Aliens built the TTC

[sabotabby]

I had brunch with a friend I hadn't seen in a long time, and we were talking (of course) politics and the pervasiveness of the "but how we will pay for it???" ideology. (I agree that it's a question worth asking—it's just usually asked as a rhetorical question to shut down debate, when it is actually a question that has an answer.) Basically, the idea that one invests in social good and infrastructure has been in rapid decline since the 80s. You couldn't build a subway system now—witness the Scarborough One Stop Wonder. People would get deadlocked wondering how to pay for it, rather than considering it an essential civic investment and just getting the thing done.

I compared it to when you see white people talking about the pyramids. Like, how did they have the technology back then? How did they figure it out? What a mystery! Must have been aliens!

Now we're existing in the ruins of a mightier civilization. Waiting for the subway (well, haha, not this weekend). Wondering, I can only suppose: How did they build this wonder? What kind of marvellous technology did the ancients of the 1960s have? How did they pay for it???

Comments

[dewline]

Well, I know for damned sure that aliens did not build the Line 1 infrastructure for OC Transpo. Alstom supplied the train sets, Rideau Transit Group hired the subcontractors that dug the tunnel, laid down the trackage, built the Belfast Yards, etc.. And how we're paying for it all - and the lawsuit filed by Siemens that followed Larry O'Brien shutting down the earlier West-South line plans - well, it's all documented, to my knowledge.

Ottawa's been damn lucky. I've been watching the mess you're being subjected to. If it weren't for Ford's need for vengeance and rotten judgement...

[sabotabby]

Ottawa has a lot farther to go. But we've been subject to "move fast and break stuff" for decades.

[dewline]

This is also true.

[metawidget]

Aliens might have understood the habits and capabilities of rush-hour humans better than Alstom and RTG seem to have.