Green Line LRT - $4.6 Billion Project

[mellbell416]

Originally Posted by sammyd

Plenty of time to cancel it after the NDP are removed.

Don't think that will happen - especially if Jason Kenney wins the Party leadsership. He was part of the Harper government when they approved the federal contribution. In fact, he is complaining that it took the provincial government too long to approve it.

https://twitter.com/jkenney/status/883040079903576064

[mellbell416]

Originally Posted by sammyd

Plenty of time to cancel it after the NDP are removed.

Don't think that will happen - especially if Jason Kenney wins the Party leadsership. He was part of the Harper government when they approved the federal contribution. In fact, he is complaining that it took the provincial government too long to approve it.

https://twitter.com/jkenney/status/883040079903576064

[mellbell416]

Originally Posted by sammyd

Plenty of time to cancel it after the NDP are removed.

Don't think that will happen - especially if Jason Kenney wins the Party leadsership. He was part of the Harper government when they approved the federal contribution. In fact, he is complaining that it took the provincial government too long to approve it.

https://twitter.com/jkenney/status/883040079903576064

[*Stardust*]

Oh dear. Looks like this thread is going to get political as well...

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by sammyd

Plenty of time to cancel it after the NDP are removed.

Why would they cancel it? everyone knows the city needs this, the conservatives would look foolish if they canceled it.

Originally Posted by *Stardust*

Oh dear. Looks like this thread is going to get political as well...

If it involves tax dollars, it's going to be political.

Originally Posted by PPAR

According to the city project timeline above, the general contractor is to be selected first quarter 2020.

They must not have done much preliminary work. Have they started land acquisition yet?

[PPAR]

Originally Posted by sammyd

Plenty of time to cancel it after the NDP are removed.

...and the NDP says gotcha!

This will be a popular project in Calgary. If conservatives threaten to cancel the project, they will be sure to loose votes in Calgary. A few seats in this city are likely to decide the next provincial election as I do not see Edmonton turning on the NDP. The last few years has been pretty good up north, not least because there is a sense that Edmonton is doing better than the arch rival down south.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by PPAR

...and the NDP says gotcha!

This will be a popular project in Calgary. If conservatives threaten to cancel the project, they will be sure to loose votes in Calgary. A few seats in this city are likely to decide the next provincial election as I do not see Edmonton turning on the NDP. The last few years has been pretty good up north, not least because there is a sense that Edmonton is doing better than the arch rival down south.

The conservatives won't cancel the LRT project. However they could adjust the payout period to be a lot longer than 8 years. This would happen under a scenario to cut or cap carbon tax rates.

Let's fast forward to 2020. The general contractor is selected at rates that are below estimated 4.65B for phase 1. New conservative government is looking for cost savings. Rather than build more greenline with the estimated savings, the province leans on the city to extend payout terms on the provisions the provincial portion of funding.

Another risk is that the province reallocates funding sources from other revenues into the climate leadership plan. Example would be to put all gas taxes under the carbon pricing umbrella. In this instance the gas tax currently allocated to other road projects would be consumed by carbon tax revenues allocated to green line.

A Third risk, the province has quietly reallocated West Ring Road funds to the green line. This could mean the city will have to improve/expand existing roads because the WRR implementation has been deferred for 10+ years.

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by dg66

Yes as a matter of fact we did borrow at all three levels. All three levels that chipped in have large debts, and guess what? All three of those debts have to be paid off someday. I think people on on this forum don't understand the concept of loans and interest.

And what % is borrowed vs tax revenue?

[MalcolmTucker]

[del]

[joe498]

Originally Posted by mellbell416

Don't think that will happen - especially if Jason Kenney wins the Party leadsership. He was part of the Harper government when they approved the federal contribution. In fact, he is complaining that it took the provincial government too long to approve it.

https://twitter.com/jkenney/status/883040079903576064

No conservative will cancel the project but they will definitely delay it in the name of balancing the budget. Not to mention, repealing the carbon tax will take away the revenue source for this project so there is plenty of room for this project to be delayed. I'd feel better of the shovels were in the ground before the next provincial election. However, if the shovels are not in the ground yet, they will likely opt to postpone it to save a few billion.

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by joe498

No conservative will cancel the project but they will definitely delay it in the name of balancing the budget. Not to mention, repealing the carbon tax will take away the revenue source for this project so there is plenty of room for this project to be delayed. I'd feel better of the shovels were in the ground before the next provincial election. However, if the shovels are not in the ground yet, they will likely opt to postpone it to save a few billion.

Kenney was part of Harper's government that approved the federal share and he made a big deal about it. The provincial PCs are not going to go against infrastructure projects like they did in the past. At least not if they want to get reelected. There are much better things to cut back on that will result in real savings. Not building infrastructure is stupid. We've already gone down that road and it was a complete disaster.

[Socguy]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

Kenney was part of Harper's government that approved the federal share and he made a big deal about it. The provincial PCs are not going to go against infrastructure projects like they did in the past. At least not if they want to get reelected. There are much better things to cut back on that will result in real savings. Not building infrastructure is stupid. We've already gone down that road and it was a complete disaster.

Consistency or hypocrisy don't mean much in politics. Whatever gets you votes today is what's going to happen and right now promising to cancel the carbon tax will get big play with the conservative base that's currently apoplectic. Ramifications of such a move will be lost on the minds of a sizable chunk of voters and when the consequences start to bite the new gov will just blame the NDP either for the cost defaulting to the debt or for the project being delayed.

[MalcolmTucker]

[del]

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Well, it really depends on what you are looking at - it is not so simple, will the P3 deal have no payments until opening day? If that is the case, the governments that use accrual accounting will be booking the expense but not not paying any cash out.

So is that debt?

Could the city's accumulated Green Line sinking fund surplus (from start of collection to opening day) under that situation defray all the interest charges? That helps the cash flow situation, but doesn't change that debt is being issued! Under that situation do you hold a surplus to generate a higher return than your interest, or lump sum to reduce your initial borrowing!

Funding through savings is just positive debt—functionally equivalent! Any difference you perceive is only aesthetic, unless your amortization period of the asset is shorter than your loan payoff period.

So it's not very straightforward, which is what I was getting at. Labeling it as 100% debt is silly and uninformed. Besides, we need this badly, I moved downtown originally because the deep SE is underserved by transit and Deerfoot can fuck off in the morning.

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

Not building infrastructure is stupid. We've already gone down that road and it was a complete disaster.

But people still LOVE Ralph Klein, and all he did was defer or tear down infrastructure. He never eliminated the deficit as people love to claim, he just converted it to a larger infrastructure deficit, and we are still playing catch-up.

Originally Posted by Socguy

Consistency or hypocrisy don't mean much in politics. Whatever gets you votes today is what's going to happen and right now promising to cancel the carbon tax will get big play with the conservative base that's currently apoplectic. Ramifications of such a move will be lost on the minds of a sizable chunk of voters and when the consequences start to bite the new gov will just blame the NDP either for the cost defaulting to the debt or for the project being delayed.

I doubt they will be able to get rid of it all together, especially without O&G revenues that are sufficient to fill holes in the budget. Also, isn't there some federal implications if we get rid of carbon tax?

[Boris2k7]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

So it's not very straightforward, which is what I was getting at. Labeling it as 100% debt is silly and uninformed. Besides, we need this badly, I moved downtown originally because the deep SE is underserved by transit and Deerfoot can fuck off in the morning.

I've been working at one of my old offices in the Deep SE the last few weeks and man oh man do I not miss the traffic. I am reverse commuting thankfully. Wouldn't want to be stuck in that parking lot on NB Deerfoot.

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

But people still LOVE Ralph Klein, and all he did was defer or tear down infrastructure. He never eliminated the deficit as people love to claim, he just converted it to a larger infrastructure deficit, and we are still playing catch-up.

There was a lot to love about Ralph but that wasn't one of the things. The last years of the PCs did see them build infrastructure even when there were budget deficits. If they go back to the stupid old days of building only when they have all of the funding on hand they'll never get elected. Now is the time to be investing in the infrastructure that we so badly need not when times are booming and we get half the value for double the cost.

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

There was a lot to love about Ralph but that wasn't one of the things. The last years of the PCs did see them build infrastructure even when there were budget deficits. If they go back to the stupid old days of building only when they have all of the funding on hand they'll never get elected. Now is the time to be investing in the infrastructure that we so badly need not when times are booming and we get half the value for double the cost.

Ralph was the king of high taxes and cuts to public services / infrastructure. If people complain of taxes under the NDP, Ralph would be relatively communist for certain.

[MrBigStuff]

Originally Posted by sammyd

Plenty of time to cancel it after the NDP are removed.

Maybe not cancel it - but they have already chopped the north section of the line from north of 16 Ave. North.

[*Stardust*]

Originally Posted by suburbia

Ralph was the king of high taxes and cuts to public services / infrastructure. If people complain of taxes under the NDP, Ralph would be relatively communist for certain.

Exactly. Taxes were higher across the board while Klein was in power. We have had it pretty good in Alberta for such a long time, that we don't realize that even after the NDP raised taxes, that we still pay the lowest in the country and the lowest in this province over the last couple of decades.