Comment 119309

By Haveacow (registered) | Posted June 14, 2016 at 11:17:13

The high BRT cost are only part of the tax issue. The other main reason is unlike Hamilton's LRT system, $1.9 Billion of the $5.1 Billion of the capital costs for both phase 1 and 2 of our LRT system is being paid for by city of Ottawa Tax Payers, locally! Yes, by 2024 we will have a nice shinny new 50km long, 2 line LRT system. The reason we get a little testy in Ottawa is that, we here that people in Hamilton complain that the province is paying 100% of the capital costs for their LRT and that they don't want that. A big chunk of that transit levy, is the charge for our share of the LRT building program. We are paying roughly 37% of the costs locally, you are paying 0% locally. We don't think that is fair. We have been told and we also hope its correct that, the operating costs for the whole transit system will actually decline once we switch over to LRT from BRT as the main rapid transit portion of our transit system. Also when construction is complete in 2024-25 we might hopefully see a reduction in the transit levy as well as we won't need such a huge construction charge on added on our taxes.

Ask someone who lives in Waterloo how they feel about you guys getting your LRT system 100% funded through provincial money and still have the balls to complain about it. When they have had to fork over roughly 33% of the capital costs of their phase 1 LRT building program, through their local property taxes. They haven't received funding for their phase 2 LRT yet but, I suspect it coming soon. I just wonder how much they will have to pay locally for their phase 2 LRT building program.

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