Toronto's recently elected Mayor Rob Ford has announced that Toronto will build a subway extension -- but nobody knows where the $4 billion needed to build it will come from.
Ford killed Toronto's previous Transit City plan and replaced it with a subway, but there is no budget for it. Ford insists that the private sector will finance it and the city will own and operate it, but many fear that Toronto's taxpayers will be on the hook instead. Marcus Gee of the Globe and Mail writes,
"Under the transit plan announced by Mr. Ford and Premier Dalton McGuinty, the provincial government will spend virtually all of the $8.4-billion dedicated to the now-defunct Transit City plan on a new midtown light-rail line. Much of it will travel underground, at Mr. Ford's insistence, adding enormously to its expense.
That leaves no money for rapid transit on the busy Finch Avenue corridor, which was supposed to get a light-rail line under Transit City but will now have to make do with buses for at least a decade. More important, it leaves the city of Toronto on its own to pay for Mr. Ford's favoured project: a $4-billion extension of the Sheppard Avenue subway."
FULL STORY: Mayor should put his money where his plans are
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