hw621
Senior Member
It is more like "kill public support for rapid transit expansion managed by corrupt and incompetent organizations such as Metrolinex".
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- Thread starter Monarch Butterfly
- Start date
urbanclient
Senior Member
I want to be clear, I am by no means advocating for a subway in the past, now, or in the near future for Finch.
The underlying data from the paper the UofT study cited shows that Spain will finish two projects post-2025 for less than $250 million international dollars per km. Which is less than the per km price for Line 6 Finch West. The more expensive project is the super delayed Barcelona Line 9/10 central section and the cheaper one is the Madrid Eje Transversal. Both are fully tunnelled but the latter is more of an RER tunnel than a subway.
Source data: https://ultraviolet.library.nyu.edu/records/9wnjp-kez15
If we're paying world-class prices for a tram, we better get world-class service. Absolutely mind boggling we don't get strong transit signal priority and/or signal preemption despite the City council faffing about since April and acting like they care about transit priority: https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2025.IE20.3
A long read on signal priority/preemption (the comment linked):
https://www.reddit.com/r/transit/comments/1n2oa73/comment/nb8syvh/
We get weak signal priority at best in Toronto on the streetcars (and very rarely buses). The city likes to call it "unconditional", but "unconditional" and weak for the streetcars is clearly not enough, so I hate to see how bad "conditional" is for Line 5 and 6.
"All of the City's current TSP locations are 'unconditional' in their operation. [...] For these reasons, and in consultation with the City and TTC the Metrolinx consortia are implementing Conditional TSP on Line 5 Eglinton and Line 6 Finch West."
TSP Toronto source: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2025/cc/bgrd/backgroundfile-254795.pdf
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soundmuseum
Active Member
I saw this promo today while on the Line 1 train going southbound from Dundas/TMU...
Steve X
Senior Member
Are we comparing apples to apples? Or Apples+oranges to apples?
If we compare the Sheppard Line to Finch West, Sheppard does not include a train yard. The trains were also part of the T1 order oppose to an expensive sole sourced deal with Alstom plus ripping up the BBD contract.
ML also build a backup control center for Finch and Eglinton unlike Sheppard or the TYSSE.
Bike lanes were added to the project.
The utilities relocation cost for some projects may or may not be included in some figures around the world.
Finally all the ML P3 contracts include 30 years operating cost which is definitely not suppose to be included in any construction project. This inflates the project cost by at least 40%.
We need a detail analysis, not copy and quoting everyone's number cause the TYSSE and Sheppard line does not include the janitor cleaning the train in 2030. ML's final cost does!
urbanclient
Senior Member
That is a very fair point. Yes those Spanish metro/RER projects are not apple to apples with Line 6.
However, the maintenance cost shouldn't be higher than $1-2 million per route km per year, which usually doesn't start until some time after the line is operational. A new line even if tested extensively is not supposed to need much maintenance. That's an additional $300 million to $600 million over 30 years. Worst case let's say $900 million to account for the Metrolinx incompetence 'tax'. That's an extra $90 million per km at most, and that's being generous.
So the fact that maintenance is included doesn't explain the full cost disparity between Finch West and a comparable European 'LRT'.
Steve X
Senior Member
We don’t know what is the average salary nor the minimum wage 20 years down the road. We also don’t know the cost of the parts and will the president of the USA levy a 500% tariff rate either. Yes some of these cost will definitely be variable based on that year’s cost.
To be safe, companies will all overbid a certain amount to ensure they don’t lose money in this deal. The cost would be very different between the private sector or kept public. Of course public employees would need to be very managed so we don’t have the whole SRT derailing disasters.
a2z
New Member
Not sure why the debate or comparison over the per-km outputs when that linked UofT transit construction costs study literally talks about all the underlying inputs (e.g. overdesigning, the cycle of lack of knowledge retention <> reliance on external consultants, inflated soft costs, strict safety standards - a theme that also hinders housing, etc.) that have led to such high costs per km here & across the Anglosphere - thus nothing discussed is really net new info lol.
(The article also reminded me how much of a bummer it was for DB to exit GO Expansion - even if they are far from perfect!)
(The article also reminded me how much of a bummer it was for DB to exit GO Expansion - even if they are far from perfect!)
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urbanclient
Senior Member
"overdesigning, the cycle of lack of knowledge retention <> reliance on external consultants, inflated soft costs"
Yeah, but lots of people including myself like to be technically correct. So there is a lot of "ummm ackshually, TTC/Metrolinx aren't that wasteful, we don't have slave labour and we are safe!/Barcelona Line 9/10 is a metro so we can't compare it to Line 6 Finch West".
Even if a lot of this technically correct info is good to get on the record, I think a significant part of it misses the bigger picture. Why are our soft costs more than the hard cost of construction itself (labour, equipment, materials).
Why are our transit authorities and politicians less transparent on transit than those in ostensibly more corrupt countries. Italy is not some shining beacon of morality with regards to the intersection of government and "private enterprise"...
Jonny5
Senior Member
Italians aren't building much of anything else, so their construction workers will take lower margins to do the tough work. We're building more condo towers and apartment towers right at this moment now than Rome has had built in probably the last 10+ years, maybe even since 2008 and the credit collapse. They also aren't building new highways or other things. It's a stagnant country and costs of labour are cheapo because youth either don't want that work, or they want any kind of work they can find and will settle for less pay to even have a job.
Then you have the migrant labourers on top of that, which Italian politicians will publicly tell you are evil criminals who should be deported, but privately are OK with them being paid meagre wages to work on construction projects in the many indirect ways behind the public eye, like at warehouses and transporting materials from site to site and as site security. They don't want to give that up gold mine of near-free labour.
Steve X
Senior Member
So some of these so called soft cost is associated with EAs and all the crap that our government requires which is non-existence in some countries. It could be requirement for sound/vibration monitoring.
Contingency is always a fun one. This rainy day fund always turns into a pool of money that contractors see as extra money they can try to earn.
We require every inch of tracks to be carefully designed by engineers while some countries would just build on the fly based on rough works. That would add up to the cost.
Ward8
Active Member
I agree with this in my post. I just wanted to articulate that the idea that it'll be *barely* faster than the 36 bus, when most riders (most people travel during peak times) are going to see a 40% drop in travel times is just incorrect. Sure a late night bus that is only hitting a fraction of the stops is probably faster, but it doesn't represent the typical 36 rider.
I hope they improve operations here and on the other dedicated lines. I understand the frustration, because I share in it, but I know if I still rode the 36 like I used to, it would make a huge difference in my life.
Jonny5
Senior Member
Yeah, you need a time-of-day weighted average of speed/rider to make a fair comparison. Unfortunately, data like that is hard to come by. Long a legendary issue with TTCs amalgamated statistics, where the blue night bus on a Sunday night counts into the "average" performance at equal-weight to a Tuesday morning 8:00 a.m. trip.
T3G
Senior Member
I'm going to do something a little crazy here, and provide actual numbers and data, something which this thread has been appallingly light on in the last while.
TransSee offers average travel time data. It's a free feature for streetcar routes, and a premium feature for buses.
Here is what it says for the 36 as of November 24, a Monday, heading westbound.
My search, showing this is a comparison of travel times between Finch West station and Highway 27/Humber College Boulevard.
The full data:
This is a summary of the data. The average travel time is 36:51 minutes, against a scheduled time of 45:13 (how's that for schedule writing and adherence?). The quickest trip was completed in 23:49 against a scheduled time of 32:59, while the highest travel time was 1 hour and 3 minutes, against a scheduled time of 56:18.
As a note, the sub-30 minute trips chiefly occur shortly before midnight.
And, for the same day, the information going eastbound:
Now that there are actual numbers here to capture an average day in the operation of a 36 bus, do with this information what thou wilst.
As an aside, a sharp eyed commenter on Steve Munro's blog pointed out some weird aspects to the publicly shown LRT schedule:
Sounds to me like they'd be able to improve the quality of the trip quite significantly purely by employing someone who actually knows how to write a schedule.
TransSee offers average travel time data. It's a free feature for streetcar routes, and a premium feature for buses.
Here is what it says for the 36 as of November 24, a Monday, heading westbound.
My search, showing this is a comparison of travel times between Finch West station and Highway 27/Humber College Boulevard.
The full data:
This is a summary of the data. The average travel time is 36:51 minutes, against a scheduled time of 45:13 (how's that for schedule writing and adherence?). The quickest trip was completed in 23:49 against a scheduled time of 32:59, while the highest travel time was 1 hour and 3 minutes, against a scheduled time of 56:18.
As a note, the sub-30 minute trips chiefly occur shortly before midnight.
And, for the same day, the information going eastbound:
Now that there are actual numbers here to capture an average day in the operation of a 36 bus, do with this information what thou wilst.
As an aside, a sharp eyed commenter on Steve Munro's blog pointed out some weird aspects to the publicly shown LRT schedule:
Sounds to me like they'd be able to improve the quality of the trip quite significantly purely by employing someone who actually knows how to write a schedule.
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cplchanb
Senior Member
Rainforest
Senior Member
I am surprised that the bus 36 scheduled trip time is so much greater than the actual trip time. Maybe, the scheduled time includes several minutes for the terminal recovery?