King-Victoria Transit Hub

[danbrotherston]

Lets just say, I strongly doubt Metrolinx's claim to being a politically independent and business case driven organization.

They have a long track record of building politically motivated projects, rather than business case driven ones, even up to right now, where things like the scarborough subway whose business case is not justified, even though they went with an obviously misleading business case assessment [1].

So at the end of the day, I don't trust them one bit when they say stuff like this, I fully feel they are just a puppet for whatever the governing party wants to do.

While I do think the freight bypass would have been expensive (frankly, unjustifiably so, in my mind, but I also don't see why a small single line transit station should cost 140 million dollars either), but I do think that the demand for transit in this corridor is so high, that it's probably justified.

Of course, it would be more justified if we hadn't just invested many many billions in locking in a future of more lanes and more congestion on the 401.

[1] https://stevemunro.ca/2020/02/29/a-preli...extension/

Unfortunately I don't know or care enough about Toronto's transit the understand the history and specifics your link is discussing. But skimming through it, is there actually evidence of malice over gross incompetence?

Phil Verster (I believe it was an interview on The Agenda) said in his view, as a government agency of a democracy, the decision making should ultimately be left with elected officials. Democracies aren't about doing what is best, it's about doing what the people want (and the elected officials are supposed to be a representation of that). While I don't necessarily agree with that, I understand the reasoning. It's just strange to me for him to take the position that the government can ultimately do as they please regardless of what's recommended, but then also cook the books in favor of what the government wants.

I do want to be clear though, I'm not in any way ruling out that possibility that their business cases aren't as impartial as they should be, I just want proof of that before I believe they are more than just incompetent.

This is off topic now though, maybe it can be moved to the GO thread.

I am not suggesting malice or gross incompetence.  In fact, I'm suggesting substantial competence, just at the skill of playing politics (which actually has a lot to do with running a big business), as opposed to running a business analysis.

As for proof, I mean, I linked you the one article, you can google and find other sources for the scarborough subway, there are plenty, you can also find other examples of the same thing happening, also from the liberals when they were in power. Lots of cases where business cases were 'adjusted' to make a politically advantageous project look better in terms of business case.

People, in general, support data driven policy making (although, trust in this has been eroded for this exact reason), especially when it comes to thinks like transit (roads, forget it, just build them), but transit, must be justified by a business case. This makes it hard for politicians to advance their political interests if the data doesn't support them. Now I wish they'd just adjust their positions, but it doesn't always work that way, maybe one riding is weak, and the liberals feel they need to be seen building a new transit station there to shore up support, but the business case doesn't support it, but if they just built it anyway they get accused of playing politics and wastefulness and all the stuff you said at the beginning (which again, it isn't, it's just politics), so instead the 'cook the books' (which is actually much closer to corruption), but presumably they feel they can do so without undue scrutiny. So I don't see it as strange at all.

For proof, like I said, there are cases of it happening, it's not like it's secret. But every time it does, the business people who are savvy at politics have excuses or justifications, and you can judge for yourself how much you trust those excuses. But weigh those next to the political motivations in favour of the particular projects which end up advantaged.

Let me be clear, I'm not saying this is all bad. Our LRT I'm sure, there were those who felt it was political beneficial to build it, and I'm sure there were even those who did benefit personally (which is closer to corruption than politics), but at the end of the day, it was a good project. Being politically motivated does not mean a project is bad, but it doesn't mean it is good, just as being unpopular politically does not make some good. it's entirely orthogonal. Now maybe Verster is doing his best to swing things in favour of good projects, or maybe he doesn't care and is only playing politics, I don't know, but what I do know is that AD2W Go is extremely important to this corridor (if for nothing else than to stem the waste of continuing to widen the 401), and I don't believe it can be effectively deployed without bypassing freight.