Quote:
Originally Posted by fenwick16
The question that I have is "why must there be growth on both sides of the harbour?"
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It is a legitimate question but it is partly addressed in the report released by the Bridge Commission. Some factors (some are in the report, some are not):
-The bridge saves significant travel time even for current residents; it's been planned for ages.
-No capacity in the southern area due to lack of roads. Would require an Arm crossing.
-Much of the wilderness to the west is protected. I believe council also shot down a subdivision in the Timberlea area.
Basically the next-closest area for future development seems to be Bedford West, which is *much* farther from the downtown than the third crossing area (~10 km extra).
The $1.1B would be paid at least in large part by tolls, not by the taxpayer. It's incorrect to view funding for projects like the bridge as "zero sum", where $1 for the bridge means $1 less for a stadium or whatever else (this isn't even true for CC vs stadium because of spinoffs and federal funding).
A while back I did a calculation showing the value of saving travel time. Here's a rough approximation:
Bridges get 30 million crossings per year right now. Let's suppose the new bridge gets 10 million crossings per year (probably conservative).
Let's suppose each crossing saves on average 6 minutes of driving time (again, conservative).
10 * 6 = 60 million minutes saved per year = 1 million hours saved per year.
Let's assume an average worker makes $20/hour, and has to pay $5/hour to run their car. This means $25M saved per year. It would take 44 years for the bridge to pay for itself -- the Macdonald is already more than 44 years old.
Note that we are not including benefits in terms of reduced emissions etc. We are also not including maintenance costs.
A billion dollars sounds large while 6 minutes sounds like nothing... but in a city with hundreds of thousands of people those tradeoffs start to make sense!