Toronto transit projects

[Pheidippides]

I believe the ION is “costing” $880M. The $1.9G figure is, to my knowledge, the Grandlinq contract value, which includes some but not all of the $880M. It excludes money for the vehicles, not to mention property acquisition and I think some other smaller costs. Normally the “cost” of something does not include a certain number of years of its operating expenses. If we were talking about a house there would be no question that the “cost” is the purchase price, not purchase price plus several years worth of taxes and utilities.

The new total is $868 million and that includes the cost of the vehicles, land acquisition, utility relocation. If you take even some of those expenses out you realize how inexpensive the actual construction portion of the project actually is, especially relative to other North American projects.

Also of note, they have only spent 3/4 of the land acquisition budget and have paid for about 1/2 of the vehicles so far (as of 31-Oct-2017).