ION Phase 2 - Cambridge's Light Rail Transit

[nms]

I can imagine that costs can only jump so far before even someone like the Province has to blink.  At the very least, other provincially or federally funded institutions (eg hospitals, universities and school boards) are going to have to think long and hard about what to build and/or renovate.  

Apparently, anything to do with construction has a long way to go before there is any chance of returning to the labour levels that existed pre-pandemic:
1. Early retirements due to the double-whammy of Covid and peak of the baby boom reaching retirement age.
2. Drops in immigration have meant less of a labour pool to tap into.
3. The ongoing opioid crisis.  Apparently the opioid crisis is having a disproportionate affect on the construction labour force.  For the most recent period of time studied, 1 in 13 Ontario deaths were construction workers (8%) while construction only account for 3.6% of the entire Ontario population. (Public Health Ontario study)

 This is going to be cold glass of water for everyone.

[dtkvictim]

1. Early retirements due to the double-whammy of Covid and peak of the baby boom reaching retirement age.

Are you suggesting this for physical labour jobs, or engineering position that have the expertise to keep costs low? I was always under the impression that construction jobs were filled with younger people due to the toll it takes on your body. But a quick (read: not thorough) Google search suggests the average construction worker age is in line with the average Canadian, so at the very least you wouldn't expect it to be suffering from disproportionate retirements.

2. Drops in immigration have meant less of a labour pool to tap into.

Sorry, what drop? Sure, 2020 saw some drop in the number of immigrants, but according to the government 2021 and 2022 had the highest number of immigrants in Canada's history.

I was actually curious if the combination of restrictive zoning and record high immigration putting immense pressure on land value could be affecting the cost of ION via expropriation. But it looks like $42 million was budgeted for land acquisition for phase 1, and if we assume similar amounts of land acquisition and use a worst case 4x cost of land since then, we are still looking at probably <$200 million. While substantial, it definitely doesn't come close to explaining the overall increase.

[dunkalunk]

Under the current Cambridge council, I don't see Stage 2 happening.

https://www.therecord.com/news/council/2...o-way.html

Keeping the current car lane count on Hespeler is hostile to pedestrians and antithetical to the stated purposes of the Stage 2 expansion.

[ZEBuilder]

Under the current Cambridge council, I don't see Stage 2 happening.

https://www.therecord.com/news/council/2...o-way.html

Keeping the current car lane count on Hespeler is hostile to pedestrians and antithetical to the stated purposes of the Stage 2 expansion.

Hespler is a regional road so the city has no jurisdiction on deciding the design of Hespler, so when the LRT eventually gets put it Hespler will be shrunk to 4 lanes and Cambridge can't do anything about it, all they're doing is making it 6 lanes so they can change the current zoning along Hespler.

What would we interesting to see is if Ford does something similar to the entire Peel situation and dissolves the region into individual cities. Then Hespler would turn over to Cambridge and then they would have the jurisdiction over Hespler. Which would seemingly mean no LRT.

[SF22]

Under the current Cambridge council, I don't see Stage 2 happening.

https://www.therecord.com/news/council/2...o-way.html

Keeping the current car lane count on Hespeler is hostile to pedestrians and antithetical to the stated purposes of the Stage 2 expansion.

Hespler is a regional road so the city has no jurisdiction on deciding the design of Hespler, so when the LRT eventually gets put it Hespler will be shrunk to 4 lanes and Cambridge can't do anything about it, all they're doing is making it 6 lanes so they can change the current zoning along Hespler.

What would we interesting to see is if Ford does something similar to the entire Peel situation and dissolves the region into individual cities. Then Hespler would turn over to Cambridge and then they would have the jurisdiction over Hespler. Which would seemingly mean no LRT.

I mean, the LRT is a regional project as it is, so if the region were disbanded, you could definitely write off the Cambridge expansion - although I'm certain that Cambridge would demand their portion of the LRT cost back since they would have nothing to show for it.

The entire thing would probably be a legal nightmare. I can't imagine that there's anything written into the LRT contracts that states what would happen if the cities no longer operated under a unified regional banner.

[ac3r]

With the 4.5 billion dollar price tag on this, the entire idea should be thrown in the trash. Absolute waste of money...for a city that doesn't even want it!

[bravado]

With the 4.5 billion dollar price tag on this, the entire idea should be thrown in the trash. Absolute waste of money...for a city that doesn't even want it!

Or we question the root of why it’s $4.5 billion in the first place

Or: we can just tear the whole Region up by demanding Cambridge’s money back which is the sort of thing that Ford is doing at the moment with Peel. I don’t see how this possible future of nasty fighting and divorce serves anyone well compared to trying to keep the region growing together with big projects…

[ac3r]

How much did they contribute? I thought their contribution basically only paid for the 302 buses.

[taylortbb]

How much did they contribute? I thought their contribution basically only paid for the 302 buses.

The tax levy is only split by urban/rural, so the region has the same tax rate for all of the cities. From the region's perspective city boundaries don't exist, just like we don't track property tax revenue or expenditure by ward in the cities. So the question of how much Cambridge paid is difficult to answer, as there's a lot of different ways you could split it up, all of which could plausibly be called fair.

If you look just at ION, Cambridge paid the same per dollar of property value as Kitchener and Waterloo. But that neglects that property values are lower in Cambridge, is that something one should adjust for?

But there's also the transit budget as a whole. Cambridge has lower ridership, and therefore the bus service receives a higher taxpayer subsidy in Cambridge. But that's not charged just to Cambridge taxpayers, so you've got a double transfer effect of the lower fare box recovery in Cambridge, and the lower property values in Cambridge.

So, Cambridge paid "the same" as KW, but also benefits from being attached to KW. If Cambridge separated from the region it would have to either raise taxes or cut services.

[jeffster]

With the 4.5 billion dollar price tag on this, the entire idea should be thrown in the trash. Absolute waste of money...for a city that doesn't even want it!

Cambridge should have never been a part of this LRT. Especially with the route they are choosing. Just not a very dense population to support this, no universities/college/hospitals along this route. And we should give them their money back.

How much did the region pay for the first phase? Something like $350m (plus yearly expenses) -- this one won't get help from the Federal government unlike before, and if they don't help, neither will the province. We don't have $4.5 billion.

[bravado]

I get it, when times were good KW gets what they want and when times are bad, Cambridge can just deal with it and stop being the way they are. I find it really distasteful that the NIMBYs and cranks are 'not representative of the true will of KW' when Phase 1 was built, but they're just taken at face value in Cambridge because 'those people' are different down there.

The 4.5 billion number isn't even possible to wrap your head around since it's nonsense from a system that is designed to produce nonsense. How many more people do I need to see every day walking through ditches to get to the industrial zone bus stop while people online talk about how Cambridge just 'loves their stroads and sprawl'. There's real suffering out there and taking your good public services and denying it to others is just a dogshit way to plan for the future.

[jeffster]

The tax levy is only split by urban/rural, so the region has the same tax rate for all of the cities. From the region's perspective city boundaries don't exist, just like we don't track property tax revenue or expenditure by ward in the cities. So the question of how much Cambridge paid is difficult to answer, as there's a lot of different ways you could split it up, all of which could plausibly be called fair.

If you look just at ION, Cambridge paid the same per dollar of property value as Kitchener and Waterloo. But that neglects that property values are lower in Cambridge, is that something one should adjust for?

But there's also the transit budget as a whole. Cambridge has lower ridership, and therefore the bus service receives a higher taxpayer subsidy in Cambridge. But that's not charged just to Cambridge taxpayers, so you've got a double transfer effect of the lower fare box recovery in Cambridge, and the lower property values in Cambridge.

So, Cambridge paid "the same" as KW, but also benefits from being attached to KW. If Cambridge separated from the region it would have to either raise taxes or cut services.

No way of knowing for sure. BTW: how much does 'rural' WR contribute to their bus service (both Baden/New Hamburg and St. Jacobs/Elmira)? And right about Cambridge benefiting from the over transit service. What sucks about Cambridge is that it is still 3 smaller cities fighting with each other, it's still not Cambridge. It's Galt, Hespeler and Preston (and Blair...). The city is bless by being on the 401, but damn, they can't get along with each other in town, let alone the region.

[taylortbb]

BTW: how much does 'rural' WR contribute to their bus service (both Baden/New Hamburg and St. Jacobs/Elmira)?

Last I looked (which was a few years ago) the rural transit service was charged to the township it operates in. The subsidy for those services don't come from the regional budget at all.

The plan was that at some future point, when all townships had bus service, the region would include it in the rural levy. But until that time the fairest option was to have that township that is served pay the region for it.

[Acitta]

Small Cities, Big Transit by Taras Grescoe
Turns Out You Don't Have to Be Chicago-Sized to Have Rail Rapid Transit

[bravado]

Small Cities, Big Transit by Taras Grescoe
Turns Out You Don't Have to Be Chicago-Sized to Have Rail Rapid Transit

But you do need to be anywhere other than North America - and when the bill comes out as too much money, you have to just give up!