This is more of a comment.
When I listen to testimony, I wonder if the federal government has its infrastructure funding program set up right. For example, the public transit infrastructure fund, a $3.5 billion fund, is putting money into renewing bus fleets. In 2012 the TTC retired their last General Motors fishbowl bus that was purchased in the 1980s. These buses last for 20 to 30 years.
I hear about automation and the elimination of jobs and I listen to people like Mark Carney, who was referring to a Bank of England report that 15 million jobs in the U.K. are going to disappear. PricewaterhouseCoopers reported last year that 38% of all jobs in the United States will be eliminated in the next 12 years because of automation. I hear about the rapid transformation of vehicular traffic. Are we making the right capital investments by purchasing buses in our transit fleets in our large cities?
I also wonder about what happens to all these bus drivers and jobs and everything else.
It's more of a comment and something for us to think about as we embark on this study.