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Roads: Gardiner Expressway

What I mean is, much city infrastructure is paid for off of the land tax base, development charges, land transfer taxes, etc. TIF is just a speculative program that builds the infrastructure of today with the tax base of tomorrow's development. It's speculative, and therefore a bit sketchy, because we don't really know how much revenue will be generated, as the development hasn't occurred yet. However, it's still using property taxes to build stuff. I'm not actually too worried about this speculation, as property values in Toronto have consistently risen over the long term. That land would get developed. I'm afraid we need to look at more of these kinds of funding tools to pay for infrastructure. City bonds are another means. If any city can implement these kinds of financing tools, it's Toronto, the centre of finance in Canada.


TIF isn't merely speculative. You are aware, I take it, that TIF is used to borrow funds or accrue debt, by using future revenue as securitization, in essence.

That's over simplifying, but roughly correct.

You may also know that the City of Toronto's debt is guaranteed as-of-right by the province, as municipalities are 'creatures of the province' meaning cities in Canada can't go bankrupt.

Given that Ontario is already highly indebted, not to the point of jeopardy, but surely to the point where one doesn't wish to add to those debts....TIF is non-starter.

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That would equally rule out municipal bonds, as the City of Toronto has already reached (within its 10 year budget) its self-imposed debt-limits, which are entirely reasonable.

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That doesn't mean additional 'revenue tools' or taxes can't be considered...............but one must first consider the shortfall in budgets as they exist today.

With no buried Gardiner (or underground Allen Expressway) ...... in fact, with no DRL, and no Crosstown-East...........there are Billions of below-the-line (unfunded) items in the City's 10-year plan.

That means items, which for the most part, are very necessary (re-signalling the B-D line, new rolling stock in 10 years, more debatably, platform-edge doors for our subway system) and many non-transit expenditures as well.

Once you've funded those, how much more appetite will there be for fees/taxes? If one assumed that provincially the needs meant a hike of the HST to 15%, and municipally a toll on the DVP/Gardiner of 30c per Km (or about $5 per direction for the typical user).........

Whatever ever tolls or other taxes you wish to impose will go on top of that.

That might be justifiable...............but is it credible?
 
No new taxes! Wynne and Trudeau's spending is out of control on a number of 'activist' pet projects of dubious value. By the end of Wynne's mandate 50 billion will be added to the province's debt. All departments should immediately slash spending. There should also be a moratorium on hiring except in highly technical fields across government departments. We are cruising for lowered credit ratings and higher debt payments. Ontario is one of the most indebted sub national jurisdictions. I suggest taking a close look at what can be salvaged and privatized. The only way that any of these fantastical transportation projects will be funded is through highly creative funding tools. I feel sorry for my grandkids. The millennials have already given up on home ownership.
 
And your "solution" is to embark on these multi-billion dollar fantastical schemes with dubious economic benefit and even shakier economics? Let's get realistic here. I'd love to see the Gardiner buried, but if the economics does not work, it does not work. And it sure is smart to use TIF (which basically takes away future tax revenues) for something that is simply a want, not a need. That's how you get budget deficits.

Don't confuse drawing a few lines on a google map for something as complex as a expressway/subway combination with multiple offramps (some of which are portrayed as having 90 degree turns) and exits to a plan - it isn't. Anyone who argue it is basically rehashing the Gardiner Viaduct ridiculousness.

AoD
 
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No, a lot more thought has gone into the routings, ramps, and funding than you account for. Look, you can't get any development (and the future revenues that derive from it) if the land upon which such development potential exists is taken up by expressway. Also, the reason I suggest the Allen toll tunnel/DRL is precisely because it requires zero user fees of drivers on our existing highways, requires no allocation of tax revenue (since the infrastructure is paid for by tolls), and it pays for the construction of part of our DRL. Why not create jobs, add transit, create better highway connectivity, and build the necessary longer term infrastructure for offloading the western Gardiner (on/off ramps through a Front St. extension) in case we ever want to bury or remove the elevated Gardiner?
 
Mr. Euphoria... tear down this expressway!! Who is actually building new downtown expressways? Nobody. They're tearing them down.

Is (NY Governor) Cuomo Ready to Rid Downtown Syracuse of I-81?

From link:


Governor Cuomo seems ready to tear down Syracuse’s crumbling I-81. Photo: Onondaga Citizens League

Speaking in Syracuse yesterday, Governor Andrew Cuomo appeared to indicate support for the removal of 3.75 miles of Interstate 81, the aging elevated highway that cuts through the heart of downtown.

“That could be a transformative project that really jump-starts the entire region,” Cuomo said, according to the Post-Standard. “I-81 did a lot of damage — a classic planning blunder. Let’s build a road and bisect an entire community. That’s an idea, yeah, let me write it down.”

With the elevated portion of I-81 fast approaching the end of its useful life and in need of near-constant repairs, state officials have narrowed its future to two options: tear it down and replace it with a surface-level boulevard, or rebuild it — which would most likely require widening the highway. A third option, an underground tunnel, is viewed as costly and infeasible.

The state DOT is in the midst of cost and environmental analyses of the remaining options, and is expected to issue a draft environmental impact statement by the end of the year. Cuomo did not explicitly say he supported a surface-level boulevard, but with the tunnel all but ruled out, if he wants to get rid of the highway it’s the only option left.

Cuomo also indicated a readiness to get things moving. “We procrastinate,” he said. “We wait for everyone to agree. You know when that day is going to come? Never. Never. If you wait for the perfect, you’re never going to get there. You will do nothing. And that’s just what we’ve done on I-81. We’ve done nothing. Find the best solution with the most agreement and move forward.”

Cuomo has been on somewhat of a highway removal kick of late. Earlier this year, the state budget included $97 million to transform the Bronx’s Moses-era Sheridan Expressway into a surface boulevard. And in April, the governor has lent his support to the proposed teardown of Buffalo’s Kensington Expressway.

The governor’s office has not responded to a Streetsblog inquiry asking whether his comments mean the state will go forward with the I-81 teardown.
 
No, a lot more thought has gone into the routings, ramps, and funding than you account for. Look, you can't get any development (and the future revenues that derive from it) if the land upon which such development potential exists is taken up by expressway. Also, the reason I suggest the Allen toll tunnel/DRL is precisely because it requires zero user fees of drivers on our existing highways, requires no allocation of tax revenue (since the infrastructure is paid for by tolls), and it pays for the construction of part of our DRL. Why not create jobs, add transit, create better highway connectivity, and build the necessary longer term infrastructure for offloading the western Gardiner (on/off ramps through a Front St. extension) in case we ever want to bury or remove the elevated Gardiner?

Words. Show me the data - engineering schematics, the vertical sections, geotechnical surveys, economic analysis, etc, etc. Everyone can throw out some combination of words that sounds nice, not everyone can make them work. You think that a scheme this complex is a one person job that you can just scribble on a forum and present as a fait accompli? All we have seen so far is a bunch of lines super-imposed on Google Maps that don't even have any semblance to what's actually possible.

Let's put it this way, even professionally done studies can be subjected to peer review for validity. Your idea isn't even close to that point, and you're already claiming it is beyond reproach - that you "thought about" these issues than we give you credit for?

AoD
 
No new taxes! Wynne and Trudeau's spending is out of control on a number of 'activist' pet projects of dubious value. By the end of Wynne's mandate 50 billion will be added to the province's debt. All departments should immediately slash spending. There should also be a moratorium on hiring except in highly technical fields across government departments. We are cruising for lowered credit ratings and higher debt payments. Ontario is one of the most indebted sub national jurisdictions. I suggest taking a close look at what can be salvaged and privatized. The only way that any of these fantastical transportation projects will be funded is through highly creative funding tools. I feel sorry for my grandkids. The millennials have already given up on home ownership.

So, for clarification; you believe this proposal and your related one for the Allen, can be funded by tolling only the proposal themselves and/or TIF.

I think the issue of using TIF and the problems that entails have already been thoroughly discussed.

So I'll skip over to your other financing notion.

For this to work, either as a private, or autonomous public (self-funding) proposal.......

We need to know the total cost you seek to recover.

As yet, you haven't put forward numbers, so I will throw out some admittedly very crude, back-of-the-envelope ones.

Cost of basic, underground, subway, excluding vehicles, and yards, in the ballparks of 450M per km, excluding terminal/interchange stations).

So a route covering in the range of 15km from the north-west of the City through to downtown runs you, $6.75B

Add in rolling stock at around $800M; plus a minimum of 3 interchange stations at +200M a pop for 600M, and a subway yard......probably running in the vicinity of 1B including properly aquisition.

So 9.2 B give or take a rounding error.

Now.....let's admit that your idea has the added complexity of a highway underground to deal with, requiring additional depth there and in certain areas downtown due to underground infrastructure.

I can't say what the added cost would be, but charitably, I would add 30% to the line-based costs, that's easily justified, and it would likely be more.

So we're all in at $11.2 B, on the low side for the subway portion of the scheme.

Now, we know transit fares don't recover operating costs, so your capital costs must be recovered from those using the highway.

But we haven't yet added the highway costs.

I could use Boston's 'Big Dig' as benchmark..........on the one hand that would be harsh, given the rather poor project management and costing of that effort; on the other hand their plan, in many respects
featured fewer complications than yours.

It cost in excess of $2B per km.

Inflation notwithstanding, I'm willing to assume you could build your highway at roughly 3x the cost of the subway, based on straight lane width vs tunnel width and replacing the cost of stations w/the cost of ramps.

That gives you a cost of around $9.4B; frankly I find that quite low...........but let's leave it for now...............so add that to the subway for a total cost of $21.5B.

Assuming a private entity built this, it would, as is likely w/gov't be debt-financed.

Commercial lending for this type of project would likely see rates in the range of 6% if the gov't issued guarantees, and 8% without.

So....let's assume an 8% carrying cost on the $21.5B

Assuming a 30-year amortization; you need to recover $700M+ per year, plus interest, so another $1.7B per year.

That's a total of 2.5B per year, with no profit.

Let's assume your highway is full to the brim.

That's around 15,000 cars each way in rush hour, or 30,000 daily trips in the peak.

Let's assume an additional 30,000 trips for the balance of any given day, or 60,000 trips per day on weekdays, and 30,000 per day on weekends.

That's 360,000 trips per week.

That's about 18.7M trips per year.

So now let's get to the cost per driver shall we?

At $10 per trip, you generate $187M per year.

Or less than 10% of what you require.

Taken to its logical extreme, you would have to charge each driver about $140 PER Trip.

$280 per day in commuting costs.

This assuming the private consortium has no interest in making a profit!

Assuming, you went to a pure government model, which still requires borrowing, you might get your interest costs as low as 2% right now, though that's optimistic.

But if you could, and if that reduced your total borrowing cost to around $400M per year, you need only recover $1.1B per year from drivers.

That let's them off with a paltry $60 per trip, or $120 per day in costs.

Now you can nitpick my numbers, change the amortization, modify the debt structure (assuming a declining balance would lower interest costs in the out years) but on the whole, I don't see you getting this done any cheaper than what I've outlined.

Now tell me again, please how this could be self-financing w/o new taxes?

Please don't imagine that Hong Kong style development would recover your costs; I don't have time to address that, in detail, right now, but I can tell you if the builder maxed out density on every available site already costed for, there is no hope of coming close.
 
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Of course much more work is required. Scribbling words on a forum is what we all do here. You know as well as I do that there aren't ready made schematics in filing cabinets at the Toronto Archives of current traffic volumes along potential alignments. There might be public works records from the land surveyors who laid out some of these streets. Current feasibility studies and EA's are complex, multi-stepped processes requiring project teams, city departments, layers of government (for example, the feds along rail corridors). My suggestions, like everyone else's, are mostly visualization exercises. There are precedents in other cities which have been referenced. If anything like this proposal went forward, much of it would be unrecognizable by the time of operation. I'm just trying to get the ball rolling on a novel approach to funding infrastructure that meets a lot of needs and some long discussed aims.
 
Did you know that the City of New York built and owned the subway tunnels. They then leased the subway tunnels to the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT, later Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) and the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT). The City of New York took them over when the private companies had a few money problems.

BTW. The streetcar tracks were owned and maintained by the city, and leased to the privately owned Toronto Railway Company from the beginning of their franchise in 1891. That lasted until the Toronto Transportation Commission took over when the TRC franchise ended in 1921.

Nobody pays a lease to drive on the asphalt. I think motorists should pay a lease (AKA toll) for driving on asphalt that is owned and maintained by the city.
 
Your costing, Northern Light, is way out of line. Read back a number of posts on the Allen Expressway thread. The distance is around 7km and the estimated cost per trip based on precedents in other cities is very likely under $10.00 one-way for the entire route. The matter of whether drivers would be willing to pay this amount has also been discussed, but these questions need to be considered with more serious and detailed data-driven analysis. The question of whether we want to remove all or a portion of Gardiner, let alone bury it, is an additional discussion. Burial is a more complex project requiring reconfiguration of Lakeshore, especially if we want to maximize the development along it. Whether we bury or remove the Gardiner, we'll need a means of transferring traffic on and off of it at its eastern and western ends. This proposal solves that problem in the west. Please keep in mind that an Allen toll tunnel only covers the capital construction costs of building the stations and the tunnel for the subway. Trains/rolling stock and the operating costs of the DRL should not be funded by the toll tunnel. That would be too expensive to pay for by tolls alone, nor would it be wise as it sets up a conflict between a highway operator and a transit operator. Boston's Big Dig was a much more extensive project in a part of the city that's much more difficult to tunnel because of the sea wall. They also kept the elevated highway above it open throughout construction, only removing it after the tunnel was completed. It's a different beast altogether. The reason I offered that specific alignment for the Allen is because there are no structures along it of more than three storeys. That's an easy bore, which is what we'd likely be doing. Trenching along streets seems to have fallen out of favour because of boring tech. The Crosstown is a case in point...
 
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Your costing, Northern Light, is way out of line. Read back a number of posts on the Allen Expressway thread. The distance is around 7km and the estimated cost per trip based on precedents in other cities is very likely under $10.00 one-way for the entire route. The matter of whether drivers would be willing to pay this amount has also been discussed, but these questions need to be considered with more serious and detailed data-driven analysis. The question of whether we want to remove all or a portion of Gardiner, let alone bury it, is an additional discussion. Burial is a more complex project requiring reconfiguration of Lakeshore, especially if we want to maximize the development along it. Whether we bury or remove the Gardiner, we'll need a means of transferring traffic on and off of it at its eastern and western ends. This proposal solves that problem in the west.

Excuse me?

Outside of changing the distance markers, how did you arrive at the conclusion that my costs are out of line?

Data, please! If you're going to suggest you know I'm wrong, then you should be prepared to prove it.

I chose that distance number based on the assumption that you would bury the entire Allen, while continuing your burial to downtown, and
that you would include in your distance the buried portion of the Gardiner. Using those assumptions will get you closer to 15km than 7km.

But assuming we took your 7km, and pro-rated my 15km, you still come out w/costs several times higher than $10 per day; a number I think you randomly plucked out of the air.

I think your target cost would be low, if it only covered the highway, but you wanted to finance an entire DRL west w/the same money.

If you think my costs are unrealistic, establish that.

I am completely prepared to stand corrected.

But I don't believe you have the requisite facts to do so.
 
No, the tolls do NOT include the cost of tunneling the Gardiner. The choice of whether to tunnel the Gardiner is another discussion, though this project would give us an exit/entrance for the western Gardiner between Strachan and Bathurst. The tolls strictly cover the tunneling of the Allen from Eglinton to the Gardiner, plus DRL stations at St. Clair, College, Dundas, Trinity-Bellwoods (Queen), and a second platform transfer box station at Eglinton West station on the Y-U, Ossington Station on the B-D, and at a new intermodal station at Bathurst and Front. This project would NOT pay for the entire intermodal station at Bathurst/Spadina and Front.
 
Don't tunnel, don't elevate, don't at-grade.............trench. Trench the damn highway and GIVE the Toronto lands to the developers with only the proviso that they have to build the highway under their buildings. This isn't rocket science and Toronto has thousands of examples of doing precisely this..........their called underground parking garages except instead of parking the cars, they would simply keep driving.

Highway is built, Toronto can sell the land the current Gardiner is on, the highway is out-of-sight-out-of-mind, and Toronto gets it's Waterfront back. If Minni can built an LRT thru a parking garage including the station surely to god Toronto can built a road. These would be just parking garages except they would have openings at either end. Also if the private developers do it you can be damn sure they will do it in half the time as the city and they won't run over budget.
 
It's a good idea, ssiguy2, but there's only room to have development with the expressway below it AND Lakeshore Blvd. well east of Yonge, from almost Jarvis to the DVP. I do think something along the lines of what you propose is better than the hybrid option.
 
If enough people think it's a good idea then don't present it to the City or but rather a developer. If a developer turns to the city with an idea that they will build the Gardiner then that will get the City's and most importantly, the media's attention.
 

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