Quote:
Originally Posted by milomilo
One other thing - it also misses some of the cost. For one, it will have significant impact during construction. The businesses on Centre St especially will suffer significant economic cost, and some will go under. That may be worth it, but it is still a fact that needs to be accounted for.
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Not including the negative costs due to the disruptions that come during construction is a serious omission. Especially given the tunnel boring machine was being justified because it avoided street level disruptions that have now been added back in. I would like to see a similar study of BRT to the North and LRT to South Hospital for comparison.
But let’s keep in mind this is not an economic case, it’s a SOCIO-ECONOMIC CASE i.e a fudge it justification, take some hard building costs and then marry then up to an array of nebulous benefits numbers and divide A by B and voila, look see our proposal is the best! Still lots of hidden gems if you can wade through the 176 pages and the brochure style text boxes. Up to each of us to decide how much we want to believe in this kind of hopium.
Some things that caught my interest:
Given the varying level of design certainty across the Program – generally with greater level of detail known in the southern portion of the Program – the cost is currently a mix of Class 3 and Class 5 estimates.
A Class 5 estimate ranges from -50 to + 100%, although it could be as tight as -20 to + 30%, still ludicrous for making decisions on a project at this stage, no wonder the North section is considered financially risky. Where is the full build out cost estimate, before committing to stage 1 we should know what to expect in future stages, anyone seen it?
The socio-economic benefits of transit investment are divided into two categories: user impacts (direct benefits to travellers) and external impacts (reductions to the transportation network’s negative impacts to society).
On the plus side, they are using a social discount rate of 4%, 30 year evaluation period, hourly value of time of $23.10, to calculate present value. its always good to use some real numbers when calculating the fudge it numbers, still GIGO is GIGO. With the downturn in Calgary’s economy we can expect the TOD and other commercial benefits to be far less as these hoped for developments are going to be pushed farther into the future and further discounted.
With a peak frequency of 5 minutes and an end-to-end runtime of nearly 37 minutes, the Green Line will require 18 two car trains in service (assuming a 5 minute layover/recovery at each terminus). Assuming these will be run as two-car trains, 36 will be needed to operate the system plus a further six trains as spares – for a total fleet requirement of 42 LRVs. If an 8-minute headway is used then 28 LRVs (including spares) will be required with 11 two-car trains in service in the peak.
Drivers using Deerfoot Trail or other major roads could save up to 4 minutes (10% of a typical 40 minute commute) due to decongestion.
4 minutes in improved door to door time of travel by car versus taking the new train? Does anyone else think putting LRT at grade on center street in Phase 1 is going to decrease travel times? Apparently LRT is 50% faster than BRT (faster for 0.8 km except for the time getting on and getting off the feeder bus and transfer at 16 ave station). And the study says car drivers will benefit from 10% less traffic, except they forgot to mention on center street it will be on 50% less road!
We’re going to run 2 car trains!
1.8 km of elevated track, hope they got public approval for that, we don’t like elevated track!
Cost estimates for this concept are:
• $30 to $35 million per year for Green Line LRT Stage 1 operating costs ($32.1 is used as the basis for evaluation)
• -$5.2 million per year for bus optimization (operating cost savings)
Does this include running the center street BRT for the foreseeable future?
The Green Line will lead to nearly 2,300 fewer auto collisions resulting in property damage, injury, or death over the next 30 years.
Did they add in LRT collisions and pedestrian hits?