GGH Transportation and Growth Plan

[danbrotherston]

Ion was still funded by the gov't, vs. something like a condo building or a steel mill that's just one company building it.

And so? The government didn't hire any engineers or consultants to build it...they hired a single private firm to do the whole thing and take all the risk. It's a PPP project. The REASON for a PPP is that people believe what you believe: that private companies are magically more efficient than the public sector. At least for transit there is some reasons why this could be true--our region isn't an expert in building and operating LRT, but in theory, a private company that has experience with it could be, in practice apparently Keolis cannot keep the trains running in light freezing rain.

But time and time again, this is proven not to be the case, efficiency has much more to do with scale than it does who runs an organisation. Efficiency increases the larger scale a product is built at but decreases the more people who are involved. Building the ION is a one off, single product, but involves tens of thousands of people. It's worst case for efficiency no matter who builds it.

But I still don't think this is related to the costs, because no engineers have been hired, or consultants retained...this is a cost estimate...one that makes little sense.