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Barcelona’s Line 9 – Inspiring Montreal’s Pink Line
- ape4 7y agoThat Line 9 is pretty radical. If it works, it'll be cool. Might be best to wait a bit and see if it works.
- HorizonXP 7y agoThat's true, but honestly, given the glacial pace of transit infrastructure development in Canada, it probably will be done by the time this project gets approved. (I'm a Torontonian.)
- janlaureys 7y agoI live in relatively small city with a pretty extensive "pre-metro" network. Our trams ride part underground, part on seperate lines above ground and part on tracks embedded in the road. Visiting cities like Barcelona, Paris or London always annoys me because of how awesome the Metro system is. Trains are usually on time, frequent and very fast.
- maxcan 7y agoI used to live in Tokyo and Singapore before moving to a crumbling city which aspires to developing world levels of corruption, blight, and bureaucratic ineptitude called “San Francisco”. Completely agree with how amazing well run transportation systems are. Also amazes me how consistently SF can fail miserably at even the most basic transportation projects. (SFO is a notable exception. No idea how that happened but we are so lucky to have it)
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoI moved from Singapore to San Francisco in 2012. Same shock. And yet, tons of interesting things happen in San Francisco, which is why I guess I'm still here.
- maxcan 7y agoI think we met at a few events towards the end of my time in Singapore. Definitely have a decent number of mutual friends.
- thbr99 7y agoWill Anglophones be allowed to use the new pink line in Québec ?
- throwawaymanbot 7y agoI cant roll my eyes hard enough at you dude! Get a grip of yer life mate.
- jefft255 7y agoVery funny. Care to be more constructive a bit?
- hqrlk 7y agoI don't get the reference, would you explain?
- jefft255 7y agoQuebec is a French speaking (in majority) Canadian province. It has bill 101 which makes French mandatory for a lot of stuff and, notably, makes it hard to get educated in english (until university where it’s pretty much as you wish). Those are the facts. Now for my admittedly biased French Canadian opinion: it makes a lot of anglophone Quebec resident very sour because they’re very unwilling to learn the language of the majority of people living all around them. Of course this is a gross generalization but this gives you an idea of the issue. It is very complex and discussing it in HN comments is almost hopeless.
- freeone3000 7y agoYou might as well say that quebecoi don't want to learn the language of the rest of the country. And it's gotten worse under the CAQ recently. A French PhD holder was denied immigration status because a chapter of her thesis was the language of international study, English, so she didn't complete a course "entirely in french". Denying government services to a chunk of the population based on language is bizarre, especially when such extreme measures are asked for out of others to accommodate French outside of Quebec.
- Milner08 7y agoIt says its the longest metro service in Europe... I assume they are not including the Elizabeth Line in London that will be 117km in total.
- unclesams-uncle 7y agoIt's quite a cool line. It's the only metro connection to Barcelona Airport, although if you're going to the center, it's a bit of a detour, as there are more direct routes. Since the line is completely automated, you can sit at the front or back and get an unobstructed view of the tracks/tunnel. If you're into trains/trams (like a certain founder of Pied Piper), it's worth checking out.
- gok 7y agoFWIW Line 9 construction was started in 2009 and is currently expected to finish in 2023. Most of it is open already though. It's a very cool construction technique but it's not fast.
- RustyBucket 7y agoMost of it but not most useful, unfortunately. Middle piece is missing - the one you actually need to connect entire city. Until that is in place - you still need transfers in city center.
- logronoide 7y agoThe author is not right about the final cost of the Line 9 in Barcelona. It is a financial disaster x5 times more expensive than projected, twice expensive the high speed connection between Madrid and Barcelona! http://www.libremercado.com/2015-06-12/escandalo-la-linea-9-del-metro-de-barcelona-duplica-el-coste-del-ave-a-madrid-1276550332/ http://www.libremercado.com/2015-06-12/escandalo-la-linea-9-...
- ant6n 7y agoFrom the article: > Another issue of the Barcelona Line 9, is actually cost. > The Initial estimates for the Barcelona Line 9 pegged the cost at around 2 billion Euros (3 billion CAD), but actual construction cost turned out to be 6.927 billion Euros (10.3 billion CAD). Per kilometre, that’s 145 million Euros (216 million CAD).
- spanxx 7y agoWhere is that money? Was it lost to corruption, mismanagement or incompetence?
- narag 7y agoProbably all of them. We tend to think corruption first because the guy that was highest authority in the region for decades (and the capo of independentists mafia) is charged with accusations of a massive and systemic institutional corruption, that extracted 3% of every public contract. The guy has been found to hold foreign accounts with astronomical amounts. That's not even controversial, he's more or less confessed, but he's not jailed yet after years of investigation and mountains of evidence. Still that's not 3%, but multiple 100%'s.
- SirLJ 7y agoIt Montreal, it will cost more... the corruption is more than 3% either...
- wahern 7y agoTime. Time multiplies costs. Time is the destroyer of worlds. Mismanagement and corruption can burn time, but in general I think much bigger factors are regulation, which requires coordination among distant, unmotivated entities, difficult even with good project management; and 2) inevitable bureaucratic and democratic squabbles that continually impose new hurdles and regularly move the goal posts. Also consider inflation. If a project is 5 or 10 years late, simple inflation can blow up reported budgets by large fractions. When people report that California High Speed Rail will end up costing $100 billion, like 30-40% of that is simply counting inflation-adjusted costs at the time of expenditure for the extended timelines. But most people think that's $100 billion in today's dollars. My rule as a voter is that once a project is approved, I'll vote against or oppose any modification to the project, even if I didn't want the project or would really like the modification. I realize there are often rational reasons for modifications, but in public works the risk of burning too much time is simply too high. No project will be perfect; just get it done, already. If it made sense in year 1 when approved, it should make as much sense in year 20, otherwise it should never have begun.
- dfcagency 7y agoThis might be off topic, but I highly encourage anyone to visit Montreal - ideally in summer, but even in winter. It's the most vibrant city in Canada, and the 2nd best city in North America (behind NYC). If you want to discover precisely what the Bay Area is missing when people talk about "culture" - Montreal has it. Note: I'm a 30+ year Bay Area native.
- thbr99 7y agoAlso good luck getting customer service in English. Its worse if you are not white. I am not sure you can call it 'culture', but I find Québec is culturally friendly to "white French speakers"
- dfcagency 7y agoWhen’s the last time you’ve been? I’ve found everyone to be extremely friendly, even in the east (French) side of the island. All you need to do is learn “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French - but I’m learning!”
- thbr99 7y agoIm a temp. resident of Montreal but contemplating on moving out of Quebec soon. As a non white minority, I don't feel welcome in Quebec at all. There are more, but here is the latest: https://twitter.com/sleeCJAD/status/1192881494689288192 https://twitter.com/sleeCJAD/status/1192881494689288192
- weinzierl 7y ago> One interesting thing to notice is that there isn’t much space for walkways inside the tunnels. In the image above, there’s no place to walk between the center wall and the train. I wonder if air resistance becomes a problem with such small tunnels.
- app4soft 7y agoBarcelona L2 and L3 available as addons for OpenBVE simulator.[0] [0] https://en.bvebarcelona.cat https://en.bvebarcelona.cat
- bobthepanda 7y agoIt is worth noting that BART chose to do something similar for its extension into San Jose, and now the deadline has slipped from 2026 to as late as 2030.