Broadway Subway - Millennium Line Extension to Arbutus (II) | U/C

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by Changing City

I don't have any confidence that anything said so far by Poilievre can be certain of becoming policy. He has so far indicated he would withdraw funding for transit projects if municipalities don't increase housing starts by 15% year on year on year. As that almost certainly couldn't happen, it seems like a mechanism to not fund transit.

Seems like the 15% housing start number is related to housing funding and not transit though both require housing for funding.

He would to link federal transfers to new home construction as a way to encourage quicker approval and construction timelines.

“We will require municipalities to permit 15 per cent more home building per year as condition of getting their federal money," Poilievre said.

Likewise for public transit, he said federal funding will go into a trust, and regional and municipal governments will need to borrow the money to build new transit infrastructure.

“The money will only be released to them when all of the available land around the station is surrounded by high-density apartment complexes that are occupied by people," he said.

https://www.biv.com/news/economy-law...-trade-8418197

[BaddieB]

From that BIV article

Likewise for public transit, he said federal funding will go into a trust, and regional and municipal governments will need to borrow the money to build new transit infrastructure.

“The money will only be released to them when all of the available land around the station is surrounded by high-density apartment complexes that are occupied by people," he said.

Seems like putting the cart before the horse. It's better to build BEFORE because it's cheaper when land is cheaper and you have more room to work with.

However, you can say the area UBCx will go through is quite dense already, especially with the Jericho Lands going up.

[mcj]

Originally Posted by BaddieB

Seems like putting the cart before the horse. It's better to build BEFORE because it's cheaper when land is cheaper and you have more room to work with.

The trust will not grow at the same pace as land acquisition costs and construction costs. It's not a plan thought out by someone that actually wants to invest in transit.

Imagine using the same logic for roadway buildouts. You'll only get your roads AFTER you build out all your development.

[GenWhy?]

Originally Posted by BaddieB

From that BIV article



Seems like putting the cart before the horse. It's better to build BEFORE because it's cheaper when land is cheaper and you have more room to work with.

However, you can say the area UBCx will go through is quite dense already, especially with the Jericho Lands going up.

It would be insane to think that a large section of the densest part of Jericho would need to be constructed and occupied before federal funding is available for a SkyTrain extension. What this leaves the door open for is if you don't build a "station" (so maybe BRT to build the user base) then the money can't be held back?

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by mcj

The trust will not grow at the same pace as land acquisition costs and construction costs. It's not a plan thought out by someone that actually wants to invest in transit.

Imagine using the same logic for roadway buildouts. You'll only get your roads AFTER you build out all your development.

He's just complaining about the same thing with Eby and the transit oriented development areas pretending to force the hands of municipal governments or using the BC Transportation Financing Authority to acquire land around stations for new housing.

I guess you need more details and see what if any exceptions there are to those policy statements. Maybe they'll dump their new home construction money into those projects around stations.

Translink can't get enough funding for existing operations so I doubt they care about future federal funding for UBCx or the Purple Line.

[Jimbo604]

Originally Posted by BaddieB

I did not know it took about a year of just testing and commissioning. That's crazy. Why does it take so long?

At first glance it is a long time. Comparatively Honolulu just energized phase 2 of their elevated Skyline train and in 2-3 weeks they will start running trains and "Hitachi can start that year-long process of testing and commissioning like we did on segment one." Src

So one year of testing is probably not out of the norm, I'm assuming. We're just don't have enough commissionings in Metro Vancouver to be readily familiar in our heads with the time lines involved. And we're impatient (me included), lol.

[jollyburger]

Explanation on the various phases for testing and commissioning explained on the Eglinton Crosstown LRT project

https://www.metrolinx.com/en/discove...ning-explained

https://www.metrolinx.com/en/discove...-commissioning

[Migrant_Coconut]

Not sure we want to use Metrolinx's bloat as the yardstick here, but yeah, I'd rather TransLink run too many tests than too few.

[griswold]

So it’s probably not going to be online until 2028. Wasn’t this originally supposed to be done in 2025? They also said earlier this year it was pushed to 2026.

[ilikeredheads]

thorough testing is important for a transit infrastructure. Sure, you can rush it out, but then you'll get 2 derailments in 2 years.

[RedArbutus]

Originally Posted by griswold

So it’s probably not going to be online until 2028. Wasn’t this originally supposed to be done in 2025? They also said earlier this year it was pushed to 2026.

It was fall 2025 originally and then a year or two ago (?) was pushed to winter or 2026. It was only a few months ago they announced that due to delays for station construction catalyzed by supply problems it would be ready fall 2027.

[mcj]

Originally Posted by madog222

Updated project schedule.

A reminder of the current schedule^

Considering the "systems" will start in Q1 2025 and end in Q4 2026, and "testing & commissioning" will start in ~Q2 2025 and end in ~Q3 2027, I wonder what the timeline of those will be for the SLS (which will almost certainly not be delivered on time at this rate either).

[WarrenC12]

The Chinese and almost everybody else who's built a train line of any kind must think this is some kind of joke.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

The Chinese and almost everybody else who's built a train line of any kind must think this is some kind of joke.

It's definately a Canadian thing - Montreal and Toronto subways were delayed a lot too. But in Sydney "Two of the three Metro lines currently under construction are tens of billions of dollars over budget and plagued by delays." In Seattle in 2022 "Sound Transit has fallen months behind schedule in its quest to operate trains across Lake Washington by June 2023, as managers blame construction errors, a concrete delivery strike, COVID-19, frayed supply chains and even bad weather." And in India, and indeed, in China too, projects hit unexpected (and expensive) problems. There are lots of other examples around the world. Even the Spanish (currently building our line), managed to have the Barcelona 'Metro Line 9 scandal: already 14 years behind schedule and €5bn over budget'

[Migrant_Coconut]

The Chinese are all running away to Canada (among other countries), so maybe we shouldn't GAF what they think. Lower QA/labour standards, $18 trillion worth of GDP and constant economic stimulation with no need to consider cost-benefit can get you a lot of things.

Sure, we could do better, but we could also do worse - in addition to CC's cities, all we need to do is ask Calgary, Edmonton, Missisauga, Hamilton, New York, San Fran, SoCal, Honolulu, London, Paris or Berlin how their trains are coming along. Even Singapore's had construction delays. At least we're still on-budget... right?

[WarrenC12]

Having delays is one thing. Our schedule was already very long to begin with.

Not sure why you guys are making so many excuses. It's pathetic trying to build anything in this country, and we shouldn't be satisfied with it.

[Migrant_Coconut]

If we don't get to make excuses for delays, then all those other places have no right to apparently "think of it as a joke" when they've had the exact same thing (plus cost overruns). Broadway/UBC's not stuck in limbo anymore, and that's more than we could've said ten years ago.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Having delays is one thing. Our schedule was already very long to begin with.

Not sure why you guys are making so many excuses. It's pathetic trying to build anything in this country, and we shouldn't be satisfied with it.

I'm not sure we're making excuses - we're saying similar (and worse) delays can be found all over the world. So far ours is supposedly not over budget. Many transit projects are delayed and over budget. I'm guessing one factor in our delay is that we have a fixed price contract. It's possible we could throw more money at the project and get it finished slightly faster. Fortunately there's no Olympic Games drop dead time crunch.

[seamusmcduff]

It would have been nice to have it open for the world cup though.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Pretty sure we can all agree a summer 2026 finish would've been ideal, but oh well - it's probably better to do it right than fast. We've seen what happens when a SkyTrain gets watered down to meet a budget/deadline.