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I knew it!im no economics expert but i too wonder just where the money that is being collected in taxes and for the development fees of a record construction tempo are going to.
im chancing part of it goes to a word that begins with a C and ends with an N with 3 syllables...
The high cost of any transportation operation is staff and fuel. Am I supposed to believe that an electric transportation system, brand new and under warranty, with vehicles that are driven by a single employee that handle a much larger capacity, is somehow more expensive to run than the buses it replaces?? How?? I get that the system was more expensive to build, and that the vehicles are more expensive... but to operate?? How?? Where is the money going to go??
Just because you see less vehicles and less operator doesn't mean it's cheaper to operate.
All of that is the opposite of what the argument by the TTC against the province uploading the operating costs of the subway has been. The argument has often been that the subway subsidizes the surface routes operationally. The electricity cost for LRVs should not be more expensive than diesel fuel for buses. The LRTs have lower rolling resistance than buses and ask any electric vehicle owner... fuel to electricity costs are not comparable. Yes, there are buildings to maintain which is new, but most have low staffing requirements. Power distribution system = capital cost already purchased and under warranty. Railway wear and tear... sure that will become a cost but not immediately. Electricity costs for stations and signage = low (modern led lighting) unless they try to keep the stations at room temperature (heating could be more expensive). Daily LRV maintenance shouldn't be that much different than the three buses it replaces. Signal system maintenance = modoerate (new system so changes shouldn't be required but there will be some cost to run a control center). Tunnel maintenance... this is under warranty... there should be no immediate cost.
I asked ChatGPT to do the napkin math:
This is not a consumer product. You make it sound like everything is under warranty, not my problem. Someone has to pay for the cleaning staffs. Someone has to pay for the pumps sucking up water in the tunnels. Someone has to pay for the fans bring oxygen down to the stations. I can tell you it's not crosslinx. They aren't a charity. If an insurance company is to provide insurance and they only have one client, the cost would be more that how much they need to insure plus operating cost to stay in business.
Excellent use case for ChatGPT
I have already stated that I agree there are costs to maintain. What you don't understand is that those costs are minuscule in the big picture of what it costs to run the line and that operating a fleet of diesel buses is not cheap. Cleaning staff... there are 14 stations which were designed for low maintenance, the mostly do not have washrooms, lets be crazy and say it is a full time job to maintain it (I rarely see a janitor in the station so I'm pretty sure they aren't assigning a full time person for cleaning per station) so 14 people. How many people are bus mechanics, bus cleaners, bus drivers? Paying for fans and pumps... how much do you think these fans cost to run? They aren't nuclear plants, they are low maintenance HVAC units or industrial pumps that are expensive to buy, but not expensive to run. You don't seem to realize where the costs come from in running large business. It is always the largest consumed operational inputs (e.g. gas if you are a transport company, ink and paper if you are a publisher, hosting/CPU power if you are a website, etc), the staff, and the capital/debt financing. In this case the city doesn't need to worry about the capital/debt financing... the province already is covering that. So it is the other things, not the running of air conditioning, lighting, running a fan or a pump... it is the cost of the actual service, the consumed product, and not the maintenance (unless you have equipment due to be replaced and you are avoiding the capital expense of doing that by maintaining something beyond its normal service life).
I always mention that a rail line cost more to operate than a bus route. Why did you think David Miller threaten to shut down the Sheppard subway?
A bus route uses the roadway that is maintained and paid for by the city. That cost is not included in the costs for the TTC (unless the TTC pays the property taxes that pays for it?).
When the Sheppard line opened it was overbuilt. It wasn't replacing a bus fleet capable of transporting subway capacities down the entire length of Sheppard, it was replacing a smaller 5km stretch with much less capacity. Only when the capacity is at a certain point is the mode of greater scale cheaper to operate. This is a chart of capital costs, but operationally things are similar where as you increase the number of people you are trying to move, the costs of operating a mode of transit not designed for that capacity becomes more expensive... it becomes more expensive to operate buses than to operate an LRT or a subway once you are trying to move a capacity that is reasonable for an LRT or a subway.
If you want to do some more math....Excellent use case for ChatGPT
So the cost released as the estimate to run the Finch West and Eglinton Crosstown lines was a total of $106 million. In fuel savings from the Finch West bus route alone $36 million of that is covered bringing the unfunded cost to $70 million. I could look up the service levels of routes 32, 34, 54, 51, and other impacted routes and determine the volume of busses replaced with this service to be able to calculate the fuel savings there... but you can see the order of magnitude we are talking about from the Finch West example. It is probably about $60 million in fuel savings on Eglinton and Eglinton West. Then you start to get into other items like not needing to maintain those buses, staff those buses, etc. The operating costs end up not being that different. It is the capital costs and payment against that initial expense that are the big dollar items. Buses aren't that efficient.
Hmm. The 430 makes sense, but the $100K seems really low for direct operating expenses unless it is all expenses minus fuel, because the driver is maybe $75K of that (more when you factor in paid benefits). When I look at the fuel a bus would use over 8h shifts annually if travelling 15km/h... it seems like it would be more than $800K so the costs of running a bus for an 8h shift all year round would approach $1 million.
