darwink
Senior Member
Agreed. it isn't a zero sum game. Alberta has the money for, and the growth prospects to support "yes, and" / "why not both" infrastructure.
Green Line LRT | ?m | ?s | Calgary Transit
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
DougB
Senior Member
But is the Green Line the best investment? I'm all for LRT service to the Deep SE. The $8B+ to get it to Seton is mind boggling given that much of the route follows freight rail or reserved RoW. If construction costs have truly escalated that much, LRT likely doesn't make sense on any corridor anymore and the money would be better spent elsewhere.
darwink
Senior Member
We don't know the price for Eau Claire to Sheppard. We shall see. With corridor secured for decades in the deep SE, the expansion cost shouldn't have sticker shock. Perhaps can even redesign to get rid of the tunnel in the last approved plans.
Even straight-line, we have 31% inflation since initial estimates (2013$), and for the very early SE only plans, 52% since 2004. For Non Residential buildings construction price index Calgary CMA, since 2004 prices are up 188.6% and since 2013, prices are up 84.1% (2004-2013 is a 56.8% increase).
The costs below do not include financing. Also recall that when the below estimates were made, that the Beltline tracks and stations were at grade. I think that the below shows that beyond scope increases, the project budget is 'in control'.
| 2004 | 2013 | Now | |
| SE Only Segment, 2 underground stations, ends at 22x | $1.7 billion (original, that I remember from debates between SE LRT and West LRT, might be off) | $2.67 | $4.92 |
| 2015 Election Gambit (only nominal north plans) | $4.59 (original) | $8.45 |
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O-tac
Active Member
What a stupid comparison to make. Public transit is a public service. It’s not intended to be dependent on GDP.
But hey, providing mobility to the workforce clearly provides a financial case as well. Particularly if you want to attract young talent that doesn’t necessarily want a car dependent lifestyle,
O-tac
Active Member
The SElrt is a political issue. The UCP has made it so. Ever since 2019 they’ve been dragging their heels on it, while their big donors mount repetitive, ignorant and questionable ‘stakeholder’ protests from billionaires who have never taken transit in their lives.
The reason I bring up our provincial conservative government is that they are sabotaging the entire process for ideological, incoherent or downright deceptive reasons. Danielle Smith has made no secret about what she thinks about it. She even gave herself power to veto our municipal government and replace councillors who disagree with her.
Plus, as someone who lives in the SE and is directly affected, I care. I’ve spoken to my useless MLA Matt Jones numerous times. Even back in the Kenney days he questioned the need for the northern segment,
MichaelS
Senior Member
But not at any cost. If this thing comes in at $1 trillion dollars (exagerating for the sake of exagerating) I think anyone would agree it is not worth it. If not, that persons support of transit is more akin to religious fanaticism, not critical thinking. So now the question becomes, how much is too much?
outoftheice
Active Member
How much is too much? I would say it becomes too much when the three orders of government no longer have the fiscal capacity to pay for it. The weakest part of that equation is the City of Calgary but that is only because we adopted a 33/33/33 cost sharing model for Green Line. There are other transit projects in Canada that are funded 50/50 between the province and the Feds and both of those entities easily have the fiscal capacity to fund what is on the drawing board for Green Line.
We seem to have this bizarre problem in Calgary where we think we are living in some small 1980s prairie town and expect infrastructure spending to reflect that. In reality, we are on a rapid trajectory to become a city of 2 million people and many other cities of 2 million people are happily spending billions on building out their rail networks. Calgary is one of the few cities that seems to think we should only have to spend a few hundred million on rail because that's what we spent in the 80s and that we can use a high price tag as an excuse not to spend the money because we have hope that the hundreds of thousands of people who will soon be living in the south east and north central corridors can magically find another way to move about a city of 2 million people that doesn’t involve LRT.
We seem to have this bizarre problem in Calgary where we think we are living in some small 1980s prairie town and expect infrastructure spending to reflect that. In reality, we are on a rapid trajectory to become a city of 2 million people and many other cities of 2 million people are happily spending billions on building out their rail networks. Calgary is one of the few cities that seems to think we should only have to spend a few hundred million on rail because that's what we spent in the 80s and that we can use a high price tag as an excuse not to spend the money because we have hope that the hundreds of thousands of people who will soon be living in the south east and north central corridors can magically find another way to move about a city of 2 million people that doesn’t involve LRT.
Albertasaurus
Active Member
Some good points raised above. I do want to see GL built, but I am at a loss to understand how it is going to cost so much for so relatively little.
One thing I have noticed, generally speaking, is that infrastructure projects - and transit projects in particular - seem to almost always go vastly overbudget in Canada nowadays. The Toronto and Ottawa LRT lines are going through a lot of the same cost challenges. Meanwhile, in European cities of comparable size to Calgary (places like Prague, Oslo, Helsinki, Vienna etc) large rail projects, including subways, LRT and commuter rail systems, are built without these cost overruns. What are we doing wrong here in Canada?
One thing I have noticed, generally speaking, is that infrastructure projects - and transit projects in particular - seem to almost always go vastly overbudget in Canada nowadays. The Toronto and Ottawa LRT lines are going through a lot of the same cost challenges. Meanwhile, in European cities of comparable size to Calgary (places like Prague, Oslo, Helsinki, Vienna etc) large rail projects, including subways, LRT and commuter rail systems, are built without these cost overruns. What are we doing wrong here in Canada?
Nawads
Active Member
It’s worth noting though. New transit projects in Europe are not getting any cheaper either. Oslos newest line under construction right now is costing about $300 million USD per km, which is higher then the green line. Their project also had massive costs increases that almost had it canceled before construction started. The new line in Oslo is fully underground so not a one for one comparison but the point stands. Oslo is also a smaller city then Calgary but is spending way more on their transit, because they actually want to reduce car use.
www.newsinenglish.no
From the article:
“ Construction of the much debated and delayed metro line between Oslo and Fornebu, where Oslo’s main airport used to be located, has finally been cleared to continue despite huge budget overruns. The project is already well underway, but was in danger of being scrapped as its costs kept rising.”
Green light for expensive metro line - Norway's News in English — www.newsinenglish.no
Construction of the much debated and delayed metro line between Oslo and Fornebu, where Oslo’s main airport used to be located, has finally been cleared to continue despite huge budget overruns. The project is already well underway, but was in danger of being scrapped as its costs kept rising...
www.newsinenglish.no
“ Construction of the much debated and delayed metro line between Oslo and Fornebu, where Oslo’s main airport used to be located, has finally been cleared to continue despite huge budget overruns. The project is already well underway, but was in danger of being scrapped as its costs kept rising.”
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artvandelay
Active Member
I don't think this is the case. They are rightly concerned about costs and scope creep however.
darwink
Senior Member
Some of it is obvious errors in project controls (scope control), some of it is contracting differences (a preference for fixed cost contracts and very large contracts), some of it is we hire workers who can speak english and are easily certifiable in the USA, some of it is we count different elements towards a project budget, versus others not doing that, a big part is we design projects to minimize impacts (especially land impacts), instead of spending less money to relocate or compensate those being impacted.
We also forget that we are rich and isolated, so we have people based on local wages, and can't draw on nearly as large (or relatively low wage) of a population to do fly in fly out.
We can also add that we have very very transparent budget systems in Canada, so we see more of the process in public. Germany has had similar cost overruns with Stuttgart Station. There as here, the main driver was time (decades long projects) and scope changes.
darwink
Senior Member
Yeah, not realizing the scope creep was mostly in service of not disrupting auto traffic which I am sure they would have also complained about.
Not that the city has been good at communicating that.
YYCguy
Active Member
In a couple years time when YUL airport is finally linked up with rail to their city, Calgary will still be without a rail link to its airport. And it seems like it will be years, decades, or perhaps never, that this will become reality. I know that Smith has indicated interest in making such a link reality, but doesn’t seem keen to offer the money to do so. For a major city in Canada with tons of tourism and business, why hasn’t more effort been made to make this happen (rhetorical question only, rant over!)….
MichaelS
Senior Member
The Province provided the funding for the design study of the airport connector:
www.calgary.ca
Calgary Airport Rail Connection Study
www.calgary.ca
trtcttc
Active Member
Not a direct study on Calgary but many of these points apply across North America. The summary starting from page 9 gives a really good overview. This site/study comes from a group of NYU researchers https://transitcosts.com/executive_summary/
The main drivers are:
Stations and construction: We overbuild our stations (those renders for Eau Claire..) and use more complicated techniques to avoid disruption to cars/freight/etc. We also don't standardize our station designs, which isn't possible at a local level due to limited number of projects but if there was a national station design guide, then a lot of that work and money can be saved.
Labour: labour cots are higher, although not primarily due to wages but inefficiency and redundancy in blue and white collar jobs; Sweden is one of the lowest cost countries despite having relatively high wages.
Procurement and soft costs: We don't build a lot of transit, so most of the expertise is contracted out, which is more expensive. It also affects the agencies ability to monitor contractors. One of the major issues in Toronto with the Eglinton LRT was a lot of work was done outside of specifications (tracks too wide, waterproofing not done properly, etc.) but the agency was slow to catch these until the project was almost at completion, likely because they had no idea what they were doing since they never built an LRT before and general incompetence. Calgary had a lot of success with extending Red/Blue lines but tunneling and building the downtown portion of the GL is going to be completely different and there will most likely be cost overruns above the estimates they will release.