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Barcelona’s Metro Continues Its Expansion at a Relatively Cheap Price

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Barcelona’s Metro Continues Its Expansion at a Relatively Cheap Price


June 29th, 2010

Yonah Freemark

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Read More: http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/...es-its-expansion-at-a-relatively-cheap-price/

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Over the next ten years, New York, Los Angeles, and Barcelona each hope to have new underground rapid transit lines up and running. Gotham will spend $4.5 billion on a 1.7-mile line under Second Avenue. Los Angeles will get a 8.6-mile extension to the Westside for $6 billion. And Barcelona will have built 30 miles of automated subways for €6.5 billion ($7.9 billion according to today’s exchange rate). Perhaps it’s an unfair comparison: Spain has lower labor costs, and despite Barcelona’s international prestige and high densities, land values there are generally lower than in the two American metropolises. But the disparity in infrastructure creation remains dramatic; countries like Spain and China are able to build far more than American cities can even dream about.

Barcelona’s newest exploit was the opening last week of the first shared segment of the L9 and L10 lines. Both are being constructed as part of a unified program that will increase the metro system’s size by a third, providing a new north-south circumferential corridor west of the city center, access to northern neighborhoods, a connection to the new high-speed rail station at La Sagrera, and direct links to both the airport and the port to the south. The first segment of L9 opened in December 2009 and the first section of L10 in April this year. The southern links will be completed in 2012, with the full program in service in 2014. That’s six years after the project was originally expected to be done.

Though Barcelona’s project doesn’t come close to the scale of Madrid’s metro expansion program — that city increased the size of its network by more than 100 miles between 1995 and 2007 and now has the highest metro route miles per person in the world — Barcelona will have Europe’s longest underground route and the continent’s most extensive automated line in four years.

For €6.5 billion, the city will be getting 52 stations, 20 of which will include transfers; the project is expected to attract 350,000 daily riders. Because of Barcelona’s already very dense metro network, the line has been built below everything else. Tunnel boring machines, which Spain specializes in, were used for the entire underground path (the line includes a few miles above ground on viaducts); this decreased costs by limiting surface cuts and land purchasing. The city also has taken advantage of the line’s building to produce some very interesting street reconstructions.

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I envy them.
 
With 5 times the density the business case is 5 times better.

Somehow I doubt Barcelona is 5 times denser than Toronto.

And they aren't spending that little.

6.5 billion euros for 30 miles = 8.7 billion CAD for 48 km = CAD 181.25 M/km

While that's cheaper than us, their spending commitment would have bought about 29km of subway over here. That would have allowed us to build the DRL, finish both the Sheppard and Bloor-Danforth subway to STC (permanently finishing subway construction in the east), and build either the central portion of Eglinton or complete significant portions of, if not the entire previously planned Eglinton West line (if we used cut and cover in Richview for example).
 
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It's a bit under 4 times denser than Toronto, so there is a point there.

But do we want to build LRT and confine Toronto's density? Or do we want to build subway so it has the capacity to reach Barcelona-like densities in the future?
 
With 5 times the density the business case is 5 times better.

A city's density is basically irrelevant when you're looking at individual lines. If we're looking at a business case of, say, a DRL/Don Mills line, we're not going to factor in the huge expanse of Rouge Park, or the sparse subdivisions of central Etobicoke, or other areas that obliterate the city's overall density and mask the fact that for such a line there'd be a string of stations with 'European' levels of existing density.

And remember that Barcelona's subway network is roughly as busy as the Sheppard subway (as is Madrid's). Unlike Toronto, there's no assumption in Spain that a transit line is a failure if it isn't overcrowded.
 
We're going to have to take some lessons. We shouldn't confine our future density or ignore all the many places in our suburbs with high density.

I don't know where the density figures are coming from, but Barcelona's 15,991 per square km is for the city itself, slightly bigger than the old City of Toronto's size (101.4 versus 97.15). Their density is thus double that of ours, but our 6961.9 is still a favourable number for new subway lines. I think we all agree that downtown needs at least one more for commuters with perhaps a second local line down a street like Queen.

But let's take a look at the urban area density because it will include areas like the 416 suburbs, where the subway versus LRT debate is salient. Barcelona has 4.2 million people over 803 square km for a density of 5230 people per square km. It is expanding its subway into those "urban" areas. In Toronto, we want to either expand the subway into a comparable area of 630 square km. Toronto has 2.5 million people over 630 square km, for a density of 3972 people per km. Thus, Barcelona is expanding its subway in an area that isn't even twice as dense as where Toronto subway advocates would want subway expansion to happen.

Hence, "5 times the density" is patently false. Central Barcelona is more than twice as dense as central Toronto but if you compare the area of the present city of Toronto where subway advocates would prefer a subway to be built to urban Barcelona, one finds that it's not an outrageous comparison at all. The density is not as high but what that means is that if we use Barcelona as a benchmark, fewer subways should be built in the 416 area, not none at all. New subway and LRT lines both have a place in the suburban 416.
 
Can you give me a list of two or three suburban Barcelona stations so I can see how the density compares to the locations in Toronto where subway proponents would put subway stations (other than the DRL). I'm looking at Barcelona and pretty much all of it looks fairly urban to me. I can't find many single detached home neighbourhoods in walking distance to a subway, yet in Toronto even without subway expansion I can find many single detached homes less than a block from the subway.
 
We're going to have to take some lessons. We shouldn't confine our future density or ignore all the many places in our suburbs with high density.

I don't know where the density figures are coming from, but Barcelona's 15,991 per square km is for the city itself, slightly bigger than the old City of Toronto's size (101.4 versus 97.15). Their density is thus double that of ours, but our 6961.9 is still a favourable number for new subway lines. I think we all agree that downtown needs at least one more for commuters with perhaps a second local line down a street like Queen.

But let's take a look at the urban area density because it will include areas like the 416 suburbs, where the subway versus LRT debate is salient. Barcelona has 4.2 million people over 803 square km for a density of 5230 people per square km. It is expanding its subway into those "urban" areas. In Toronto, we want to either expand the subway into a comparable area of 630 square km. Toronto has 2.5 million people over 630 square km, for a density of 3972 people per km. Thus, Barcelona is expanding its subway in an area that isn't even twice as dense as where Toronto subway advocates would want subway expansion to happen.

Hence, "5 times the density" is patently false. Central Barcelona is more than twice as dense as central Toronto but if you compare the area of the present city of Toronto where subway advocates would prefer a subway to be built to urban Barcelona, one finds that it's not an outrageous comparison at all. The density is not as high but what that means is that if we use Barcelona as a benchmark, fewer subways should be built in the 416 area, not none at all. New subway and LRT lines both have a place in the suburban 416.

Excellent analysis. Well done.
 
Can you give me a list of two or three suburban Barcelona stations so I can see how the density compares to the locations in Toronto where subway proponents would put subway stations (other than the DRL). I'm looking at Barcelona and pretty much all of it looks fairly urban to me. I can't find many single detached home neighbourhoods in walking distance to a subway, yet in Toronto even without subway expansion I can find many single detached homes less than a block from the subway.

Surely you know by know that density has little to do with a transit line's viability when you factor in a heavily used feeder/surface network like Toronto's. One park'n'ride lot like Finch's can pour in as many riders as a huge cluster of apartments. There's frequencies, fare structures, etc.

If Barcelona is more uniformly dense across the city than Toronto, that means there's few spikes - it's almost as dense one block from the subway as it is 20 blocks, so if you're willing to build subways that aren't overcrowded and may not recoup 80% of their cost from fares, you can build them anywhere. Barcelona is building more lines but how many people are actually using them? No more than would use such lines here, we know that. Toronto has many large concentrations of people and jobs and students and shoppers, as well as many areas filled with almost nothing. So what if there's detached houses barely one block from Eglinton or Sheppard? Both of those stations move 70K+ people a day. The Annex is urban, too, and filled mostly with simple houses, but it's riddled with subway stations. Is there something so wrong with Glencairn? Saying "Oh, Barcelona is five times as dense as us" ignores the fact that there are dozens of clusters/nodes in Toronto that when combined with a very heavily used surface network are perfectly capable of supporting stations. A few in a row plus unfavourable conditions hindering the surface vehicles and you have a recipe for a line that will be no less successful than in Barcelona. One Toronto bus route can easily pour as many riders into a station as a "dense" Barcelona neighbourhood.
 
^^ Exactly. And, may I note again, what's stopping Toronto from having Barcelona-density districts in the future? The city's growing so quickly, I doubt it's impossible as long as people come together and say they want it.
 
Surely you know by know that density has little to do with a transit line's viability when you factor in a heavily used feeder/surface network like Toronto's. One park'n'ride lot like Finch's can pour in as many riders as a huge cluster of apartments. There's frequencies, fare structures, etc.

Yes, but maintaining a bus route system through low-density areas to act as a feeder to the subway is expensive endeavor. Most of the money spent on transit in Toronto goes to paying for bus purchases, bus maintenance, and bus driver salaries. Where there is significant density you don't need to rely on an expensive feeder system.
 
Yes, but maintaining a bus route system through low-density areas to act as a feeder to the subway is expensive endeavor. Most of the money spent on transit in Toronto goes to paying for bus purchases, bus maintenance, and bus driver salaries. Where there is significant density you don't need to rely on an expensive feeder system.

What low density areas? We're not talking about the Leslie bus or the Martin Grove bus. Density isn't a hindrance on extremely heavily used routes like the two Finches (that are probably not much less busy than a European subway line). Some bus routes lost a fortune, though, like Steeles East...some of these riders could be shifted onto GO, which would save some money while improving many of their trips.

It takes billions of dollars of construction to save billions of dollars of operating expenses and such money is available, but sporadically, if the stars align. The stars are always aligned in Spain and if they're not, they are aligned manually.

It's not like subways are free once they're built. Sure, maybe if we did build like 50 subway lines, we could scrap our entire surface network and realize some slight manpower savings, but that's obviously not going to happen. Even if we built 2 or 3 more subway lines and a few extensions to existing lines, which would probably be as many subway kilometres as we'll ever need unless we reduce the 'need' threshold to the standards used in other cities, like in Europe or DC or elsewhere, there'd still be dozens of routes moving many thousands of people every day. That's why we look at each line individually, the pros and cons, how it fits in in context, etc. That's why we don't say "City X, you have Y density, therefore you deserve Z more subway lines." That's not how it works.

Our huge surface system already exists and does more than just funnel people to the subway. If you're just looking at saving through replacing the surface network, stuff like the Yonge extension would move to the top of the priority list, and maybe something like an Eglinton East subway, which sees 5 or more routes overlapping on two separate stretches, or a short Bloor extension, etc. The Leslie bus can stay...it would be insane to replace it with anything else.
 
While that is all interesting, it does not explain the difference in construction costs.
 

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