Queen's Park approves the major infrastructure Metrolinx builds. That dedicated ML revenue stream and the infrastructure it builds would still be subject to the whims of QP politicians. How about we get rid of one level of politics?
And money given to the municipalities would be at the whims of municipal politicians. That's gone swimmingly so far in Toronto.
At least under this model, regionally important projects wouldn't be at the whim of municipal politicians. Brampton being a perfect example too.
As has been pointed out before, those revenue tools are a joke. $40 Million/year from an entertainment tax won't put a dent in Toronto's infrastructure shortfall. All the tools in the City of Toronto Act generate similarly little revenue. Some of those taxes cost more to collect than the revenue they'd generate. The tools in the CoTA are horribly inefficient at raising raising the funds for capital infrastructure.
Alone they wouldn't, but combined together, including road tolls, would make a pretty sizeable dent, especially considering that most of the projects that Toronto would need to fund under this model would be local LRT projects, which usually run a couple hundred million a pop. Spread out over the life cycle of a project, that's not a hugely burdensome investment.
Even these LRT lines run $1 Billion a piece. That's too pricey for Toronto to self fund, even with the revenue tools in the City of Toronto Act. With three taxes, a gas tax, entertainment tax, alcohol tax, $5 Billion of light rail would take 40 years to fund. Toronto needs more than $5 Billion of investments over 40 years. This isn't going to work.
The Transit City lines are more expensive because of their size and complexity. It also costs a lot more to get a network started than it does to add onto it. Take Finch West for example: an extension from Humber College to Woodbine wouldn't break the bank. Or a Sheppard East LRT spur to STC. Or a connector between the Queensway ROW and Exhibition. These are projects that could easily be funded through municipal revenue tools funded over a 5-10 year period.
And ideally the province would fund the regional infrastructure, but in the real world that's not going to happen. A new party could come in and cancel all the transit expansion (as they usually do).
If we're to have any hope of actually getting this stuff built, Toronto needs access to its own revenue streams that won't be in upheaval every time there's a provincial election. If not, all these lines we talk about will remain just lines on a map.
Yes, because Toronto's transit politics are a bedrock of stability
.
In all seriousness though, a more financially independent Metrolinx would be much less at the whim of a change in government. It would take some pretty big guts to pull that 0.5% away from them once it's been implemented. It's spending without looking like the Province is spending. Nobody bats an eye when gas tax money is used to fund a transit project, because it isn't seen as "new money".
Yes, a change in government may result in reduced 'extra' spending, but that 0.5% would still form a pretty good base for which to continue
some projects. That's true for a change in government at any level though.
