A new game to play on Twitter: Take two (or more) tweets that happen to show up in the same feed that, when juxtaposed, make another point altogether.
Like these two:
And this one:
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The fundamental problem on display is the use of tolls to fund new infrastructure.
Road tolling is about behaviour modification and should never be counted on for anything else.
The structure of the deal with Golden Grossing (the P3 partner) for the Golden Ears Bridge does not have Translink even making full interest payments for another year or two, much less payments on the principal. As a result, the bill for the $800 million bridge has now exceeded $1 billion and the subsidy (difference between tolling revenue and concessionaire payments plus tolling company and maintenance contracts) now exceeds what Translink pays InTransitBC to operate the Canada Line and reimburse its $700 million+ investment in the project.
The scary thought is that the P3 contract with Golden Crossing is 30+ yrs. from the time the bridge was completed.
The problem is not the P3 nature of the contract. if it was done using a traditional design-bid-build, all that would be happening is that instead of concession payments to the P3 operator, it would instead be listed as part of TransLink’s debt payments. Under a DBB, it wouldn’t necessarily get its own line on the balance sheet (since its rolled into the larger debt), but it would still be happening. No matter how you procure iit, if you’re pulling in less revenue than you’ve anticipated, whoever bears the patronage risks is in trouble. If anything, in HINDSIGHT, this project would have benefited from MORE privatization, in which the private sector took on patronage and revenue risks. Of course, if you do that and you end up getting MORE revenue then anticipated, then people complain about how we’re sending all this extra money to a private company.