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It was the canton's decision. Direct democracy was involved [1], but at the local level, not nation-wide. People from other cantons in Switzerland had no say in
by wereHamster 7y ago
It was the canton's decision. Direct democracy was involved [1], but at the local level, not nation-wide. People from other cantons in Switzerland had no say in this matter. The people of Zurich have decided that they want that. Zurich is not a big city, by global standards, but any city with similar size can make these decisions, if they want to pursue the same goals.
[1] Examples: in 2014 the people of Zurich decided (66% voted yes) to extend tram line 8, in 2017 that extension was opened. And just this year a the tram line 2 was extended to reach further into the suburbs of Zurich, and further work is planed for the next few years. People of Zurich also voted on these extensions, and will continue to in the coming years.
- mc32 7y agoI’m curious about what their cost structure looks like. In SF building about 2.75km of a combo of bored tunnel and cut and cover tram tunnels cost $1.5 billion...
- microtherion 7y agoI don't know offhand what the current extension costs, but the full extension of 13.4km is projected to cost about $750M.
- wereHamster 7y agoConstruction of the tram 8 extension took place 2015-2017, total costs of 170mio. The length of new tracks was only a few hundred meters, the rest of the line is sharing tracks with existing lines. Everything above the ground. Difficult part of the construction was the fact that the new tracks were built across an existing bridge that is also used by car traffic. Nothing too difficult I suppose, just a bit of clever traffic management was needed (both during construction and afterwards).
- sschueller 7y agoI believe when the bridge was renovated a few years before, it was re-enforced to be able to take the load of a tram. The approval to run a tram over it came later. Similar thing happened with the subway that was never built. The station and a few tunnels where already dug because of renovations but the people voted no on building a subway. That part of HB turned into the SZU Station. The tram tunnels by the Tierspital where also meant for the subway from what I recall. When they converted those for the use with trams they had several issues like the tunnel being not heigh enough. You can see the tracks are very low and the electrical connection on top is almost completely compressed.
- sschueller 7y agoZürich recently built a train tunnel that is 4.8 km long plus a 675 m trainstation 16m underground for ~USD 2 billion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinberg_Tunnel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinberg_Tunnel https://www.zvv.ch/zvv/de/ueber-uns/projekte/durchmesserlinie.html https://www.zvv.ch/zvv/de/ueber-uns/projekte/durchmesserlini...
- TulliusCicero 7y agoWell, it's definitely harder for cities in the US. The US' whole system from the federal level down through states and cities are designed to make things good for cars and terrible for everyone else. Like, just look at the interstate highway guarantee of paying the vast majority of costs for new freeways. There was certainly no such guarantee for public transport, or sidewalks, or bike lanes.