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Originally Posted by niwell
Yes, sorry I should have added that it's a relatively new and growing problem, which extends to infrastructure beyond transit (though probably not to the same extent). The Yonge-University extension to Vaughan was about $370M per km IIRC. Which adjusted for inflation is still far less than newer construction.
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A big part of it is shifts in accounting practices, but there is a lot of underlying construction inflation as well.
If you watch construction of the Ontario Line Metrolinx is literally checking every single option box it seems too though - much higher design standards, overbuilding infrastructure, overly complex and specialized construction equipment being used.. It's no wonder it costs so much.
One type of construction that actually hasn't inflated quite as much is highways, ironically. The Bradford Bypass contract issued this year was apparently around $550 million or about $100 million per kilometre, including the full flyover interchange with the 400.
That really isn't that much compared to transit costs, and hasn't inflated as much over the last 20 years either. The 407 East extension contract for the first phase, issued in 2012, cost about $40 million/km ($1 billion for ~27km of highway), but generally with less overall complexity. MTO is building the Highway 3 expansion in St Thomas (10km) for $12 million a kilometre! Now that does re-use a lot of existing grading and structures, but shows how highways can still actually be quite affordable.
Ironically the province just spends absolute pennies on them.. MTO gets like $500 million a year, if that, in actual expansion spending compared to Metrolinx which gets a firehose of like $6-7 billion annually, and just blows it on crap. The GO expansion program has sucked up close to $20 billion at this point with almost nothing to show for it. It's absolutely insane and it blows me away that it gets no media coverage. It should be government-ending level scandal.
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