11 ms·

Montreal’s new rapid transit line saved millions per mile

211 points by TheIronYuppie 3y ago

lordleft 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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-montreal-1.6988479 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bike-paths-park-ex-m...
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    The issue is that, in typical Quebec (and Canadian) fashion, the entire thing has 0 vision or innovation to it. The shift to a more walkable city has been to imitate European cities as is, as if Montreal isn't different from say, Amsterdam or Copenhagen. For most of the year, due to the cold and snow, the bike lanes are unused and are not convertible to anything else. Sure, some people still bike in the very cold months but that's an extreme minority that inherently includes mostly young, mostly fit cyclists. (Yes European cities also have winters, but they are usually way milder, even in northern cities like Stockholm) Now, I'm still fully on board of having a walking/biking centric city when it makes sense, so convertible infrastructure would have been amazing. But instead we get half of the roads being unusable for anything during the colder months (look at St-Denis st. for example). Not even for bus transit. Which is to me ridiculous and is again, typical of Montreal's infrastructure projects.
    - kiba 3y ago
      In Finland, people cycle in the winter all the time.
      - senkora 3y ago
        Montreal is colder than Helsinki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal#Climate
        sudosysgen 3y ago
        Yes, but it doesn't really make a difference. You end up needing the same gear and you get to a point where you expend enough energy biking that you actually have to vent and cool down. The big pain points are salt on the road and lack of infrastructure.
        mardifoufs 3y ago
        IME, the snow is really the killer for bikes. And there is a lot more snow in Montreal than in anywhere in Europe! The snow is also usually salted, so there's a permanent "slush" like cover on the roads...
        BurningFrog 3y ago
        Cykling is worst around the freezing point (32F/0C), when things get icy and super slippery. When it gets colder, you just have to dress for the temperature.
    - fbelzile 3y ago
      Both directions of the bike lanes on St-Denis take up about one car lane. The street has 2 lanes for car traffic and 2 more lanes for street parking on most sections of the road. I think that's a fair trade-off for the very high traffic the bike lanes receive on non-snow months. Not all public infrastructure needs to be used at capacity all the time (like public swimming pools, playgrounds, tennis/basketball courts, un-plowed walking paths, etc). Although Montreal is leading the way to sustainable transportation, I don't think Montreal is copying European cities enough. Most of the biking infrastructure around the city is paint on roads making it a patch work system that kids and elderly people can't use safely.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
  The French are the only interesting thing about Canada.
simonlc 3y ago
The title in metric but the article in imperial had me very confused.
- mlyle 3y ago
  Currency conversion at the same time made it double complicated.
orangepurple 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 https://www.stm.info/en/elevatoraccess
  - orangepurple 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      If you’re old or have young kids life already requires careful planning.
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        No reason to avoid adding to the scope and complexity of that planning, then?
    - jszymborski 3y ago
      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 3y ago
      Babybjörn or similar carrier and a backpack for accoutrements is imo often superior to a stroller once your young one can sit up.
sokoloff 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - mfringel 3y ago
    [vehicle not included]
- namdnay 3y ago
  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
darkclouds 3y ago
I wonder how that C$119M per Km compares to other country's. Anyone know?
- bluGill 3y ago
  https://transitcosts.com/ 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 3y ago
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 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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      Yes buses are a good compromise, especially since you can close the other lanes and give up the space for humans
      - mumblemumble 3y ago
        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.
antoineMoPa 3y ago
Service also randomly halts because of software failures.
faeriechangling 3y ago
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-just-5-major-montreal-projects-has-exploded-by-1b-opposition https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/the-cost-for-jus...
- jszymborski 3y ago
  The REM is not on this list, and much of it is either running or testing.
- CraftThatBlock 3y ago
  The REM is currently built and running.
icyfox 3y ago
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-rail-politics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-...
- alephxyz 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
> 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 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-extension-sue-company https://www.universalhub.com/2023/companies-built-green-line...
- jeffbee 3y ago
  It's funny that this is the big cost overrun that all Americans know, when it's so small. The SF-Oakland Bay Bridge cost $6.4 billion (2013 dollars) and that was 25x the original estimate, and we didn't get anything new out of the deal, it's a straight replacement of the bridge with an equivalent facility, same lanes, same route.
morkalork 3y ago
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!
- gigantaure 3y ago
  the parking is free so of course it's quite popular. Having been there regularly on the busiest weekdays you really have to arrive close to 8:00 to see a full lot. I do agree the REM is sweet and very effective.
- euroderf 3y ago
  Make the parking lot bigger. Then give the parking lot its own small railcar system for getting to the station. Expand. Recurse. Fractal transit.
- harryVic 3y ago
  Biking there should not take very long if it's only a 7 minute drive
iot_devs 3y ago
So M5 in Milan is completely automated AND underground. According to the Italian Wikipedia page the cost was of 1.3B € for 13kms. For a cheaper 100m€/km While the cost is comparable with Montreal, the Italian one is completely underground.
- akdor1154 3y ago
  Having just stayed in Milan for a week i was really impressed with how the metro had been built and continually improved. I wanted to know though, how was the tunnelling done so cheaply? I noticed the lines seemed to follow roads a lot, did they do cut and cover along the roads to keep costs down?
- VHRanger 3y ago
  100mEUR is 150mCAD
- sofixa 3y ago
  Don't forget that Milan is a very old city (initially settled 400BC) so there was probably lots of old infrastructure and stuff to work around. Similarly old Amsterdam has a collection of all the objects found during the digging for one of the metro lines in one of the stations, with all sorts of very old coins, plates, knives, etc.
- igrekel 3y ago
  One thing to mind is that infrastructure project's financing and cost allocation is different in Europe vs North America. All countries and jurisdictions counts things differently. Are stations part of the cost, what about roads and paths leading to them, getting right of way, buying land etc. some of these costs are often incurred by local governments and municipalities and aren't considered part of the infrastructure project while other projects will include them as part of their costs. The Milan project is fantastic, but it's difficult to have more than a ballpark comparison based on general numbers such as these.
Sytten 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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.
- andy99 3y ago
  I don't know enough about it to weigh in on the economics (though I live in Montreal and this is the first good press I've seen so I'd take it with a grain of salt). But noise-wise, I was really surprised at how loud it is. I don't live along the route but I run along the Lachine Canal and and I don't know if it's because it's elevated but it is way louder than you'd expect for what looks like a small train going by and jarring in an otherwise very quiet area.
- jltsiren 3y ago
  That's just the way public transit works. Direct bus lines don't scale. As the city grows large enough, you have to replace them with trunk lines. Otherwise there will be too much traffic and too little passenger capacity in the central parts of the city. With trunk lines, you have to make compromises between speed and service level. Urban light rail moves slowly and stops frequently. Suburban lines are faster and have fewer stops, which allows them to provide a reasonable service over longer distances. Once you go far enough, suburban lines also become too slow, and you have to switch to regional heavy rail with faster trains and even longer distances between stops. As you get farther away from the city center, the distance between stops on the trunk lines gets longer and the fraction of the area served by the lines gets smaller. If you live in a distant suburb or a satellite town and you are not near a local public transit hub, you can't get good service. Trying to provide it to you would be a waste of money. If you need better transit, you have to choose between driving and moving. If things look better in Europe and Asia, it's because the people who use public transit have taken the level of service into account when choosing where they live. And every time the transit network changes, there are similar complaints to yours.
neonate 3y ago
https://archive.ph/Ko7s6 https://archive.ph/Ko7s6
anArbitraryOne 3y ago
For those of you that use French units, like they do in Montreal, they saved about 0.82 million Canadian dollars per Kilometer
woodruffw 3y ago
Something I’ve been hammering on recently: NYC could build new light rail lines relatively rapidly and cheaply, especially in Brooklyn and Queens: much of those boroughs was covered by streetcar lines until the 1950s, and all of the streets that those lines ran on are still graded for that purpose. In some places they didn’t even bother to pull up the old rails, and just paved over them instead[1]. The roads themselves are owned by the city too, sidestepping half of the bureaucratic process that comes with the state-run MTA. [1]: https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Tracks_on_Broadway https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Tracks_on_Broadway
- BenFranklin100 3y ago
  This idea is brilliant. Cars are inefficient means of transit in dense urban areas. Mass transit easily has many multiples if not an order of magnitude greater ability to move more people/hr than autos. Our cities used to be structured around mass transit and walking before the advent of the car and the exodus to the suburbs. In the intervening century technology has rapidly progressed such that cities are no longer dirty, squalid environments, and in fact, places like NYC have the highest life expectancies in the nation. It’s time to return to proven solutions like street cars, or nowadays, Bus Rapid Transit.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    Yep. One thing to note: NYC has attempted Bus Rapid Transit (we call it the "Select Bus Service") to mixed results: the SBS routes are popular, but are also frequently delayed (drivers regularly park and drive in the dedicated bus routes, and the police have no interest whatsoever in enforcing the dedicated rights of way). Streetcars are significantly more expensive than BRT, but have at least two substantial advantages: they bring civic interest and investment (streetcar lines are semipermanent fixtures that real estate and communities can develop around), and they physically prevent the kind of petty infringement that personal drivers inflict upon bus riders.
    - tekla 3y ago
      The bus situation is rapidly improved now. Buses are supposed to automatically take pictures of cars in the dedicated bus lane and will auto-fine drivers that park in them.
raverbashing 3y ago
There's one thing that Montreal can do that's very cheap and would improve significantly the transit in the city: increase utilization of the local train network It's simply stupid to have suburban trains running only every hour/30m
- igrekel 3y ago
  That isn't so simple. The issue is a lot of the tracks are one way so you aren't able to return the train sets in the suburbs during peak hours. This means that every frequency you add means an extra train set that you need to buy, maintain and store somewhere on the island during the day.
renewiltord 3y ago
SF is applying to spend almost four billion a mile: https://sfstandard.com/2023/10/27/san-francisco-downtown-rail-extension-portal-cost/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/10/27/san-francisco-downtown-rai... Think of the jobs created. Montreal could stand to learn something.
m0llusk 3y ago
Absolute garbage. The Montreal subway has nothing in common with the NYC Second Avenue extension or the SF Central subway.

211 points by TheIronYuppie 3y ago

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 3y ago
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-montreal-1.6988479 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bike-paths-park-ex-m...
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  The issue is that, in typical Quebec (and Canadian) fashion, the entire thing has 0 vision or innovation to it. The shift to a more walkable city has been to imitate European cities as is, as if Montreal isn't different from say, Amsterdam or Copenhagen. For most of the year, due to the cold and snow, the bike lanes are unused and are not convertible to anything else. Sure, some people still bike in the very cold months but that's an extreme minority that inherently includes mostly young, mostly fit cyclists. (Yes European cities also have winters, but they are usually way milder, even in northern cities like Stockholm) Now, I'm still fully on board of having a walking/biking centric city when it makes sense, so convertible infrastructure would have been amazing. But instead we get half of the roads being unusable for anything during the colder months (look at St-Denis st. for example). Not even for bus transit. Which is to me ridiculous and is again, typical of Montreal's infrastructure projects.
  - kiba 3y ago
    In Finland, people cycle in the winter all the time.
    - senkora 3y ago
      Montreal is colder than Helsinki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal#Climate
      - sudosysgen 3y ago
        Yes, but it doesn't really make a difference. You end up needing the same gear and you get to a point where you expend enough energy biking that you actually have to vent and cool down. The big pain points are salt on the road and lack of infrastructure.
        mardifoufs 3y ago
        IME, the snow is really the killer for bikes. And there is a lot more snow in Montreal than in anywhere in Europe! The snow is also usually salted, so there's a permanent "slush" like cover on the roads...
      - BurningFrog 3y ago
        Cykling is worst around the freezing point (32F/0C), when things get icy and super slippery. When it gets colder, you just have to dress for the temperature.
  - fbelzile 3y ago
    Both directions of the bike lanes on St-Denis take up about one car lane. The street has 2 lanes for car traffic and 2 more lanes for street parking on most sections of the road. I think that's a fair trade-off for the very high traffic the bike lanes receive on non-snow months. Not all public infrastructure needs to be used at capacity all the time (like public swimming pools, playgrounds, tennis/basketball courts, un-plowed walking paths, etc). Although Montreal is leading the way to sustainable transportation, I don't think Montreal is copying European cities enough. Most of the biking infrastructure around the city is paint on roads making it a patch work system that kids and elderly people can't use safely.
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
The French are the only interesting thing about Canada.

simonlc 3y ago

The title in metric but the article in imperial had me very confused.

mlyle 3y ago
Currency conversion at the same time made it double complicated.

orangepurple 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 https://www.stm.info/en/elevatoraccess
- orangepurple 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    If you’re old or have young kids life already requires careful planning.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      No reason to avoid adding to the scope and complexity of that planning, then?
  - jszymborski 3y ago
    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 3y ago
    Babybjörn or similar carrier and a backpack for accoutrements is imo often superior to a stroller once your young one can sit up.

sokoloff 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- mfringel 3y ago
  [vehicle not included]
namdnay 3y ago
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

darkclouds 3y ago

I wonder how that C$119M per Km compares to other country's. Anyone know?

bluGill 3y ago
https://transitcosts.com/ 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 3y ago

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 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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    Yes buses are a good compromise, especially since you can close the other lanes and give up the space for humans
    - mumblemumble 3y ago
      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.

antoineMoPa 3y ago

Service also randomly halts because of software failures.

faeriechangling 3y ago

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-just-5-major-montreal-projects-has-exploded-by-1b-opposition https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/the-cost-for-jus...

jszymborski 3y ago
The REM is not on this list, and much of it is either running or testing.
CraftThatBlock 3y ago
The REM is currently built and running.

icyfox 3y ago

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-rail-politics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-...

alephxyz 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago

> 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 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-extension-sue-company https://www.universalhub.com/2023/companies-built-green-line...

jeffbee 3y ago
It's funny that this is the big cost overrun that all Americans know, when it's so small. The SF-Oakland Bay Bridge cost $6.4 billion (2013 dollars) and that was 25x the original estimate, and we didn't get anything new out of the deal, it's a straight replacement of the bridge with an equivalent facility, same lanes, same route.

morkalork 3y ago

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!

gigantaure 3y ago
the parking is free so of course it's quite popular. Having been there regularly on the busiest weekdays you really have to arrive close to 8:00 to see a full lot. I do agree the REM is sweet and very effective.
euroderf 3y ago
Make the parking lot bigger. Then give the parking lot its own small railcar system for getting to the station. Expand. Recurse. Fractal transit.
harryVic 3y ago
Biking there should not take very long if it's only a 7 minute drive

iot_devs 3y ago

So M5 in Milan is completely automated AND underground. According to the Italian Wikipedia page the cost was of 1.3B € for 13kms. For a cheaper 100m€/km While the cost is comparable with Montreal, the Italian one is completely underground.

akdor1154 3y ago
Having just stayed in Milan for a week i was really impressed with how the metro had been built and continually improved. I wanted to know though, how was the tunnelling done so cheaply? I noticed the lines seemed to follow roads a lot, did they do cut and cover along the roads to keep costs down?
VHRanger 3y ago
100mEUR is 150mCAD
sofixa 3y ago
Don't forget that Milan is a very old city (initially settled 400BC) so there was probably lots of old infrastructure and stuff to work around. Similarly old Amsterdam has a collection of all the objects found during the digging for one of the metro lines in one of the stations, with all sorts of very old coins, plates, knives, etc.
igrekel 3y ago
One thing to mind is that infrastructure project's financing and cost allocation is different in Europe vs North America. All countries and jurisdictions counts things differently. Are stations part of the cost, what about roads and paths leading to them, getting right of way, buying land etc. some of these costs are often incurred by local governments and municipalities and aren't considered part of the infrastructure project while other projects will include them as part of their costs. The Milan project is fantastic, but it's difficult to have more than a ballpark comparison based on general numbers such as these.

Sytten 3y ago

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 3y ago
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.
andy99 3y ago
I don't know enough about it to weigh in on the economics (though I live in Montreal and this is the first good press I've seen so I'd take it with a grain of salt). But noise-wise, I was really surprised at how loud it is. I don't live along the route but I run along the Lachine Canal and and I don't know if it's because it's elevated but it is way louder than you'd expect for what looks like a small train going by and jarring in an otherwise very quiet area.
jltsiren 3y ago
That's just the way public transit works. Direct bus lines don't scale. As the city grows large enough, you have to replace them with trunk lines. Otherwise there will be too much traffic and too little passenger capacity in the central parts of the city. With trunk lines, you have to make compromises between speed and service level. Urban light rail moves slowly and stops frequently. Suburban lines are faster and have fewer stops, which allows them to provide a reasonable service over longer distances. Once you go far enough, suburban lines also become too slow, and you have to switch to regional heavy rail with faster trains and even longer distances between stops. As you get farther away from the city center, the distance between stops on the trunk lines gets longer and the fraction of the area served by the lines gets smaller. If you live in a distant suburb or a satellite town and you are not near a local public transit hub, you can't get good service. Trying to provide it to you would be a waste of money. If you need better transit, you have to choose between driving and moving. If things look better in Europe and Asia, it's because the people who use public transit have taken the level of service into account when choosing where they live. And every time the transit network changes, there are similar complaints to yours.

neonate 3y ago

https://archive.ph/Ko7s6 https://archive.ph/Ko7s6

anArbitraryOne 3y ago

For those of you that use French units, like they do in Montreal, they saved about 0.82 million Canadian dollars per Kilometer

woodruffw 3y ago

Something I’ve been hammering on recently: NYC could build new light rail lines relatively rapidly and cheaply, especially in Brooklyn and Queens: much of those boroughs was covered by streetcar lines until the 1950s, and all of the streets that those lines ran on are still graded for that purpose. In some places they didn’t even bother to pull up the old rails, and just paved over them instead[1]. The roads themselves are owned by the city too, sidestepping half of the bureaucratic process that comes with the state-run MTA. [1]: https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Tracks_on_Broadway https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Tracks_on_Broadway

BenFranklin100 3y ago
This idea is brilliant. Cars are inefficient means of transit in dense urban areas. Mass transit easily has many multiples if not an order of magnitude greater ability to move more people/hr than autos. Our cities used to be structured around mass transit and walking before the advent of the car and the exodus to the suburbs. In the intervening century technology has rapidly progressed such that cities are no longer dirty, squalid environments, and in fact, places like NYC have the highest life expectancies in the nation. It’s time to return to proven solutions like street cars, or nowadays, Bus Rapid Transit.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Yep. One thing to note: NYC has attempted Bus Rapid Transit (we call it the "Select Bus Service") to mixed results: the SBS routes are popular, but are also frequently delayed (drivers regularly park and drive in the dedicated bus routes, and the police have no interest whatsoever in enforcing the dedicated rights of way). Streetcars are significantly more expensive than BRT, but have at least two substantial advantages: they bring civic interest and investment (streetcar lines are semipermanent fixtures that real estate and communities can develop around), and they physically prevent the kind of petty infringement that personal drivers inflict upon bus riders.
  - tekla 3y ago
    The bus situation is rapidly improved now. Buses are supposed to automatically take pictures of cars in the dedicated bus lane and will auto-fine drivers that park in them.

raverbashing 3y ago

There's one thing that Montreal can do that's very cheap and would improve significantly the transit in the city: increase utilization of the local train network It's simply stupid to have suburban trains running only every hour/30m

igrekel 3y ago
That isn't so simple. The issue is a lot of the tracks are one way so you aren't able to return the train sets in the suburbs during peak hours. This means that every frequency you add means an extra train set that you need to buy, maintain and store somewhere on the island during the day.

renewiltord 3y ago

SF is applying to spend almost four billion a mile: https://sfstandard.com/2023/10/27/san-francisco-downtown-rail-extension-portal-cost/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/10/27/san-francisco-downtown-rai... Think of the jobs created. Montreal could stand to learn something.

m0llusk 3y ago

Absolute garbage. The Montreal subway has nothing in common with the NYC Second Avenue extension or the SF Central subway.