[HN Gopher] Montreal's new rapid transit line saved millions per...
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Montreal's new rapid transit line saved millions per mile
Author : TheIronYuppie
Score : 59 points
Date : 2023-11-05 16:19 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| lordleft wrote:
| I was very impressed with Montreal and its decentering of cars
| the last time I visited...it seems to be a city that is leading
| bike and public transit-friendly development in North America.
| jszymborski wrote:
| It's not been without its detractors [0], but overall the mayor
| remains quite popular and making Montreal more accessible to
| bikes and pedestrians has been a consistent priority since the
| beginning of her mandate.
|
| [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bike-paths-park-
| ex-m...
| simonlc wrote:
| The title in metric but the article in imperial had me very
| confused.
| mlyle wrote:
| Currency conversion at the same time made it double
| complicated.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Try to get around the Montreal subway on a wheelchair or pushing
| a stroller. You can't. There are multiple flights of stairs to
| get anywhere. Accessibility has not yet been discovered there.
| There are no old people on the Montreal subway for some reason?
| simlevesque wrote:
| There are elevators. They are being retro-fitted and sometines
| it's not simple at all to add them but they exist.
|
| > They are located in 25 metro stations.
|
| https://www.stm.info/en/elevatoraccess
| orangepurple wrote:
| That's a good start but if you're old or with multiple young
| children it requires careful planning. I drive into the city
| with my family rather than trying to remember exactly which
| stations I won't be trapped in.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| If you're old or have young kids life already requires
| careful planning.
| sokoloff wrote:
| No reason to avoid adding to the scope and complexity of
| that planning, then?
| jszymborski wrote:
| That sounds stressful. Just an FYI for your next trip,
| every metro map has a little symbol indicating whether a
| station has an elevator.
| sottol wrote:
| Babybjorn or similar carrier and a backpack for
| accoutrements is imo often superior to a stroller once your
| young one can sit up.
| euroderf wrote:
| FWIW retrofitting is difficult in Berlin too, so they make a
| point of indicating which stations (fewer than half) are
| accessible.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Accesibility is certainly not where it needs to be for our
| metro, and elevators at every station is long overdue.
|
| That said, the STM _has_ been installing elevators, and
| currently 25 stations have elevators, which is a lot more than
| even a few years ago [0]. Five additional stations are under
| construction [1].
|
| [0] https://www.stm.info/en/elevatoraccess
|
| [1] https://www.stm.info/en/about/major_projects/major-metro-
| pro...
| thriftwy wrote:
| I wonder if it is cheaper to buy every disabled person an Uber
| pass than refit large subway systems to make them accessible.
| asvitkine wrote:
| That doesn't solve things for strollers... (Hint: you also
| need a car seat in the car for the baby.)
| sottol wrote:
| See above, 95% of parents could use an on-body carrier.
| Baby in the carrier and older kids walk, they'll drag your
| speed down a bit but you'd probably not stroller for hours
| on end.
|
| Plus you don't need that huge SUV to fit that stroller and
| awkwardly park it in the entrance of restaurants and so on.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| It doesn't need to solve everything for everyone if it
| succeeds in reducing road congestion by being accessible by
| 95% of the population.
|
| Also strollers are much easier with elevators, but they're
| not impossible to use with escalators and even can be
| reasonably lifted for stairs. We've done it plenty. Of
| course the stroller should be city-sized, not suburban-
| sized.
| sokoloff wrote:
| When C$119M is a "bargain" compared to US costs, it should come
| as no surprise why public transit has so little utility in most
| cities (as measured by utilization as a percent of total trips).
| berkes wrote:
| How does it compare to car infrastructure though?
|
| I strongly suspect that, although the price-per-kilometer might
| be lower, the price per traveled-kilometer is literally
| multiples of that.
|
| I do know in my city-area, price to build, maintain and travel
| on bike infra, public transport and even dedicated bus infra is
| far cheaper than the same distances for cars. And that excludes
| private costs for fuel.
| anjel wrote:
| Don't forget the enormous land-use opportunity cost of a
| metro road network. In Los Angeles,I once read in the LA
| Times that when you factor in residential and commercial
| parking, drive ways, and incedental adjacent land consumed eg
| in ramps medians and cloverleaf's, more than 80% of land in
| the LA basin is devoted to auto use.
| berkes wrote:
| Even in The Netherlands, where we have decades of
| investment in bike and PT infrastructure, and therefore one
| of the highest bike and PT use in the world, a staggering
| amount of land is used for cars. In most cities, the land
| used for cars surpasses the land used for living,
| gardening, working combined.
| namdnay wrote:
| Which cities? And what parts of these cities I'm pretty sure
| public transit represents the lions share of trips in Manhattan
| or London zones 1-2
| sokoloff wrote:
| I bet I can name the other 3 cities where that's possibly
| true in the US: DC, Chicago, and Boston.
|
| So 4, maybe 6 if you add Atlanta and Seattle (both of which I
| doubt have a majority share of transit), out of over 300
| cities (or equivalent) with 100k+ people.
| namdnay wrote:
| So you're saying that in a country that has been organised
| around the personal automobile for the past 70 years (going
| so far as to actively undermine public transport in certain
| cases), there are few cities with good public transport?
| Yes, I think we can all agree on that
| sokoloff wrote:
| Yes. And the cost of providing of usably pervasive public
| transit is a huge part of that.
|
| I live in Cambridge, MA (attached to Boston and sharing
| one of the top 5 transit systems in the US). We have one
| car per driver and expect to maintain or exceed that
| ratio for the next three decades as we can't afford to
| spend the increased time needed to do all trips via
| transit. Or even transit plus ride-share.
| namdnay wrote:
| > We have one car per driver and expect to maintain or
| exceed that ratio for the next three decades as we can't
| afford to spend the increased time needed to do all trips
| via transit. Or even transit plus ride-share.
|
| That's exactly what needs to be fought. A bit of carrot,
| a bit of stick
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'd love to see public transit's utility improved, in
| order to be remotely competitive with the current utility
| of the auto.
|
| What I mostly see are plans to nerf the utility of the
| auto, in order to make it competitive with the current
| utility of public transit.
| smolder wrote:
| Yes, for instance, I'd like to see some modern effort to
| reduce the effects of the tinnitus-causing screeching of
| rail cars on the MBTA. For daily commuters who take
| particular routes, the noise pollution is a serious
| issue.
|
| For another example, I'm reasonably sure regenerative
| breaking is not a thing for the light and medium rail,
| (might be for the silver line) because those systems are
| old enough designs that efficiency wasn't so much of a
| concern. Rather, I recall hearing they use big resistor
| packs to turn speed into heat, and maybe stink up a
| station when they fail.
| ethanbond wrote:
| You know, all those cities that chose not to invest in public
| transit. Looks like they were smart, no one even uses it!
| Retric wrote:
| Transit looks really expensive until you start looking into how
| expensive cars are including roads, cars, maintenance, gas,
| insurance, etc.
|
| Car insurance alone in small city is what ~= 80$/month/driver *
| 1 million drivers = approximately 1 billion dollars per year.
|
| When people drive less they don't just use less fuel and save
| on maintenance etc, but also get into fewer accidents driving
| down insurance. People also avoid traffic tickets, and cities
| need fewer traffic cops etc. The city's air quality improves
| which reduces respiratory issues saving not just lives but sick
| days etc. Local property becomes more valuable and congestion
| shrinks.
|
| The costs comes out of cities budgets, but the savings largely
| goes to individuals.
| sokoloff wrote:
| 1 million drivers is by no means a _small city_.
|
| That's probably only 4 cities in the entire US: New York, Los
| Angeles, Chicago, and Houston.
| Retric wrote:
| Austin Texas has 1 million people living inside city
| limits, but 1.8 million people in the metro area and
| therefore more than 1 million drivers.
|
| Large vs small vs tiny is an arbitrary separation, but
| Chicago is the 39th largest city in the world. Auston is so
| far down that list it's a small city IMO. By comparison
| Terre Haute, Indiana with 60k people can be called a city,
| but it's a tiny city.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The ones living outside the city limits: is it practical
| for and done by most of them to use public transit and
| thereby save money by not owning a car?
| Retric wrote:
| It's more likely to reduce the number of cars owned by a
| family than to allow a single person to avoid owning a
| car.
|
| However, simply reducing the number of trips makes a
| significant difference.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| That isn't a whole lot more than the cost per kilometer to
| construct urban roads with a comparable passenger throughput,
| though. And construction cost alone isn't exactly a fair price
| comparison because users of urban roads tend to need to supply
| their own vehicles, at considerable cost to themselves, and
| more money also has to be spent to provide space to store those
| vehicles when not in use.
|
| And you could argue that roads are actually even more expensive
| to invest in because they tend to create a feedback cycle that
| promotes even more spending on road construction. Because as
| more people use roads, you need to widen them to increase their
| carrying capacity, and because road-oriented infrastructure
| encourages sprawl that pushes people toward choosing driving,
| and spending more time on the roads, which increases the need
| for more roads to be built.
|
| A nice case study here is Chicago versus Detroit.
| Proportionally speaking, they had similar and approximately
| contemporaneous population growth and loss trends over the 20th
| century. But that trend didn't cause the same financial
| catastrophe for Chicago that it did for Detroit, and one
| argument for why this is is that, since Chicago retained a
| denser, more public transit oriented urban plan, its
| infrastructure costs relative to population stayed lower, which
| in turn meant that it was able to weather a lot more population
| decline without its economy shrinking too much to be able to
| affordably maintain its infrastructure, including
| transportation infrastructure.
| bluGill wrote:
| Roads are about $5m/km in the US. Over course size matters,
| but that number covers a two lane road near me that goes to a
| school (read designed for school buses)
|
| In Spain $100m/km gets you a subway.
| darkclouds wrote:
| I wonder how that C$119M per Km compares to other country's.
| Anyone know?
| bluGill wrote:
| https://transitcosts.com/ has a lot of data, but that focuses
| on underground while this is mostly elevated. Spain has built
| fully underground subways for less, but most of the world is a
| lot more expensive.
| trothamel wrote:
| To put this in perspective, in the US, adding a principle
| arterial in a large ubanized area costs between $9M and $35M per
| mile. (2016 USD)
|
| https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/24cpr/pdf/AppendixA.pdf , page
| A-9.
|
| Makes me wonder if the right answer will be dedicated surface
| roads with a mix of buses and self-driving cars on them. It
| certainly seems like transit is overpriced by comparison.
| namdnay wrote:
| The problem with that is it doesn't solve the surface space
| problem, i.e. unnecessary city sprawl and reduced walkability
| due to 30% of space being dedicated to roads
| convolvatron wrote:
| certainly agree. but busses at least dont have the associated
| surface costs of parking, and you can shunt them into tunnels
| without having to transfer like seattle used to do
| namdnay wrote:
| Yes buses are a good compromise, especially since you can
| close the other lanes and give up the space for humans
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Buses are only a good compromise as long as car usage
| remains low.
|
| For example, in Chicago car ownership has increased as
| wealthy people move back into the city, and quality of
| bus service has declined because buses are also stuck in
| all the congestion that the cars generate. The city has
| started creating dedicated bus lanes, but they aren't
| actually improving the situation much because painting
| the right lane red doesn't actually prevent it from being
| jammed full of cars waiting to make right turns and
| double-parked delivery and rideshare vehicles.
| trothamel wrote:
| I was more thinking of separated bus lanes. The idea
| being that if you can create a separated railroad in a
| space, you can create a separated bus lane in that same
| space for significantly less cost.
| bluGill wrote:
| The cost for rail and roads is about the same. This is
| more expensive because it isn't on the ground. Building a
| road on a bridge is vastly more expensive.
| namdnay wrote:
| what you can do with bus lanes is take an existing multi-
| lane road, and turn it into a single lane road + a
| dedicated bus lane. This has the advantage of making
| things easier for the bus and also harder for cars. So
| people start to see they can actually save time by taking
| the bus
| bluGill wrote:
| Buses are very hard on pavement, once your bus lane is
| end of life rail would have been cheaper. A bus also has
| much less total capacity so if it becomes popular you
| need to.figure out how to get a train there.
|
| Buses are great for roads where there isn't much traffic.
| However if traffic is bad you have enough demand that a
| train is better investment.
| namdnay wrote:
| Yeah you have to really separate the lanes and go heavy
| with cameras and fines (at least at the start). One thing
| that never works is when municipalities are too timid to
| really close off roads/lanes for buses and instead opt
| for a bit of paint and "cars can still cross here if they
| need to"
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| why can't "the private sector" compete and do it for less?
| bluGill wrote:
| They could if there wasn't government interface. NYC subways
| were built by the private sector and made money until the
| 1920s when the city didn't allow them to raise fares to cover
| inflation. Also most private railroads have to pay property
| taxes which goes to subsides the roads they are competing
| with.
|
| If you go full libertarian the government should not build
| roads private rail competes well, but I don't see that
| happening.
| alright2565 wrote:
| This is why there's so much of a push for bus rapid transit in
| my city.
|
| Unfortunately, this has disadvantages as well:
|
| - lack of enforcement for bus lanes
|
| - needing to share travel lanes with personal cars
| occasionally, making keeping the timetable harder
|
| - low cost also means no long-term permanency. would you want
| to invest in transit-oriented development around a platform
| that could go away anytime?
| bluGill wrote:
| Surface streets are much slower because of pedestrians and
| intersections. This is more expensive, but also much faster as
| they don't have to stop for other traffic. When you count how
| many more people can be on this vs a freeway it is a bargin
| (assuming people use it )
| antoineMoPa wrote:
| Service also randomly halts because of software failures.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Counting chickens before they're hatched are me?
|
| Let's see it built for that price.
|
| https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/the-cost-for-jus...
| jszymborski wrote:
| The REM is not on this list, and much of it is either running
| or testing.
| CraftThatBlock wrote:
| The REM is currently built and running.
| icyfox wrote:
| I'm really happy that Montreal made this work. We need more
| alternative examples of public transit build-outs in the west
| that actually work and come in on-budget. Copenhagen is another
| good exemplar here with their public/private collaboration for
| new lines.
|
| I do think this article has a rather unrealistic tone for what
| the rest of us can learn from this though.
|
| > One advantage is that CDPQ Infra was able to take advantage of
| existing rights of way to create the route, rather than needing
| to dig costly tunnels or demolish buildings.
|
| This is huge. In many cities where we most desperately need
| public transit in the US, this just isn't realistic. We need net
| new lines either over or underground, and no matter how you slice
| that they're going to need right of way allowances and NIMBY
| disagreements. Plus most urban settings that will benefit the
| most from transit will need tunnel development as part of the
| cost projections.
|
| > Quebec passed a law that requires municipalities to respond in
| a timely manner to CDPQ Infra's requests for permits and other
| forms of cooperation.
|
| Reading about California's highspeed rail project[^1], it seemed
| clear that there was deep government buy-in about the end state
| but the interim goals were over legislated. Counties in the
| central valley traded their buy-in for the project to starting
| the line build-out in their counties, even though population
| centers in LA and SF could have benefited way more from early
| wins. One thing this article missed was that we need to set more
| of a precedence for transit agencies / bureaucrats on the ground
| to make decisions that will further the end goal and circumvent
| the horse-trading at the legislative level.
|
| [^1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-
| speed-...
| alephxyz wrote:
| Indeed, about 80% of the tracks for the new rail system,
| including the most expensive bits (across the st Lawrence
| river, through downtown and dense suburbs, under the Mont-
| Royal) were on pre-existing railways or rights of ways. The
| rest was built aboveground next to a highway (with a small
| branch dug underground towards the airport).
|
| By comparison, the Blue line metro extension is being built
| from scratch, including expropriations, and the projected cost
| is CAD6.4B for 5-6km of new tunnels and give stations.
| theluketaylor wrote:
| Frustratingly despite CDPQ doing a great job on REM (with
| several stages left to deliver) the next phase of the project
| has been taken away from them. REM East was going to repeat
| plan and success for the REM in the eastern end of the island
| (historically the poorer parts of the city). It would also
| provide a whole new line into downtown, providing relief for
| the overcrowded green line
|
| Some groups (including envrionment groups bizarrely) objected
| to the elevated rails, even though these would not split
| neighbourhoods the way elevated highways did in the 60s
| throughout north america.
|
| The project was taken away from CDPQ who proved they can
| deliver transit on time and on budget in both Montreal and
| Vancouver and given back to STM who have a history of cost
| overruns. STM immediately proposed running the entire network
| underground and not running it into downtown, requiring a 2
| seat ride onto the green line which is already over-crowded.
| That explodes estimated costs to $36B CDN from CDPQ's $10B and
| delivers fewer km of track and less function. What a mess.
| ilamont wrote:
| > CDPQ Infra was able to take advantage of existing rights of way
| to create the route, rather than needing to dig costly tunnels or
| demolish buildings. In one area, they repurposed an old rail
| tunnel
|
| I'm listening to the podcast about Boston's Big Dig
| (https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/the-big-dig), and one of the
| things that came up in Episode 6 was cost overruns in the 1990s,
| particularly on the I-93 segment (burying the highway to replace
| the elevated highway from the 60s).
|
| The engineers and administrators had no idea what they would be
| getting into when they drew up the estimate, because no one
| really knew what was underground when they started digging 100
| feet below street level next to Boston harbor and well below the
| water table. They found everything - old pilings, sewer tunnels
| from the 1800s, archaic utilities, and mud that was exceptionally
| sticky. It turned into a series of change orders which greatly
| increased the $7.7B original price ($10.8B adjusted for
| inflation) to $14.8B.
|
| TFA mentions the Green Line extension in Boston which has been a
| costly disaster for different reasons, from ADA compliance to
| mislaid tracks.
|
| https://www.universalhub.com/2023/companies-built-green-line...
| morkalork wrote:
| The REM is pretty sweet, the only down side is the bus system
| getting to it in the suburbs is a bit shambolic. Driving to the
| station takes 7 minutes, but parking is full by 6:30, while the
| most direct bus takes over half an hour!
| iot_devs wrote:
| So M5 in Milan is completely automated AND underground.
|
| According to the Italian Wikipedia page the cost was of 1.3B EUR
| for 13kms.
|
| For a cheaper 100mEUR/km
|
| While the cost is comparable with Montreal, the Italian one is
| completely underground.
| Sytten wrote:
| The article is way too rosy. Sure it didn't cost much but it also
| uses a shit rail technology IMO that is very noisy. Go ask the
| residents that live near it if they find that nice. They had so
| many complaints recently that they had to do urgent work to
| mitigate.
|
| The problem we have in general is that the REM should have been
| expanded way beyond the Montreal suburbs. All the planning for
| public transit is controlled by local agencies and no larger
| integration vision. I have a family member that now has a longer
| commute because the bus go to the REM instead of straight to
| downtown Montreal.
|
| It's also super useless if you live a bit further out than the
| immediate Montreal suburb like I do since you already have to
| take your car to the highway so it is faster to continue driving
| on the island vs getting out, finding a parking, waiting for the
| train, etc.
|
| Personnaly I am very critical of how we handle public transit
| here vs what I saw can be done in Europe.
| alephxyz wrote:
| The REM makes a lot more sense if you think of it as a way to
| funnel money from the local and provincial governments to the
| CDPQ.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Ko7s6
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