Montréal Transit Developments

[urbanclient]

I do appreciate your insights and almost always agree with you. But this one seems like a stretch.

Yes, appropriating the tunnel did hamper Montreal's suburban trains; yes, technically, what you said about it going over budget is true. Yes, it currently breaks down in winter sometimes. But seems harsher on it than it deserved. The quality and frequency of the REM is far better than the commuter rail it replaced. It created a spine in the middle of the city with the connections to the Metro that would not have existed for another century if not done now.

The budget increased from a shockingly low 6.3B to a more 'typical' 9.4B for 67 km of rail. Even with the increases, it seems a lot more efficiently designed and constructed than any currently under construction transit project in Ontario or Quebec. (Might not be completely accurate. I don't have the time to look at the numbers, especially for other provinces, during my lunch break.)

There are growing pains, but these will get ironed out.

I concur, here is some pro-CDPQ propaganda

Less consultants, low contingencies, and also:

^Wow what a novel concept... Hear that Metrolinx? Hiring campus-recruit consultants with zero industry experience is not a good idea.
Being a part of the ongoing HS2 debacle as a consultant ≠ successfully delivered past projects. Not naming names...

It all adds up to a small, efficient group, further enabled by a favourable political environment in Quebec.

People nitpick that 30 km of track and the Mont Royal tunnel already existed, or that the Champlain bridge was built with provision for future transit, but fundamentally the REM’s low cost was due to a departure from the North American transit development model. The REM saved on the soft costs.

And the more expensive PSE replacement for the cancelled REM de l'Est, marks a return to that ill-conceived model which allows soft costs to exceed the hard construction costs:

The dead giveaway is that a surface-running tram is projected to cost nearly double that of an elevated and underground metro.
How is it okay for contingency to be higher than hard costs, and escalation to be nearly the same?

The REM is successful because it focused on reducing the actual (soft) costs, so the original $6.3 billion became $9.4 billion for 67km and 26 stations. They were aggressive with cost-saving with a lower budget to start, despite being tolerant of later overruns and delays (*cough* Eglinton $5.3 to $10+ billion for 25 'stations' that also started earlier).

I am fairly certain the material costs for the REM were also higher than Eglinton: 26 platform screen door stations compared to 15 stations, and 10 median stops.
Even doubling the REM's real capital costs to $20 billion puts it at <$300 million per km. A miracle for North American rapid transit.

Regarding bloated contingencies, Dr. Jonathan English says: "Once the higher budget is allocated, it's pretty much guaranteed to get spent [by the P3 consortium]."
Roughly speaking for the REM, CDPQ Infra acted as the private party instead of a consortium. So not really a P3 in the Metrolinx DBF(OM) sense.

its merely that the trades made to achieve that have some longer term adverse consequences some with very significant price tags now shifted to other projects (see new tunnel into downtown Montreal for Alto)

The lack of a unified vision for transportation led to this, and it is a tragedy, because a new tunnel for Alto would be very costly. I am not entirely sure how or if a full provision could have been left for Alto though, the old tunnel was over a century old. More to the point, IMO, allowing ~120,000 rapid transit trips to go through the old tunnel earlier, instead of leaving room for 72,000 Alto riders from 2038 onwards*, doesn't seem like as bad of a trade-off as many believe. I lament the impending wasted money on a wholly new tunnel for Alto, but I also think rapid transit needs are more of a pressing short-term need than HSR.

*assuming Alto progresses quickly, with 100% load factor to and from Montreal, 1000 pax per 16 car trainset, 72 trains per day.