Calgary Public Transit II

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Tunnel diameter would be a small savings, holes are holes - and when they say ART, they don't mean necessarily SkyTrain, Canada Line is counted in the example.

Big savings comes from being able to build shorter stations - underground station boxes are expensive! To figure out the ART cost you need to do way more than a back of the envelope, you need grade profiles and system capabilities because depending on the ROW, you might still be able to run much of it at ground level.

Just checking the math here

You have 54,000 riders saving $0.87. Using capacity at 50 weeks of working days, and half loads at other times, (307.5 'days') you have 16,605,000 trips with a savings of $14,446,350 a year. That is, the operational cost differential takes 138.44 years to pay for, without interest costs.

I think a decimal point must of been misplaced in the calculation above.

Also, the display boards capital cost per rider while they might be proportionally correct, do not really reflect any real value it seems.

I know that they don't necessarily mean skytrain. In fact, I can't see us going linear induction but driverless means grade separated. With grade separated we can go third rail and the tunnels can be a couple of feet shorter.

I thought costs increase exponentially with tunnel diameter. Laying utility pipe is a hole... Moving all of that extra dirt costs money; going deeper costs money.