$26 billion in additional infrastructure funding needed over 10 years
Good evening and welcome to City News. Just when you thought Toronto’s financial shortfall was a thing of the past, Well, think again. Mark McAllister with why 10s of billions of additional dollars are still needed simply to stop the city from falling apart. Just how bad is it? It’s it’s a worst case scenario when you have a decade of where we haven’t been investing here at the local level. There’s a long list of things falling apart in this city, and it’s going to get worse without an additional $26 billion over the next 10 years, on top of 40 billion just to maintain what exists that according to a new report going to the city’s executive committee next week, old transit infrastructure failing and breaking down. Toronto Community Housing Crumbling city buildings like libraries and recreation centers. In need of Syria’s upkeep. The longer we wait to fix what needs fixing, the more expensive it will become, the more a quality of life is going to get worse. And it’s and it’s going to have a major impact in terms of being able to just get around the city on transit. Mayor Olivia Chow, for instance, has been calling for investment to replace the older subway trains on Line 2, in addition to $2.4 billion per year to maintain the TTCS state of good repair. Drop by a local park and you’ll likely see small buildings requiring some maintenance, outdoor rinks or splash pads in need of an overhaul. It’s staggering the scale of the backlog and how much it’s going to cost to dig out. The age and estimated life of infrastructure from different city divisions can be seen in this graph presented at City Hall. Everything in poor and very poor condition is laid out in orange and red. This is a huge amount of money in a city where people are starting to see. The price of what happens when things fall apart in our parks, on our roads, on our transit system, in our community centers and libraries, things are starting to wear down, and we’re experiencing it in our daily lives. Work has started to catch up on repairing social housing, but more than 40% of the buildings are still in need of some renovation. Requiring double the funding. It’s like life and death for some people. If we don’t actually secure the funding that we need to fix and build what’s what is going to keep Toronto safe and and healthy and the economy going, as was the case when dealing with a $1.8 billion operating shortfall. The theme here is asking for more help, so expect the calls to other levels of government to continue beyond the province. Uploading the Gardner. And the DVP Mark McAllister City News.