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I saw this study from UofT today, and I think it's pretty relevant. PDF: UNDERSTANDING THE DRIVERS OF TRANSIT CONSTRUCTION COSTS IN CANADA Some key quotes, IMO. Risk and NIMBYs: Methods: The Consultant Enrichment Scheme™: Risk: That special Metrolinx brand of transparency...

In case you had some lingering doubt that the Trudeau government is a serious administration, doubt no more. Chrystia Freeland says that the HST rebate is attacking the "vibecession." Not the real problems of youth unemployment, or housing, or inflation? I just, I don't understand, I can't even-...

The Tokaido Shinkansen doubled in cost during construction, and the chief engineer and JNR head both resigned - but they were forgotten once the line opened between Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, and Osaka. That's the deal - there needs to be a line between two places people want to go, even if there are...

It's a shame. Not having any freeways should have made the case for rapid transit easier. Instead, they got a bunch of stroads and a frankenstein BRT system that's half RapidTO, half Viva. This is the sort of thing that should cost $90 million, not $450 million. Canada and its rising costs...

I think that any discussion of Midtown will come from capacity challenges at Union Station. GO RER is not even supposed to finish construction until the early 2030s, and the USRC offers capacity for, in my very unqualified opinion, decades of growth. The station building itself is probably a...

Stitching a tramway with a tunnel is fine, if you have more than one branch to make the best use of the tunnel's expensive capacity (like Edmonton-ish with 1.5 branches, or San Francisco with 5 branches - not the Central Subway mistake). Theoretically, we could turn around trains at Science...

My opinion is that the province ought to fund a large portion of municipal transit operations; given the post-COVID number of $4 billion or in subsidy so across the province, I think 1/3 of the subsidy (up from about 10% today with the gas tax fund) is reasonable, at about $1.5 billion annually...

Just because we don't hear about it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Big cheques make the news, but many levels of government regularly dole out smaller sums which don't make headlines. You do have to go digging for this stuff. HICC: blah blah invest in public transit in Cornwall, Kingston...

We don't put new power plants in the downtown of cities. We do have Portlands, Goreway, Pickering - but this situation is non-ideal, and if (hypothetically) the opportunity came to replace Portlands with a solar plant because, say, we were developing the neighbourhood next to it, I say go for...

This is just an illustration. You can get higher speeds by abandoning Cooksville GO and tunnelling under more properties, but money. Even at 15 minutes, that's a time savings worth it to create a connection to the Mississauga Transitway, GO buses from Square One, MiWay at MCCT, and MCC itself...

This is waay off topic and maybe belongs elsewhere, but I've always thought cost/return ratios are almost fraudulent. We put a magic number in, and get a magic number out. If we double the value of a minute saved (for example), the BCR changes, but nobody's actually saved any more time. Or if...

A Milton GO realignment, tunnelling to reach MCC and using the 403 Transitway corridor at-grade, should be doable for net <$1 billion, maybe even less than $700 million, assuming no issues with easements (I know that's partly responsible for MTL's Anjou Extension blowouts). Though we're moving...

The off-peak service on other lines is far above what was offered 30, 15, 10 years ago (maybe not 5 years ago). Milton GO should be on the priority list for 2030s projects, but Metrolinx is short on project management capacity and competence as it is. Milton GO Expansion would be billions in...

It's so strange. "Increase" would be great publicity, and perfectly honest when used properly, such as here; "decrease" provides neccessary information. I will echo comments made during the September changes, adjusted is only appropriate if it's a runtime change that affects headways by a few...

This information is readily Googleable, even more so if you know which website to look for. From Steve Munro

What's interesting is that all this comes less than two weeks after Metrolinx announced that "All Stations and Stops for Finch West LRT [are complete]". Also, Metrolinx's response is the opposite of the "let's hold hands and make up, we hope for a clear resolution" response that you'd expect...

Immigration policy. Housing policy (too little, too late). Other, more technical quibbles - HxR was pushed to his third term, his government waffles on military spending - these are not necessarily going to be better under Prime Minister Poilievre, but asking "why do you hate the person who shot...

I'm not against option 3, but in this case, I do think that option 1 is preferable in the long-term. I see three problems with the route as selected: The very tight curves increase maintenance and decrease speeds, and this will remain the case even if we fixed the slow order disaster. The...

This is the same mistake being made in the Montréal thread. It may be private influence pushing for certain alignments and/or mode choices, but it's the government that has the final word on what does and does not get built. The solution is stronger politicians and better political culture...

One wonders where the problem is. Is it procurement? Is it implementation? Is it planning? Some combination of the three? I don't need to rehash the disaster of diversions and slow zones that is the streetcar network. Ottawa's metro-LRT has 15% added to travel times. This iON problem...