G&M on the "Madrid Miracle"

[Filip]

Old thread, I remember reading it years ago without a single clue I'd be one day living here!

Madrid.. oh what to say? Well, one thing will be when I go back to Toronto I'm going to be complaining why there isn't a subway stop in front of my house. The goal of the Comunidad de Madrid (provincial government) is that not ONE house in the city of Madrid is more than a 5 minute walk from a metro stop. I have a friend here who's father works in the Infrastructure Development Ministry for the Comunidad, and he told me that 15 years ago when they began planning these expansions the mayor and his chief transit person (whatever he's called here, I have no idea) just took a map of Madrid, with the superimposed metro lines and just began colouring lines. One here, one here, one here, Oh! a hole here, we should fill it up with another line.. etc etc until the city basically looked like a bowl of multicoloured spaghetti.

I live in the dead centre of the city, which means that from my house I have NUMEROUS stations right around the corner. One minute walk takes me to La Latina on the green line, two minute walk takes me to Tirso de Molina on the light blue line, 3 minute walk takes me to Sol which has the red, light blue and yellow lines including a cavernous feat of engineering the new Sol Cercanias station, a 4 minute walk takes me to Opera which has the red line, the green line and the shuttle to Principe Pio station. It is that feeling of connectivity that makes me think that Madrid is a very small city, but small it is definitely not. The distances are quite big and are amplified by this strange greenbelt to the west of the city called Casa de Campo.

However, the trains are much smaller than Toronto's; the trains are shorter, narrower and don't run on third rail, but on a suspended third rail above the train where a squashed pantograph runs along it. Also, the trains run the opposite way (imagine London driving but in the subway). Definitely though, the newer stations are cavernous and remind me of the TTC's notorious overbuilding (not that I complain, I love cavernous cathedral-like stations).

Here's a few examples:

Madrid's metro network upon completion of the current set of expansion (2016)

Typical 'older' station from the 30s

New station on MetroSur with an elevated interchange with the Regional Railway (Cercanias)

Typical 'new' stations.. They have this omnipresent blue ceiling that I find incredible to stare at

Terminal 1,2,3 station.. Again; omnipresent blue ceiling and perfectly integrated artwork.

Toronto and its respective governments should learn the meaning of 'hutzpah'

 

[nfitz]

A few people here would look at those photos and call the stations overdesigned!

 

[Filip]

A few people here would look at those photos and call the stations overdesigned!

Yet somehow they still end up significantly cheaper than the TTC.. Zing!

Maybe we should kidnap the guy in charge of Madrid's transportation system. Spaniards already seem to flock to Toronto to learn English; so we could cut a deal! You get the TTC in order, we teach you English. Fair enough?

 

[nfitz]

You get the TTC in order, we teach you English. Fair enough?

That suprises me that you wouldn't think such a person couldn't speak English!

 

[Filip]

That suprises me that you wouldn't think such a person couldn't speak English!

Spaniards are notorious at not speaking another language. Those born in the distinctive provinces have their own + Spanish which is the only advantage, I'd assume, of being Catalan, Galician, Basque...

None of my professors speak English, barely any of my Spanish friends, for the most part I'm glad because I've become fully fluent in 2 months after coming here with a 'decent' knowledge of Spanish.

 

[nfitz]

That's unusual for Europe ... I guess most Spainards I've encountered though might be the exception that travel out of Spain.

 

[hbl33]

Spaniards are notorious at not speaking another language. Those born in the distinctive provinces have their own + Spanish which is the only advantage, I'd assume, of being Catalan, Galician, Basque...

None of my professors speak English, barely any of my Spanish friends, for the most part I'm glad because I've become fully fluent in 2 months after coming here with a 'decent' knowledge of Spanish.

Same goes for Japanese and French; while the Japanese tries hard to be fluent at English, their fear of embarrassment for poor English skills have hindered them from going ambitious for mastering the language. French people pride in their own culture rather than encountering any foreign cultures or languages, especially English. Koreans on the other hand...

 

[Second_in_pie]

Same goes for Japanese and French; while the Japanese tries hard to be fluent at English, their fear of embarrassment for poor English skills have hindered them from going ambitious for mastering the language. French people pride in their own culture rather than encountering any foreign cultures or languages, especially English. Koreans on the other hand...

Thankfully, it doesn't go the other way around. I have made a fool of myself numerous times with French and Japanese, and now I've got both of them pretty well down

In terms of the Madrid stations being overbuilt, I have no problem with overbuilding unless it gets in the way of network building. If Madrid can build a huge subway network along with large stations, all for less than the TTC builds their stations for, then that's fine. But if the TTC is citing huge costs as a reason for not building subway, then it becomes a problem.

 

[hbl33]

I am surprised by the look of Madrid's future network; it overkills LA in size and capacity, is as immense as Berlin and Seoul, for a size of T-Dot. Who knew Spanish had tiger economy while everyone put attention on Mid-East and East Asia?

 

[Second_in_pie]

I don't think it has anything to do with the size of their economy. This is just their plan for moving people around. They're investing heavily in mass transportation infrastructure instead of other things.

 

[Dan416]

Madrid has achieved economy of scale in terms of subway construction. A continuous program of subway expansion has made it cheaper to build than occasionaly one-offs like we do in Toronto (think the one-stop extension to Kipling from Islington, the Sheppard line, the extension to Downsview, the upcomign extension to Vaughan with nothing else concrete planned). They have subway-building teams there, and that's what they do.

 

[andrewpmk]

It seems to me that the experience of Madrid teaches us in Toronto three things:

1. Economies of scale. Building many subway lines at once allows for reduction of cost because it allows builders to gain experience, because it allows construction equipment such as tunnel boring machines to be reused, and because it allows bulk orders of things such as rolling stock.

2. Don't overbuild. There are many ways to reduce the cost of construction. The tunnels in the Madrid Metro are narrower than ours, allowing two tracks to fit into a single tunnel (reducing cost), and the platforms and trains are shorter. And, of course, there is less need for large and expensive structures such as bus terminals and parking garages because the dense network of subway lines reduces the need for them.

3. Build several medium-capacity lines instead of one high-capacity line. The goal of having everyone within a 5 minute walk of a subway station is a rather lofty one in the case of Toronto (I live within a 10 minute walk of the subway here and I would consider myself close, though I sometimes take a short bus ride if I'm feeling lazy), but it works. This provides more accessibility to transit and more redundancy during construction or in case of a breakdown. In the case of Toronto, this could mean intentionally building all new lines with a narrow, incompatible loading gauge to reduce cost, and compensating for this by building more lines when needed (one can always build a new line parallel to the existing one). This could also mean the use of at-grade LRT when a subway is not justified (which could be converted to subway at a later date if needed).

 

[EFSF Jaburo]

I am surprised by the look of Madrid's future network; it overkills LA in size and capacity, is as immense as Berlin and Seoul, for a size of T-Dot. Who knew Spanish had tiger economy while everyone put attention on Mid-East and East Asia?

I would tread carefully when comparing Madrid's network to Seouls.
Madrids trains are shorter (4-6 cars) than Seouls (mostly 8-10 cars) and narrower as well, thus making the stations equally as small in size.

On paper, they both have a similar size of network (madrid 282.5km, seoul 314km) but seoul's size more than doubles if you include the surface portions to 755km. And the surface (Korail) tracks are not a commuter network, but is more or less identical to the subway counterpart (same trains, level of service..etc)

but then again, madrid IS a much smaller city so they have more track per capita.

 

[Filip]

Madrid's network is also an oddity considering track gauge differs depending on the line.

In the case of lines 7,9,10 (those that I have taken, there might be more) the track is wide, probably as wide as in Toronto's case. They're currently spending hundreds of millions extending the platforms to fit more cars. I know line 1 has just completed this and lines 2,3 are next. Newer lines are much longer. All in all, it depends on when the segment was built. Madrid just never stops, subway building seems to be a national effort in Spain (Barcelona is getting ready to open line 9 which apparently is nearly 50km long (ya, getting close to the entire length of the TTC subway network, oops do we fail epically).

All it really takes is political will, once there financing can be extorted from Queen's Park/Ottawa. I'm fairly certain if we proposed $15 billion in subway instead of the same amount in streetcars to nowhere we would have gotten it all funded and then some. Too bad the Miller/Giambrone combo has a eurofetish for trams. Madrid is building light rail too! COMBINED with that amount x3 in metro.

 

[Filip]

I don't think it has anything to do with the size of their economy. This is just their plan for moving people around. They're investing heavily in mass transportation infrastructure instead of other things.

What are those other things we're investing in? Quite honestly I wonder what Canada has to show for its relatively extreme wealth. Our infrastructure is quite frankly, and this is putting it lightly, pathetic, our cities are crumbling, our healthcare and education is decent but nothing to write home about; yet we're touted as a highly developed, significantly wealthy, country.