This is a long post, but it needs to be to address the operating cost issue in a comprehensive manner. Please bear with me.
If one assumes realistic headways, there is no operating cost advantage for LRT in Ottawa. Let’s use the MRC/Delcan report (page F-44) as a starting point.
The report used costs of $105 per hour for standard buses, $115 per hour for articulated buses and $172 per hour for LRT cars. A couple of observations:
• The first two are based on current bus costs in Ottawa. Thus, they do not assume any effort on the part of transit operators to bring down their labour costs to levels seen in the rest of the bus industry in Canada (e.g., inter-city operators such as Greyhound). Any such effort would make buses more cost competitive. They also bear absolutely no relationship to bus costs in South America.
• The LRT costs are based on Calgary. They seem consistent with the operating cost per vehicle hour numbers that Calgary has made public (e.g., see bottom paragraph in page 14 of
http://www.calgarytransit.com/pdf/Calgary_CTrain_Effective_Capital_Utilization.pdf). As others have noted, they are based on 3-car trains. In my view, this would be quite close to costs during the first years of a built-out LRT system in Ottawa, which would be a mix of 4-car trains (Blair to Baseline) and 2-car trains (N/S Line). Moreover, I hope that Ottawa would not skip on things like air conditioning. So $172 per hour per LRT car is a good ballpark estimate.
Using these parameters, the MRC/Delcan Report calculated that the rail option would save $51.6M per year in operating costs in 2031 (i.e., $485.4M per year (bus option) minus $433.8M per year (rail option) – note: these are cost totals for the transit system as a whole, including local routes and feeders). Although not explicitly stated, this assumed that frequencies would be much lower for rail. Assuming an average train length of 3-cars, the frequencies would be 7 times lower for rail.
Frequencies that are 7 times lower than bus would be acceptable during the peak period. With peak bus headways of 18 seconds, this would give rail headways of about 2 minutes. No issue here.
However, frequencies that are 7 times lower than bus would not be acceptable during the off-peak period. With off-peak bus headways of 3 minutes (a realistic average for the entire off-peak period), this would give rail headways of 21 minutes. This is not acceptable, especially for the Blair to Baseline segment, which is the core of the network. Remember, 1 minute of wait time is equivalent to 3 minutes of in-vehicle time so a substantial decline in ridership would ensue with such headways. Let’s be very, very generous towards the LRT option and assume that off-peak frequencies for the option would only need to double to become acceptable. Under such a scenario, the LRT option would still compare very poorly to the bus option in terms of wait times due to headways of 10 minutes versus 3 minutes for bus. In my humble opinion, a tripling of LRT frequencies to get headways of 7 minutes would be needed for the service to become acceptable. Even in that case, the bus option would remain much more attractive.
With a doubling of off-peak frequencies for the LRT, its operating cost advantage over bus would dwindle to a mere $14M per year. With a tripling of off-peak frequencies for the LRT, its operating costs would exceed that of the bus option by $23M per year.
Wait, there’s more. The MRC/Delcan report assumed that buses would be operated exactly like trains in that they would stop at every station (i.e., both options would have the same average speed). Hence, no effort was made to take advantage of the operational flexibilities of buses. It is really strange for consultants with a purported BRT bias to make such an assumption. Anyways, a substantial portion of peak period traffic would be carried by “trunk expresses” (to borrow Dado’s term). These services would only stop at a select number of stations within the Greenbelt – along the Blair to Baseline and N/S corridors, they may only stop at Blair, South Keys and/or Greenboro, Hurdman (depending on demand patterns, Hurdman could be skipped), Rideau Centre, two stops downtown (east and central portions), Tunney’s Pasture, Lincoln Fields and Baseline. Overall, the trunk expresses would skip about 60% of all of the stations within the Greenbelt. This would lead to substantial increases in average speed and productivity, thus reducing operating costs further and probably tipping the scale in favour of the bus option.
Not being entirely comfortable with the MRC/Delcan methodology on page F-44 (e.g., its bus option actually provides 13% more transit capacity than the rail option, which is very strange), I developed my own simplified cost model to compare a bus option (using 100% high-capacity, articulated buses) with an LRT option (average of 3-car trains). The results were consistent with those above. Capacity-wise, 1 train can carry roughly the same amount of people as 6 articulated buses. Thus, running trains at frequencies that are 6 times lower than bus would provide the same overall capacity. Under a scenario with LRT frequencies being 6 times lower than bus frequencies at all times, the LRT option was found to be 22% cheaper in terms of operating costs than the bus option. However, the following adjustments should be made:
• Off-peak frequencies for the LRT option are doubled to achieve headways that are “only” 3 times higher (i.e., worse) than the bus option (e.g., off-peak headways of 9 minutes for LRT versus 3 minutes for bus).
• Peak period operating costs for the bus option are reduced by 10% to take into account the extensive use of fast “trunk expresses” that would skip most stations within the Greenbelt and serve only the busiest stations.
With these two adjustments, the bus option ends up with operating costs that are 16% less than the LRT option.
As an aside, I also used the simplified cost model to do a comparison with a Skytrain option (i.e., automated trains), which would provide much better frequencies than LRT. However, I have grave doubts about the reliability of such a system in Ottawa’s harsh winter climate and it would require complete grade separation with its higher capital costs, its barrier effects and/or the ugliness of large elevated guideways. Using Mark I cars (which have about the same capacity as an articulated bus, albeit with many fewer seats and many more standees) with operating costs of $80 per vehicle hour, the Skytrain option was found to have operating costs that are 26% less than the bus option. On an annual basis, savings in operating costs were between $25M and $30M. Better than nothing, but not a huge amount. Perhaps, the use of the latest Mark II cars would increase the amount of the savings, albeit at the further cost of passenger comfort (the scarcity of seats means that, at capacity, 75% of the people in the vehicles would be forced to stand) .
Back to the LRT. I’m sure people will point out the City’s intension to eventually run 6-car trains along the Blair to Baseline segment. Yes, this would reduce operating costs per hour for each LRT car. However, it would further aggravate the disparity in frequencies and the cost of addressing this disparity during the off-peak period.
So the bottom line is this. At least in the case of Ottawa, claims that the LRT would result in large savings in operating costs over a “best bus” option is predicated on extremely poor headways during the off-peak period. Basically, savings in operating costs are obtained by dramatically increasing wait times and thus user costs (i.e., savings in one kind of cost result in increases in another). Since an extra minute of wait time is equivalent to an extra three minutes of in-vehicle time, I suspect that a social cost-benefit analysis would confirm that the frequencies are indeed too low for the LRT option and would need to be increased substantially. Moreover, pressure from users to provide acceptable headways would be expected. Savings in operating costs would disappear. The “trunk expresses” would further tip the scale in favour of the bus option. Thus, a “best bus” option would have lower operating costs than the LRT option. This would add to the other advantages of the bus option:
• Lower capital costs.
• Much higher ridership (due to less waiting time, faster rides on “trunk expresses”, fewer transfers, more seats, more direct routes, better integration with Rapibus, etc.).
• Less disruption during construction.
Also, as I have noted before, a well-designed “best bus” option would provide sufficient capacity to meet Ottawa’s long-term needs.
None of the claimed benefits of the LRT option (i.e., higher ridership, lower operating costs, greater environmental benefits, etc.) stand up to scrutiny.
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