Cognitive Dissonance
January 5th, 2011
Cognitive dissonance (n): voting for someone because they’re going to clean up the city’s finances, then supporting them when they decide to spend $344 million on 61,000 people instead of $111 million on 630,000:
Somebody needs to tell Mayor Ford that Torontonians don’t want a cheap city: they want a good one.
Don’t take this as gospel, as I am unfamiliar with either plan as well as much of the municipal politics, but note that the figure indicates cost per kilometer, not total cost, and it appears that the LRT is about 4 or 5 times the size of the subway addition, making it the more expensive option.
I’d still chose option 1 though, if it were me.
Keeping in mind that those “MILLION” values are per kilometer. But this CBC article (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2011/01/05/subway-light-rail-report241.html) has the total values: $8.15B for the LRT vs $6.2B for the subways. If you add in the cost of breaking existing contracts, it closes the difference to a “mere” $1B (unfortunately, I can’t seem to find the article I read that from).
So the Ford plan does “save” money in that fewer dollars would be spent, but each dollar spent would be significantly less effective. I’d rather see the LRT plan go through.
I just wish that the facts could be reported a little more scientifically.