Heavy Rail, Commuter Rail, & Intercity Transportation

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

I am noticing a theme.
Migrant and Changing are both against pretty much anything that Translink already has planned.
Makes me wonder if they are lobbyists for it.

Huh? What have I questioned that TransLink has planned?

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Changing City

Huh? What have I questioned that TransLink has planned?

Project NEXUS, of which you feel should be in the fantasy page.

How much does Translink pay for you to troll here?

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by Changing City

Huh? What have I questioned that TransLink has planned?

Given context, the proper accusation sans typo is likely "anything that Translink already doesn't have planned." To which the obvious answer is that people are allowed to have opinions and express them; some are just more based on reality than others.

[VancouverOfTheFuture]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

How much does Translink pay for you to troll here?

are you for real?

[Aroundtheworld]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

AFAIK most train construction protests in Europe have environmental concerns or think the money could be spent elsewhere... as opposed to North Americans who often just hate trains near their houses altogether.

Once again, the Cascadia HSR alone is $26-42 billion, and that's from the experts who want it. 350 km at North American prices would start at $31.5B, and we'd attempt to water it down to $15-20B.



There's already competition for our subway contracts... and cost savings there are usually in the form of cut 'n cover or less station escalators or smaller platforms. It's safe to say that BC has probably bled the turnip as dry as it can be for now.

The $11 B estimate in this proposal is not for high-speed rail but for rail with a design speed of less than 200 kph (most of it at 160 kph). The reason why HSR is so much more expensive is every aspect needed to accommodate vehicles going at 350 kph is more expensive. Your turning radius is more than 4x greater, necessitating more tunnels and viaducts. The tunnel entrances have to be designed differently to deal with the boom effect, etc.

The high-speed rail component in Project Nexus is only for the Canadian portion of the line and does not include the portion built south of the border.

In terms of finding savings, I do not know how deep it will go but my sense is that we are far from where we could be. We don't do detailed design in-house and we don't do itemized tendering and only recently have we started splitting up projects. It also doesn't help when every cost item is hidden behind a veil of secrecy.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by Aroundtheworld

The $11 B estimate in this proposal is not for high-speed rail but for rail with a design speed of less than 200 kph (most of it at 160 kph). The reason why HSR is so much more expensive is every aspect needed to accommodate vehicles going at 350 kph is more expensive. Your turning radius is more than 4x greater, necessitating more tunnels and viaducts. The tunnel entrances have to be designed differently to deal with the boom effect, etc

The high-speed rail component in Project Nexus is only for the Canadian portion of the line and does not include the portion built south of the border....

Right, and that's why I'm using the GO expansion - regular heavy rail - as the benchmark instead. $13.5 billion over 150 km gives me $90m/km; with 350 km, that's $31.5 billion, or almost 3x the lowball estimate.

[Aroundtheworld]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Right, and that's why I'm using the GO expansion - regular heavy rail - as the benchmark instead. $13.5 billion over 150 km gives me $90m/km; with 350 km, that's $31.5 billion, or almost 3x the lowball estimate.

I work at a company that has been involved in Metrolinx projects and I can say that if we're using GO as a benchmark, something has gone horribly wrong.

To illustrate the disfunction, I heard a story where they has a room of about 100 consultants (all of whom were being billed for their attendance) for two full days to watch a panel of a few people at the front of the room to discuss...whether to rename GO Train to Metrolinx.

2 full days! It probably cost Metrolinx over $50000 the amount all those consultants charged them to essentially watch a few heads talk about a relatively minor issue.

If you want an organization that doesn't care about how it spends taxpayer money, then we should quote prices like that. To me, it helps illustrate my point: these figures that get quoted aren't the norm...unless you think dysfunction has to be the norm.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Oy vey... my sympathies to anybody who had to sit through that one.

Even if $30+ billion is the highball though, again, I'd be genuinely surprised if everything above can all be done for $11B or lower; using European cost/km figures gives me around $12 billion for the whole network at the cheapest... and why does the creator think everybody wants to go downtown?

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Project NEXUS, of which you feel should be in the fantasy page.

How much does Translink pay for you to troll here?

When you resort to dumb questions like that all it does is lower your credibility (and that’s not easy to do). TransLink don't pay me, I pay them (to ride their buses and trains).

Project Nexus is a wonderful ‘what if we had a lot of money to spend on transit’ document, but the cost estimates fall very firmly into the realm of fantasy. It’s not good enough to suggest ‘tunneling costs should be less’. They aren’t.

The report’s suggestion is that bored tunnels could be built at $100m per km. I suggest that’s out by about a factor of five. The current Broadway extension is 5.7km (not all in tunnels) and it’s $2.83bn. That’s $500m per km. That’s a realistic cost for what twin 6m tunnels with underground stations cost in Vancouver – because that’s what it’s costing. A single 10m bore isn't particularly cheaper than two 6m tunnels we're building - there's a third extra spoil to have to dispose of.

Our costs are not on the high side of costs for that sort of project in North America, or elsewhere. Sidney is building a 24km transit line with 11km in tunnels. It comes out at $460/km (Canadian $). In the US tunnels outside New York are $600m to $900m per mile (US $). That’s from $510m (Canadian) per km to $760m. (New York is off-the-scale more expensive).

So, I’d be amazed if all the elements of Nexus could be built for less than $50bn. And it’s supposed to be built as well as all the Translink projects. Those are easily 20 years worth of transit funding at current rates of investment from the sources we have. We can’t even raise the capital to build the UBC extension yet.

If there were $50bn lying around (or $30bn, or even $11bn) looking to be spent in capital projects, some would fund some transit, but most would go to reducing homelessness, and to improve healthcare facilities, some to create greater resilience against climate change, some to upgrade our replace health facilities, some to finally deal with the seismic upgrades needed to schools and other public buildings. Some might go to municipalities and Metro to upgrade the basic infrastructure like sewers, water mains, provide more charging stations, improve energy efficiency of public buildings and public housing.

Those are already identified as priorities that need money spent, that doesn’t currently exist. There is no $50bn. If there was, it wouldn’t go to ‘it would be great if we had better transit’ – that would be a fantasy, and that’s exactly what’s discussed in the fantasy thread (where nobody worries about what anything would cost in reality).

[SFUVancouver]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Project NEXUS, of which you feel should be in the fantasy page.

How much does Translink pay for you to troll here?

The fantasy thread is tailor made for things like 'Project Nexus'. It isn't a real project, but still totally valid to be posted and discussed on the forum. I've made my own notional SkyTrain maps in the past and it goes without saying that they go in the fantasy thread.

You also could not be more off-base in accusing Changing City to be a paid troll. My stars, what a bizarre accusation.

[Aroundtheworld]

Originally Posted by Changing City

When you resort to dumb questions like that all it does is lower your credibility (and that’s not easy to do). TransLink don't pay me, I pay them (to ride their buses and trains).

Project Nexus is a wonderful ‘what if we had a lot of money to spend on transit’ document, but the cost estimates fall very firmly into the realm of fantasy. It’s not good enough to suggest ‘tunneling costs should be less’. They aren’t.

The report’s suggestion is that bored tunnels could be built at $100m per km. I suggest that’s out by about a factor of five. The current Broadway extension is 5.7km (not all in tunnels) and it’s $2.83bn. That’s $500m per km. That’s a realistic cost for what twin 6m tunnels with underground stations cost in Vancouver – because that’s what it’s costing. A single 10m bore isn't particularly cheaper than two 6m tunnels we're building - there's a third extra spoil to have to dispose of.

Our costs are not on the high side of costs for that sort of project in North America, or elsewhere. Sidney is building a 24km transit line with 11km in tunnels. It comes out at $460/km (Canadian $). In the US tunnels outside New York are $600m to $900m per mile (US $). That’s from $510m (Canadian) per km to $760m. (New York is off-the-scale more expensive).

So, I’d be amazed if all the elements of Nexus could be built for less than $50bn. And it’s supposed to be built as well as all the Translink projects. Those are easily 20 years worth of transit funding at current rates of investment from the sources we have. We can’t even raise the capital to build the UBC extension yet.

If there were $50bn lying around (or $30bn, or even $11bn) looking to be spent in capital projects, some would fund some transit, but most would go to reducing homelessness, and to improve healthcare facilities, some to create greater resilience against climate change, some to upgrade our replace health facilities, some to finally deal with the seismic upgrades needed to schools and other public buildings. Some might go to municipalities and Metro to upgrade the basic infrastructure like sewers, water mains, provide more charging stations, improve energy efficiency of public buildings and public housing.

Those are already identified as priorities that need money spent, that doesn’t currently exist. There is no $50bn. If there was, it wouldn’t go to ‘it would be great if we had better transit’ – that would be a fantasy, and that’s exactly what’s discussed in the fantasy thread (where nobody worries about what anything would cost in reality).

You need to look beyond the English-speaking world which is notorious for inflated construction costs. (No one is sure exactly why this is the case but it probably has to do with the amount of political interference that is allowed to take place). I would look at places like Madrid and Italy where they are getting costs for metros of $100-150 M per km.

In addition, the big cost for tunnelling for many of these projects is not the tunnels themselves but the stations. For the Broadway Line, they chose to build stations using cut-and-cover (good) but in a way that required road decking (expensive). Other places are even worse, opting for mined stations.

You will notice many of the underground stations in this proposal are incorporated into the tunnels themselves. This reduces the amount of excavation needed, especially mining. This is a great technique that was used in Barcelona's Line 9 for saving money on station construction, even when digging deep through dense urban areas.

[GenWhy?]

Do TransLink project costs usually include all the above ground road improvements, new light standards, landscaping, property acquisition, etc. I remember seeing some cities include those costs and some not. For instance, when Edmonton was budgeting its latest 13km LRT expansion folks were comparing it to "X" project, but "X" project didn't include the full cost of the project, just the track bed, rail, trains, while Edmonton had given the citizens the full price of utility relocation and replacement, new sidewalks, etc.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Aroundtheworld

You need to look beyond the English-speaking world which is notorious for inflated construction costs. (No one is sure exactly why this is the case but it probably has to do with the amount of political interference that is allowed to take place). I would look at places like Madrid and Italy where they are getting costs for metros of $100-150 M per km.

In addition, the big cost for tunnelling for many of these projects is not the tunnels themselves but the stations. For the Broadway Line, they chose to build stations using cut-and-cover (good) but in a way that required road decking (expensive). Other places are even worse, opting for mined stations.

You will notice many of the underground stations in this proposal are incorporated into the tunnels themselves. This reduces the amount of excavation needed, especially mining. This is a great technique that was used in Barcelona's Line 9 for saving money on station construction, even when digging deep through dense urban areas.

I was looking at the list of tunnelling costs on the article I linked to earlier. Barcelona Metro was $325/km in 2009. Mumbai in India was $167 and Hangzhou in China was $307/km in 2012. You would have to explain how we could possibly build at significantly lower cost than low-wage countries with cheaper land costs. All the portals and stations would have to be acquired - even through compulsory expropriation (if that were politically accepted) full fair market value + has to be paid in compensation - that's expensive.

Don't get me wrong, it would be great if it was possible, but I've yet to see any evidence that it would be realistically possible. (If you could get one contractor building all the tunnels in one contract, maybe the price would go down, but (realistically) Nexus describes sequential construction projects, each of which would have to be bid on separately).

I'm also struggling with the idea of four trains in a 10m diameter tunnel. Has one been built anywhere in the world? The Evergreen SkyTrain extension needed a 10m tunnel for two side-by side lines. Bertha, who dug the four (2-lane stacked) vehicle lanes in Seattle needed a 17.4m diameter tunnel. (We won't look at the cost of that tunnel!)

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by GenWhy?

Do TransLink project costs usually include all the above ground road improvements, new light standards, landscaping, property acquisition, etc. I remember seeing some cities include those costs and some not. For instance, when Edmonton was budgeting its latest 13km LRT expansion folks were comparing it to "X" project, but "X" project didn't include the full cost of the project, just the track bed, rail, trains, while Edmonton had given the citizens the full price of utility relocation and replacement, new sidewalks, etc.

It's not TransLink - it's the Provincial TI Corporation who are building the projects here. I think the $2.83m budget for Broadway includes all the acquisition, service relocation, and reinstatement of the street afterwards. The construction contract isn't as much as that.

[Aroundtheworld]

Originally Posted by Changing City

I was looking at the list of tunnelling costs on the article I linked to earlier. Barcelona Metro was $325/km in 2009. Mumbai in India was $167 and Hangzhou in China was $307/km in 2012. You would have to explain how we could possibly build at significantly lower cost than low-wage countries with cheaper land costs. All the portals and stations would have to be acquired - even through compulsory expropriation (if that were politically accepted) full fair market value + has to be paid in compensation - that's expensive.

Don't get me wrong, it would be great if it was possible, but I've yet to see any evidence that it would be realistically possible. (If you could get one contractor building all the tunnels in one contract, maybe the price would go down, but (realistically) Nexus describes sequential construction projects, each of which would have to be bid on separately).

I'm also struggling with the idea of four trains in a 10m diameter tunnel. Has one been built anywhere in the world? The Evergreen SkyTrain extension needed a 10m tunnel for two side-by side lines. Bertha, who dug the four (2-lane stacked) vehicle lanes in Seattle needed a 17.4m diameter tunnel. (We won't look at the cost of that tunnel!)

The figures you posted are per mile, not per km. Using the Barcelona figure per km, we get $150 M per km which is reasonable, especially if you include stations.

You are right to point out the tunnel diameter. The 10m tunnel mentioned in the study is incorrect. It should be 13 m and that will be stated in future iterations of the study.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

The fantasy thread is tailor made for things like 'Project Nexus'. It isn't a real project, but still totally valid to be posted and discussed on the forum. I've made my own notional SkyTrain maps in the past and it goes without saying that they go in the fantasy thread.

You also could not be more off-base in accusing Changing City to be a paid troll. My stars, what a bizarre accusation.

Are you his boss at Translink, keeping tabs on his trolling?

What I saw is unlike someone like myself saying "hey, lets put a line here", that was a fleshed out study of what could be useful in the region. They included reasonable costs for the projects and the timelines. That is not fantasy. That is a plan for the future.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Are you his boss at Translink, keeping tabs on his trolling?

What I saw is unlike someone like myself saying "hey, lets put a line here", that was a fleshed out study of what could be useful in the region. They included reasonable costs for the projects and the timelines. That is not fantasy. That is a plan for the future.

You should check out the fantasy thread, there are some very fleshed out plans there, however, that doesn't make them not fantasies. There's nothing wrong with fantasy plans since they can help shape public sentiment, but without any commitment from any level of government, these are all still just fantasies. And also just because something is a fantasy doesn't necessarily mean it can't in the future become reality. I'm sure people here were talking about SkyTrain lines to the North Shore before Translink started talking about it.

[GenWhy?]

Originally Posted by Aroundtheworld

Project Nexus - A Vision for Regional Rail in Southwest BC

Who wrote it?

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Aroundtheworld

The figures you posted are per mile, not per km. Using the Barcelona figure per km, we get $150 M per km which is reasonable, especially if you include stations.

You are right to point out the tunnel diameter. The 10m tunnel mentioned in the study is incorrect. It should be 13 m and that will be stated in future iterations of the study.

You’re quite correct – that’s a US site, so they use miles. But that means they also use US dollars, so the 2009 Barcelona line cost over $200m per km to build. That was 13 years ago – and have you seen what went wrong with that contract? It had an overspend of $5 billion euros (nearly 7 billion Canadian) – and came in three times the original 2002 budget, and many years delayed. Except it didn’t come in – the whole thing was paused for ten years. They’re only now tunneling the final 4 km link which will cost 926m euros (1.28m CA$), so just over $400m per km. That’s for a 12m diameter tunnel, with the two lines stacked on top of each other.

Converting to kilometers and Canadian dollars means Seattle (2016) was $496/km, Los Angeles (Purple) is $661/km, Melbourne and Sidney are each $620/km, and the Chinese example in Hangzhou ten years ago was $190/km. (We're at $500/km for Broadway). York-Spadina in Toronto was $372m/km over 5 years ago, and was only partly underground. Nothing was close to $100/km

If you’re proposing a 13m diameter tunnel, that’s likely to be more expensive than two smaller bore tunnels. The area of the head is over 530 sq metres. Broadway has two 6m tunnels. Those only displace 113 sq metres of material each, so 226 in total – less than half your huge tunnel. That’s a lot more material to have to dispose of, and more than twice the opportunity to meet rogue glacial boulders that slow everything down.

Any examples of four trains in the same tunnel?

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by Aroundtheworld

Project Nexus - A Vision for Regional Rail in Southwest BC

It seems a bit 'Dreamsville," and on top of that the huge price tag, but it's nice to ponder anyway. Something may come of it ... but not for a long time, I am sure.