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Newsstand: October 3, 2012

Wednesday’s favourite album is Jock Jams, Volume 1, but don’t think less of him. It’s just how he gets all pumped up before the big dodgeball game. In the news: say goodbye to bike lanes on Jarvis; say goodbye to Enwave ownership; say hello to taxes that probably won’t happen anytime soon; and say nothing to Metrolinx. Whooomp! (There it is.)

By • Illustration by Brett Lamb

It is set: the bikes lanes that currently run along Jarvis Street will be ripped from the road by the end of the year, as one final effort from councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale) to save the lanes was voted down at city council yesterday. However, this ripping will apparently not happen until a separated bike lane one street over, on Sherbourne Street, is completed. The price tag of removing the lanes—between $280,000 and $300,000, roughly—will not be coming out the cycling budget as had originally been planned. Instead, the transportation budget (why are these different things?) will be picking up the tab for this one. Get out and ride those lanes while you can.

Enwave goodbye to the city’s partial ownership of Enwave Energy, because we sold it for a bag of magic beans! Sorry, not magic beans, $100 million! The actual decision to go ahead with the sale was not that eventful. However, deciding where to put the money drew a slew of suggestions that included the Toronto Community Housing Corporation, leaky basements, and, as was planned earlier, Toronto’s outstanding bill on new streetcars. In the end, the decision was referred to the budget committee for review. Budget Chief Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) choose the interesting analogy of a carcass to describe the new money and the act of chewing on said carcass to describe the actions of his councilmates looking to spend that money. Sounds like somebody can’t stop thinking about that sweet zombie costume they have planned for this year’s office Halloween party.

Because you can’t always sell everything all the time forever (don’t tell the mayor, we want it to be a surprise), a new report [pdf] from the city points to raising taxes as a possible route for funding transit expansion. Income taxes and a special one per cent sales tax across the GTA could bring in $2.7 billion each year, according to the report. But, really, who wants to pay for necessary things anyway?

In a last bit of news related to moving around the city, yesterday Councillor Joe Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul’s) withdrew his council motion to throw a temper tantrum if the TTC doesn’t get to operate and do the maintenance for the new Metrolinx LRT lines in the city. The reason that Mihevc is no longer asking council to insist that the TTC run the lines is that the discussions with Metrolinx are going well. That is correct: talks between two levels of government are apparently going well.

Comments

  • Anonymous

    How much money was the city making from Enwave each year?

    • Anonymous

      11.2m last year according to someone on the G&M thread.

      • Anonymous

        I’m not a financial advisor, but it seems to be then that come 2021 (give or take, and assuming that profit remained steady year after year), the city starts losing money by selling its shares now.

        • Anonymous

          To clarify, the present value of a revenue stream is not equal to the sum of the payments over time. This is because the future value of money is less than its present value. For example, if I offered you $1000 today or $1000 a year from now, you would prefer to take the money today, since you can invest it (in a GIC or other very safe investment) and end up with $1000 + interest a year from now. So the money today is worth more.

          A good way to think of the present value of a revenue stream is as an investment with an annual return. If we’re saying that Enwave’s $11.2 million per year (forever) is worth $100 million today, then we’re calculating the return at 11.2m/100m = 11.2%. More commonly, you will see the value presented as a multiple of earnings, which is just the reciprocal of the return rate: in this case, Enwave is valued at 1/0.112 = about 9 times earnings. Since companies (in general) are relatively risky investments, this is within the realm of reasonable valuation, but otherwise I’m not saying anything about whether this is a good deal or not.

  • http://www.bitpicture.com Marc Lostracco

    “My travel time up Jarvis has increased by two minutes! It’s an outrage! Why can’t those selfish cyclists take a measly two minutes and move over to Sherbourne?!”

    I used to live on Jarvis during the three-lane era and I drive on it frequently now. Not only has there been no discernible change in traffic (other than the construction that’s been going on all summer), drivers recklessly use it like a freeway, pedal to the metal from Queen up to Charles. If the delay was caused by anything, it’s drivers having to slow down to drive more like they are SUPPOSED to drive when not on the 401.

    Of course, there’s no way of knowing because the planned Gerrard left turn removal hasn’t happened and there has been watermain construction all summer long, so anybody claiming an increased delay on account of the bike lanes is disingenuous at best, and intentionally lying to further an agenda.

    And shame on Minnan-Wong for desperately refocusing the issue on how great the new Sherbourne bike lanes are so he doesn’t have to answer the questions about the waste and safety on Jarvis.

    There is no reasonable justification to remove the lanes. All the excuses don’t hold up to facts or reason. Even if there was a significant delay incurred—and there isn’t—it’s still not a good enough reason to rip out the bike lanes. But in Fordlandia, inconveniencing drivers is a mortal sin; inconveniencing cyclists is just pest control.

    Rob Ford, in his usual “people tell me” tradition, says questionably that “hundreds and hundreds” of people have called his office complaining about the Jarvis bike lanes—yet he ignores the actual “hundreds and hundreds” of cyclists who have protested their removal. Because by Fordian metrics, a cyclist who lives in a neighbourhood is worth much less than a motorist who passes through it for a moment each day.

    • Anonymous

      The Sherbourne lanes are a failure, cars still park in the completed sections. Time to stop the project and rethink it before more money is spent

      • Anonymous

        The money’s already been spent, but now more money, *300K tax dollars* more money, will be wasted to remove the bike lanes, thanks to Rob, Denzil, and the other Ford puppets. This was never about anything more than twitting a Miller initiative, and wasting tons of money to do it. Hurrah for Rob, stopping the waste by even more waste. Go back to your football and leave this city the hell alone.

  • GI Poo

    Sherbourne is NOT one street over. I have no idea what maps everyone is looking at, but they must not be publicly available.

    • Anonymous

      Poor people live on George street, so it doesn’t count.

  • Anonymous

    One thing to bear in mind for the people who want the city to continue owning Enwave is that a private owner can raise capital as the market sees fit, while the city also has a political process which would be risk-averse. It is possible the city will see a larger impact from a privately financed investment in additional deep-lake cooling capacity for the buildings planned over the next two decades, whereas Ford would likely oppose borrowings to expand Enwave. We already see with Toronto Hydro the City grabbing every dividend dime it can, when ideally TH would be reinvesting that money into additional capacity for the ageing and stretched grid across the city.

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