02-23-2024, 01:01 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-23-2024, 01:03 PM by danbrotherston.)
(02-23-2024, 11:43 AM)cherrypark Wrote: Fun exercise: do a business case for vehicle users paying the full value per kilometer of their road use and expansion.
Imagine the furor if Doug said the 413 was doing to be tolled to pay for upkeep. The OPC have removed "free market" pay fors from their existing highways but paying to run buses into places that could grow with connectivity isn't worth it? Come on.
The problem with this...is that you basically can do it...the fundamental problem with business cases is that they are fake...a pseudo science. You decide what you want, then you design a business plan that will give you that result.
So, basically you say stuff like "buses going to a city will provide rides for x people at y cost", oh look that's way too high. But then you don't consider things like how you can grow the service, or how valuable those rides are...do they provide options to lower income people who can now survive much better, etc. etc.
It's the same thing that council did regarding hybrid buses 10 years ago. I remember the presentation to council. GRT said "the hybrid buses save y in fuel over their lifetime, and they cost x more in maintenance and purchase price, and since y < x we won't buy them...oh...you mean they also are more pleasant, less polluting in noise and emissions....well, we don't care, because y is still < x..."
But then you come to building a road, oh, well, it's going to cost y billion dollars and generate x trillion dollars in economic growth, that clearly wouldn't have happened in the "do nothing" scenario where you you instead burn y billion dollars in a bon fire, a totally realistic scenario...and x is much bigger than y so clearly we're going to build the road.
Businesses cases do nothing than provide the veneer of objectivity on an inherently subjective decision. They are a lie we tell ourselves to justify the things we want without admitting that we are making real choices. Neoliberalism at it's finest.
So yeah, I can write a business case for the 413 that looks bad, and I can write one for transit that looks good, but it doesn't change the fact that they'll be filled with just as much opinion as the ones the government already writes. I'll give them credit...when it comes to roads, we don't even pretend to lie to ourselves...