The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Ottawa doesn't have wide roads either. That is why LRT is following old rail lines, and expressways for most of the distance, and why there was no choice but a subway through downtown.

London has no rail lines or open corridor it can use unlike Ottawa. Nor does it have a corridor like along Lebreton Flats and the Ottawa West Parkway. London also doesn't have an urban freeway it can travel along like the Queensway to St.Laurent and Gloucester. A tunnel like in Ottawa would be too expensive for London and London's development is far different from Ottawa's. Ottawa is a long corridor up against a river while London is much more square like. In Ottawa the vast majority of transit and road trip are east to west while in London they come from every direction.

[p_xavier]

https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2019/cc/bgrd/backgroundfile-131253.pdf
Toronto transit planning drama!


https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/03...er-the-provinces-subway-upload-plan.html

[MalcolmTucker]

Automated trains delivered by a P3. What’s not to like, as long as stations aren’t cut and there is fare integration.

[rbt]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Automated trains delivered by a P3. What’s not to like, as long as stations aren’t cut and there is fare integration.

Yeah, option #2 and #3 of the DRL North EA was certainly hinting at combining the DRL + Richmond Hill line into a single bundle.

Something on a BART scale rather than REM scale would have sufficient capacity for a few decades to do both jobs. Also, there's nearly unlimited train storage space out near Gormley.

The part not to like is it means another 4 to 5 years until a tender as it would need to be done as a single package from Bloomington to Union, some of which hasn't even started an EA yet.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Automated trains delivered by a P3. What’s not to like, as long as stations aren’t cut and there is fare integration.

The fear I have with a setup like that is if it can be modified later. If it is an isolated line that can't be extended or changed in any way without great difficulty, then that is a problem to me.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by milomilo

The fear I have with a setup like that is if it can be modified later. If it is an isolated line that can't be extended or changed in any way without great difficulty, then that is a problem to me.

Only a little harder to do than elsewhere, just need to write the contract to be flexible. Like normal delivery methods, you can screw up P3s just as you can screw up conventional contracting and maintenance.

A lack of change can be a good thing - in Toronto continual changes and scope creep has been a major source of cost increases. Decide what you want (in this case, the number of people per direction per hour in the busiest section, minimum service standards for frequency, the number of bus bays if you want seamless transfers) and where you want it (where the government has acquired land for station heads, emergency exits, and ventilation, along with where government owned corridor will be available) and let the 3-5 firms lay out what they think will be the best option. A key benefit of P3s is the maintenance is built into the contract, and conventional delivery has consistently led to the government focusing on expansion rather than keeping the existing system in good repair. A P3 makes the cost transparent - the line costs this much a year to exist, rather than hiding costs in budgets all over the place.

You can totally have different companies take on different sections, different functions. Ontario has tonnes of experience with P3s - the Eglinton line tunnel is being delivered and financed by the P3 while operations is with the TTC, and surface extensions are delivered by (I believe) conventional methods.

Of course, you get the most savings by building it all at once, having the entire contract bundled together, so the private partner builds it to a higher standard to reduce maintenance costs and increase availability (reduced maintenance periods, reduced non-plan outages). Designing the contract with the right incentives can even reduce things like suicide, as you can have the operator partially paid by the number of people who use the new line, have penalties for non-planned outages (whether you need this beyond the loss in passenger revenue I don't know, too much risk transfer can also reduce efficiency), which would incentivize the contractor to build things like platform screen doors.

For an expensive project like this, you'd likely split the model. You'd have an availability payment (the project is available for the TTC to use), a shadow toll (the government transfers a certain fee per passenger or passenger mile, or a combination of both), maybe you'd have incentives that pays the operator in transferable density for TOD sites, and if you want to go full Montreal, transfer tax value uplift in TOD sites (to incentivize good community integration). You can even put incentives in for the availability of elevators and escalators at stations during service hours, to ensure that stations aren't built to a minimum accessibility standard, but are built to a usable standard (more effective than just requiring a certain number of elevators or escalators, as that doesn't ensure they will actually be available to use, and doesn't incent maintenance in off hours).

[SteelTown]

Metrolinx resumes buying land for Hamilton LRT after 7-month pause
Metrolinx will start buying property again for Hamilton's $1 billion LRT project

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/hamilton-lrt-1.5075865

After a seven-month pause, Metrolinx will start buying property again for Hamilton's planned light rail transit (LRT) system.

Mayor Fred Eisenberger met with Jeff Yurek, Ontario's minister of transportation, at city hall Thursday afternoon.

Yurek's message: Metrolinx will start buying property again, Eisenberger says. And the request for proposals for consortiums to design, build, finance, operate and maintain the system will be extended until September. It was due to close this month.

Eisenberger says he won't relax until shovels are in the ground. But this move is good news for the project.

The previous provincial government committed $1 billion to build the system. It will run alternately down King and Main from McMaster University to Eastgate Square. But the province paused property acquisitions in August.

It's due to launch in 2024, although Kris Jacobson, the city's LRT head, says the team will look at that.

The joint office between Metrolinx and the city needs to buy about 90 full properties to make LRT happen, Jacobson said. It's purchased a little over 50 now. Then there are about 300 partial property acquisitions to do.

So far, all of them have been with willing sellers, Jacobson said. But there may be expropriations in the future.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Only a little harder to do than elsewhere, just need to write the contract to be flexible. Like normal delivery methods, you can screw up P3s just as you can screw up conventional contracting and maintenance.

A lack of change can be a good thing - in Toronto continual changes and scope creep has been a major source of cost increases. Decide what you want (in this case, the number of people per direction per hour in the busiest section, minimum service standards for frequency, the number of bus bays if you want seamless transfers) and where you want it (where the government has acquired land for station heads, emergency exits, and ventilation, along with where government owned corridor will be available) and let the 3-5 firms lay out what they think will be the best option. A key benefit of P3s is the maintenance is built into the contract, and conventional delivery has consistently led to the government focusing on expansion rather than keeping the existing system in good repair. A P3 makes the cost transparent - the line costs this much a year to exist, rather than hiding costs in budgets all over the place.

You can totally have different companies take on different sections, different functions. Ontario has tonnes of experience with P3s - the Eglinton line tunnel is being delivered and financed by the P3 while operations is with the TTC, and surface extensions are delivered by (I believe) conventional methods.

Of course, you get the most savings by building it all at once, having the entire contract bundled together, so the private partner builds it to a higher standard to reduce maintenance costs and increase availability (reduced maintenance periods, reduced non-plan outages). Designing the contract with the right incentives can even reduce things like suicide, as you can have the operator partially paid by the number of people who use the new line, have penalties for non-planned outages (whether you need this beyond the loss in passenger revenue I don't know, too much risk transfer can also reduce efficiency), which would incentivize the contractor to build things like platform screen doors.

For an expensive project like this, you'd likely split the model. You'd have an availability payment (the project is available for the TTC to use), a shadow toll (the government transfers a certain fee per passenger or passenger mile, or a combination of both), maybe you'd have incentives that pays the operator in transferable density for TOD sites, and if you want to go full Montreal, transfer tax value uplift in TOD sites (to incentivize good community integration). You can even put incentives in for the availability of elevators and escalators at stations during service hours, to ensure that stations aren't built to a minimum accessibility standard, but are built to a usable standard (more effective than just requiring a certain number of elevators or escalators, as that doesn't ensure they will actually be available to use, and doesn't incent maintenance in off hours).

Interesting, 'you can screw up P3s just as you can screw up conventional' - definitely agree with that. It just seems like the consequences of screw up will be worse and more short sighted with P3. Look at the Canada Line in Vancouver. Sure, they got what they asked for, but now they have an incompatible, minimally upgradeable line. It will probably be fine for the life of the contract, but in 50 years time I think they might be questioning the criteria.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Interesting, 'you can screw up P3s just as you can screw up conventional' - definitely agree with that. It just seems like the consequences of screw up will be worse and more short sighted with P3. Look at the Canada Line in Vancouver. Sure, they got what they asked for, but now they have an incompatible, minimally upgradeable line. It will probably be fine for the life of the contract, but in 50 years time I think they might be questioning the criteria.

In 50 years, the line will be 60 years old. If we only built things with a 60 year time horizon in mind, we would have to build a lot less. Heck, the value of that extra investment needed to build to a higher standard over 60 years would most definitely pay for building another line to relieve it, serving a different but complementary corridor. (you could also just expand the stations, but that would be more disruptive)

Think about whether you would rather have 4 north south lines in Toronto with half the capacity each, or the system as it exists today.

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Automated trains delivered by a P3. What’s not to like, as long as stations aren’t cut and there is fare integration.

For one thing, it's a P3. The benefits are front end loaded. They never look as rosy at the end of the term and the success rate is sketchy. The standards for maintenance and state of good repair are subjective to the contract and will be based on the return on investment for the private equity partners. In other words, The public will end up paying for the maintenance over the course of term and with a healthy profit margin included.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

For one thing, it's a P3. The benefits are front end loaded. They never look as rosy at the end of the term and the success rate is sketchy. The standards for maintenance and state of good repair are subjective to the contract and will be based on the return on investment for the private equity partners. In other words, The public will end up paying for the maintenance over the course of term and with a healthy profit margin included.

So true!

[ssiguy]

While certainly the private sector is in it for the money, they can still be very effective and even cost saving when done right. Vancouver's CL station design flaws had nothing to do with the private company and everything to do with Campbell who wanted it built as cheaply as possible and in time for the Olympics. Campbell had absolutely no interest in building anything for the long-term benefit of Vancouverites.

Also, often the extra expenses long term using PPP are exagerated and sometimes PPP can save money. PPP allows more transit to be built at one time due to the extra infrastructure money they cough up. Some people say that's not worth the long-term costs but don't look at the big picture. Those extra funds means more things can be built earlier. For example: If a province has $5 billion in transit projects and only has $4B they can get the extra $1B from the private sector with more long-term costs. However without the private sector, the province can only build $4B and the other $1B has to wait for a decade and by that time the cost of construction may have doubled. This would mean that $1B in PPP could mean the province saves $2 in infrastructure costs.

Also that time savings by being able to build everything faster garners the city more money in property and development taxes sooner than having to wait another decade til they find more money. When the PPP are involved, costs are kept down as in the CL where any cost or time overrun penalties would have be born 100% by the private company and not taxpayers.............the standard government late & over budget were not optional.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

For one thing, it's a P3. The benefits are front end loaded. They never look as rosy at the end of the term and the success rate is sketchy. The standards for maintenance and state of good repair are subjective to the contract and will be based on the return on investment for the private equity partners. In other words, The public will end up paying for the maintenance over the course of term and with a healthy profit margin included.

The benefits aren't front loaded, they are spread throughout the project. Costs are higher because costs are transparent - the public has to pay for maintenance and knows it up front. When is the last time you saw a publicly delivered project go through a life cycle analysis and then adequate funding actually follow through? The public sector is notoriously bad at this.

And since when is having a project earlier, not a benefit? If you have 30 or 40 years to pay for a project, why phase it to have one every decade when you could have all 4 in the first decade for the same price?

As for profits, it isn't like conventionally delivered projects aren't creating profit either, we don't have a TTC large project construction unit where all the workers are public employees.

Financing, it depends on the model, but in a situation where the politically viable options are: no project or P3 with financing, the P3 option is much more attractive. If you want to put a government guarantee on the debt, then the cost of financing will equalize to the cost of government finance anyways.

As for success rates, I'd argue conventional procurement has an equally spotty record - poorly implemented projects can be poorly implemented by any method. A big part of P3 failures have been inappropriate transfers of risk, trying to get P3s to take over risks created by government, like trying to transfer land acquisition and permitting risk to the partner when the local governments have problems acquiring land and issuing permits. Or poor contract design, where one party has complete control over an element which binds the other party into an unacceptable arrangement (like in the case of the London underground, where the P3 partner was bound to deliver whatever Transport for London designed at a fixed price, so TfL started designing everything to a much higher standard, which after 6 or 7 years pushed the P3 partner into bankruptcy).

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

In 50 years, the line will be 60 years old. If we only built things with a 60 year time horizon in mind, we would have to build a lot less. Heck, the value of that extra investment needed to build to a higher standard over 60 years would most definitely pay for building another line to relieve it, serving a different but complementary corridor. (you could also just expand the stations, but that would be more disruptive)

Think about whether you would rather have 4 north south lines in Toronto with half the capacity each, or the system as it exists today.

That sounds fine on paper, but in practise we know it doesn't work like that.Two half size lines costs much more than one full size line if built at the same time, and far more if the other one is built in the future. Plus, the political challenge of building the one smaller line is basically the same as a full size one, whereas building two is twice as hard. It's not like Vancouver can now use a pot of money it didn't use to get another parallel line for free in the future.

I wouldn't actually mind the costs being amortized over a longer period. AFAIK, HS2 in the UK has its CBR judged over a 60 year period, which is fair as the benefit of that will be felt essentially forever, it's not like these transit lines evaporate once 30 years are up and need to be rebuilt.

I'm probably inherently untrustworthy of P3s - I grew up hearing story after story of government fuck ups around them in the UK (PFIs as they were called there). As you mention, the London Underground being one of them. Hopefully we've learnt since then.

[MalcolmTucker]

The London one while it collapsed did save the government money (the main reason it collapsed is the deal was one sided in favour of the government!), and it did get the government to actually commit to spend money on the maintenance finally, which the system hadn't been able to do under labour or conservative governments. And what was the result of the collapse? No deaths, no under funded maintenance. What was the result of the public investment plan before? Accidents and deaths.

A key benefit is forcing the public sector to commit to long term maintenance funding in a contract, one that the public sector can be sued for if the funding isn't there. It locks in the funding. In an ideal world, the public sector wouldn't have a problem performing adequate maintenance, but it continually does. Good maintenance as a preference over other demands on the public purse is the exception, rather than the rule.

In an ideal world, where we can amortize things over the life of the asset, instead of having stupid accounting fights, it would be great. But we do live in a world where the stupid accounting fights matter a lot, and those stupid fights can prevent an asset being built.

Surface rail is a different kettle of fish than underground infrastructure as well, we can't just arbitrarily stretch out the life of assets when they need substantial renewal earlier.

I also believe that companies subject to competitive pressure (even when they have to employ people based on existing collective agreements) do better at controlling costs, and at finding innovative solutions to control costs.

And we haven't even touched on the benefits of bundling, to ensure assets are built to reach the lowest lifecycle cost, not just the lowest cost (we've seen this failure happen in Canada with the Champlain Bridge). The Champlain Bridge is also a great example of improper and inadequate maintenance happening by spreading responsibility amongst agencies instead of concentrating it.

As for:

Two half size lines costs much more than one full size line if built at the same time, and far more if the other one is built in the future.

You have to not just look at the headline cost, but the cost of finance as well. 1) we have no certainty that cost inflation for construction which has happened recently will continue forever, it should re-converge with inflation (this is the same error people make when they buy a house to try to insulate themselves against future price increases) 2) We have to compare in inflated dollars, so it isn't as simple (as I'm sure you know) 3) We have to account for the value of both not spending the more money now, or spending that money on different things (assuming we are operating in an environment without unlimited money)

The point you make about getting a second line built later is a political problem, just as it is a political problem to try to get a larger line built in the first place. I'd argue that the political risk is equal in both cases, and therefor can't be taken into account.

Going away from your last post.

A lot of the arguments around P3s are unfounded, and based on an emotional appeal to a loss of control. But, there is no loss of control, the government is in full control. The government writes the tenders, sets the standards. Governments elsewhere before private entities came into the picture did this as well. A great example is the build out of the Italian autostrade. The government basically wrote standards, and created an entity within itself but at arms length to meet the standard with control over its own budget (it received its revenues directly, instead of them being subject to appropriation by the government), to make sure it wasn't subject to political whims. It isn't how Canada has delivered things, but it is a good way to do so.

Imagine if Toronto instead had set standards and signed a contract to deliver Transit City and locked it in, instead of trying to do things our way? Whether the tendering was to a public entity or private, Toronto wouldn't have suffered a lost decade.

[ainvan]

Public engagement for Surrey-Langley SkyTrain to begin in April

The public engagement process for the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project is set to begin in April, according to a corporate report from Surrey staff.

In the Monday (April 1) agenda, it says council will be given an update on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain (SLS) project, which will include TransLink’s work plan and information on the upcoming public engagement process.

Based on TransLink’s proposed work plan, the public engagement process will start in April with the preliminary design and costing in May/June.

Then in July, there will be a draft business case presented to the mayor’s council, with finalized reference design, costs and business case in November/December.

The timeline states that the construction would be from 2021 to 2025 and start of service would be in 2025, both pending the approval of the business case from the provincial and federal governments.

At the same time, TransLink has started a planning process to “refresh” the South of the Fraser Rapid Transit (SoFRT) Strategy which is “consistent” with the mayor’s council’s 10-year vision of building 27 km of rapid transit on three corridors: 104th Avenue, King George Boulevard and Fraser Highway.

Peace Arch News

[ainvan]

TransLink's new $32-million SeaBus vessel arriving from Europe this year

TransLink’s newest SeaBus ferry fleet addition now has a name.

The Burrard Chinook, which was christened at Damen Shipyards in the Netherlands earlier this year, will begin its journey to Vancouver over the coming weeks.

According to the public transit authority, the vessel is named after “the largest and most iconic of the Pacific salmon species.”

The other SeaBus vessels are named Burrard Otter (1976), Burrard Beaver (1976), Burrard Pacific Breeze (2009), and Burrard Otter II (2014). The first three vessels were built in BC shipyards, and the latter was built in Singapore.

While Burrard Otter has been retired, its original sister, the Burrard Beaver, has been retained as a spare vessel.

Each of these vessels can hold 385 seated passengers.

When the new $32.2-million vessel begins its regular operations this summer, TransLink will increase its peak hour SeaBus frequencies to every 10 minutes — up from the existing maximum frequency of every 15 minutes.

Daily Hive

[ainvan]

Vancouver’s Broadway SkyTrain Subway Line Construction Planned for 2020

In an effort to extend light rail service from Vancouver, B.C., toward the campus of the University of British Columbia west of downtown, the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation has invited bidders to submit their qualifications to design, build and finance what is now called the “Broadway Subway.”

Part of the Metro Vancouver’s Mayors’’ Council 10-Year Vision, the project will add 3.5 miles and six stations to the light rail Millennium Line between VCC-Clark and Arbutus Street.

The Transportation Investment Corp., a crown corporation with the legislative authority to deliver major transportation projects, will deliver the project on behalf of the province, an expected $2.83 billion (CDN) project funded and delivered by the B.C. government with contributions from the federal government and city of Vancouver.

During planning for mass transit to the University of British Columbia, it rested on the TransLink Mayors’ Council to endorse SkyTrain as the preferred technology for the extension. The vote by regional mayors was favorable toward SkyTrain, although not unanimous. SkyTrain was chosen as the preferred technology due to its ability to continue adding frequency and larger trains to keep up with demand to 2045 and beyond.

ENR

[ainvan]

TransLink's 10-year Investments (2016-2026)

[SkahHigh]

^very nice. Vancouver seems to be very proactive with their regional transit.