> In Toronto, Canada a simple renovation of a subway stations entrance (painting, tile, basic refresh) can take several years. All the while they will rope off

> In Toronto, Canada a simple renovation of a subway stations entrance (painting, tile, basic refresh) can take several years. All the while they will rope off large sections or shut down escalators for months while there is ZERO work being done. This most likely happens because of insufficient government funding for maintenance. Government budgets reset every year; governments can't take unspent program money at the end on one fiscal year and bank it for next year. There is no way to "save up" for big expenses aside from directly allocating sufficient funds in the funding legislation. That sort of lump allocation is a lot easier to get for new work. The main reason is, new work has better optics--you go from nothing to something. Maintenance, unless it changes the cosmetics, looks about the same at the end as it did in the beginning. Boring! "What did we get for all that money??" citizens ask. And maintenance is harder to budget for in a lump sum because you don't know how bad things are until you actually start the work. This is generally true of maintenance--anyone who has renovated an old home knows this. Until you open the wall, you don't know how much work needs to be done. So what you do in government is start the maintenance projects you have at highest priority, find out how bad things are, and then do as much as you can with the budget you have. It it's not enough to complete an atomic unit of work, you just sit on partially-done work until more money becomes available. And ironically, the irritation caused by unfinished work can help get you the money to finish the work. If maintenance was properly budgeted, then the subway system could afford to do a full refresh all in one continuous go. Usually it's not, so usually they can't.