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Does Construction Take Too Long to Complete in This City?

BurlOak said:
Proving that your point number 7 is correct. Not only is the EA process exceedingly long, it often makes the wrong decisions. Maybe that is the point of stretching out the EA - that way all the objectors will just get tired of opposing and give up. However, if a new candidate comes along who represents their objections, then the whole process grinds to a halt again.
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It is absurd to have politicians making technical decisions. It should be engineers who decide what is the best way to do things and politicians should just decide on priorities and funding methods. Why do a bunch of people with little to no engineering background whatsoever debate in the city hall on if an LRT should be built or a subway? That's absurd. At least it should be debated among engineers.
 
The premise of the thread is that Toronto infrastructure construction projects are actually completed at some point. Does that happen?
 
For me, it's not the length of time construction takes that's bothersome, but how short lived such projects are before they must be repeated. Streetcar track and road surface replacements don't seem to last long at all. It's the 21st century, we may not have the jetpacks and robots we were promised by sci fi writers, but can we at least get some progress on the longevity of building materials?
 
Agreed. And what drives me crazy is when a newly paved street is torn up again in a matter of months to put a cable down or something. Richmond for instance has just been completely repaved from Parliament to Jarvis (maybe further by now) smooth as a baby's bum. How long before we see a backhoe digging it up for something.
 
Admiral Beez said:
Streetcar track and road surface replacements don't seem to last long at all. It's the 21st century, we may not have the jetpacks and robots we were promised by sci fi writers, but can we at least get some progress on the longevity of building materials?
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Haven't we seen improvements? Years ago, you either dug up the road completely (taking forever), or put on yet another layer of asphalt that quickly deteriorated, and only smoothed over the lumps (and in some cases, the underlying streetcar tracks!). Now you've got these great machines that quickly skim off the top asphalt, leaving a flat, stable, base for a new layer of asphalt, which can be done very quickly.

And for streetcar tracks, you had to rip up all the concrete, right down to soil. Now you just remove the tracks, skim off the top layer of concrete, and install new tracks, quicker than before.

At the same time the state of the city streets, and particularly the provincial highways, seem a lot smoother than 20-40 years ago. Sure, there's some roads that have been waiting too long to be completely rebuilt. But overall, seems better. I can't remember the last time I drove down a 400-series highway, with the bump-bump-bump every 500 metres when you crossed every culvert, that used to mark many hours on the 401.
 
One thing I can say for TTC at this point, the new design will take less time to fix or rebuilt down the road.

Was in Detroit looking at their new LRT track work in Oct and couldn't believe what I was seeing. Not only it was taking longer to built, but will be a bitch when it comes time to fix it or rebuild it.

Most system go down 18 inches and have rail hanging in the air on space bars that have leveling bolts with a steel tie about 10 feet apart. They pour concrete to anchor the rail in place once everything is level.

Detroit does not only this but use rebar everywhere to hold the tracks in place. To remove the rails or a section of the road at a later day is a major under taking. Other systems in the US are using rebar, but not as much as Detroit. Even Berlin was easy to replace than most US systems, but not built like TTC.

Politic is the name of the game for building the wrong system in the wrong place.

That last section before Windsor is now a smooth baby compare to the bumb de bumb days.

Detroit
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Berlin
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Downtown Detroit is a great place. There are still a lot of vacant storefronts, but there are more and more businesses and residents every year. It's quite clean and well maintained, too. The streetcar line will be a much needed connection between downtown, midtown and the Amtrak station in New Centre. Hopefully, it'll encourage middle class people to take transit in Detroit--currently it's mostly people too poor to drive who ride buses.
 
Admiral Beez said:
For me, it's not the length of time construction takes that's bothersome, but how short lived such projects are before they must be repeated. Streetcar track and road surface replacements don't seem to last long at all. It's the 21st century, we may not have the jetpacks and robots we were promised by sci fi writers, but can we at least get some progress on the longevity of building materials?
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Streetcar track replacemens last more than two decades, IIRC.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Streetcar track replacemens last more than two decades, IIRC.
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Not true.

TTC has rip up a number of locations this year where the new style has been built in the last 5 years. This included the rails as well.

There are a number of locations where concrete is already breaking up due to traffic and will have to be replace in the coming years before the 25 year life cycle.

The top coat and rail are supposed to last 25-30 years with the base lasting up to 75 years. The ties are supposed to last 50-75 years. Switches will have a shorter life cycle.
 
drum118 said:
One thing I can say for TTC at this point, the new design will take less time to fix or rebuilt down the road.

Was in Detroit looking at their new LRT track work in Oct and couldn't believe what I was seeing. Not only it was taking longer to built, but will be a bitch when it comes time to fix it or rebuild it.
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I see that Detroit uses green (epoxy coated) rebar. Does Toronto use it?

MTO has found that the concrete cover protects the rebar from corrosion for about 30 years. Meanwhile, the epoxy coating lasts about 30 years due to the alkali environment of the concrete. In other words, just when the chlorides from salts reach the rebar, the protective coating fails. Many US DOT's do not agree with this and still use green rebar. Quebec has used galvanized rebar in some locations and MTO has used stainless steel.
 
really puts north american public works work ethic to shame
I guarantee that even if we had twice the people we would still be wasting over half of them
walking around in circles. Mind you they did replace the CN diamond as part of he georgetown upgrades in 1 night
but this is a whole different level. even in the timelapse you can see that everyone is working efficiently with little downtime and smoke breaks. these were
also the people who after the 2011 tsunami completely rebuilt 500ft of road that was completely broken and flipped in under a week.
 
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