ION Phase 2 - Cambridge's Light Rail Transit

[jeffster]

My understanding that the cost ballooned to $3B for rolling stock, property acquisitions, construction, and everything up to service date. That additional $2B is operational costs for whatever number of years. That $2B is disingenuous -- it's like our costs also went up to whatever, but also included operating it for 30 years (was it just over $2B for KW?).  But that's how it went from $1B to $5B. As far as I know, neither the provincial or federal are on the hook for anything else regarding the ION.

In Hamilton, I believe that Metrolinx was going to run this system, paid solely by the province, with no money from the city, though apparently Hamilton was going to keep the fair money.

Now, personally, I never understood how this project was only going to cost $1B in the first place. KW was close to $800M -- and that was years ago that we started. Factor in inflation, our system is probably closer to $1.1B now, if we were to start. A good chunk of our LRT is along previous rail corridors, and also within a relocated hydro corridor. That saved a lot of money. When the first heard of Hamilton LRT, I though initial costs would be close to $2.5B, and was surprised that it was going to be so little.

My guess is that the previous Liberal government pushed this project and left out certain numbers, and perhaps the $1B cost was for only rolling stock and basic rail construction (not including utility relocating, ripping up roads, demolishing homes/businesses, not including purchases of homes/businesses, no environment assessments, etc).

Inflation doesn't work that fast.  Even with inflation from 2010 (which I don't think would have been the target year for construction costs) CPI calculator still has our project at less than 1B.

Is the Hamilton project not a similar scope to ours? Where 1B would be a reasonable estimate, and 3B seems off (and of course 5B is a complete fabrication).

I believe its route takes it along a much different course than here. I read a different article (from the Toronto Sun) and it stated "The province claims the total project would cost $5.5 billion — $4.6 billion of which would be capital costs that the province would be expected to pay."

One huge thing to keep in mind, KW was willing to make compromises along the route. It's going through some areas that perhaps it could have gone elsewhere. It's travelling along transit corridors (saving hundreds of millions) and the hydro corridor (probably another $100M). Also lots of negativity from those along the route. Everything is going to be more expensive.

Another factor is we had Grandlink building ours -- Metrolinx is doing Hamilton. Sooooo, follow the money.