.

They are published on SEDAR. Cash flow from customers less costs and interest are about $500M/yr. They spend about $100M on construction in 2015. They also raised via debt market net $350M so they can pay a dividend of $750M. And pretty steady results year over year.

But net cash flow excluding debt issuances is around $400M per year. Of course part of this has to be attributed to the capital they spent to buy the road. So it is FALSE to say this is what could have been allocated to transit.

The same will be true with all future infrastructure bank projects. A lot of people on this site will have to gain financial acumen or else there will be constant complaints about private profit (versus paying for political graft, union pensions and constant cost overruns).
 
Rob Ford 2.0 (disguised as John Tory) will be funding the TTC with a fare increase. See PDF report at this link on the TTC operating budget for 2017. See PDF report at this link on the TTC capital budget for 2017 to 2026. Of course, John Tory, being "rich", will see this increase as "small" and shouldn't hurt his family at all.

See The Star at this link.

TTC set to increase fares for sixth straight year

The transit agency is proposing to increase the cost of a token to $3 from $2.90, though it would not affect the $3.25 price of a cash fare.​
 
Rob Ford 2.0 (disguised as John Tory) will be funding the TTC with a fare increase. See PDF report at this link on the TTC operating budget for 2017. See PDF report at this link on the TTC capital budget for 2017 to 2026. Of course, John Tory, being "rich", will see this increase as "small" and shouldn't hurt his family at all.

See The Star at this link.

TTC set to increase fares for sixth straight year

The transit agency is proposing to increase the cost of a token to $3 from $2.90, though it would not affect the $3.25 price of a cash fare.​

whatever./.....the token is about to go extinct anyways. Seriously though, assuming a daily rider to and from work uses tokens, itll only amount to $1 a week, and at that frequency they most likely wouldve purchased a metropass anyways.
 
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whatever./.....the token is about to go extinct anyways. Seriously though, assuming a daily rider to and from work uses tokens, itll only amount to $1 a week, and at that frequency they most likely wouldve purchased a metropass anyways.

I'm hoping under Presto TTC will move to quarterly or even monthly price adjustments. Ten 1 cent increases per year would make them far less shocking when they occur and better align with increases in expenses.
 
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