Hamilton Hamilton Line B LRT | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

Considering that all the Metrolinx documents I've seen - including ones as recently as 2020 - still have the Hamilton LRT shown as "proposed",I think it's all a matter of funding at this point. If the province can get itself off the hook for the full bill, it'll come back.

No comment on the viability of the two-phase option without further details. I think that the first phase would need to cover the whole of downtown to get enough ridership to make it worthwhile. By that I mean having the temporary eastern terminus be no further west than Wellington Street. Would they open the western phase before the completion of the eastern phase? Would construction of the first phase transition into construction of the second?
 
Allandale25 said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1357869640677019648

www.thespec.com

Could Hamilton afford half a LRT? A two-phase project option is on the table, says LIUNA

The construction union says it is still talking to the province about its pitch to resurrect a cancelled LRT line — maybe in two phases to ease the financial burden.
www.thespec.com www.thespec.com
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The fact that LIUNA is showing a much more active approach in supporting and building the LRT, just shows how much an embarrassment Hamilton politics is.

This project is 2nd only to the Scarborough LRT/subway debacle for most embarrassing planning of public transit in the past 30 years.
 
^Very close 3rd. Hamilton beats Brampton out because the saga has been going on for 15+ years, and Hamilton did something similar by being non-committal to the LRT at a time where the province was fully willing to fund it back around ~2013.

At least Brampton has made some substantial improvements to their bus system in the meantime, unlike Hamilton which continues to talk a cheap game but yet cant even build their long awaited 2nd bus garage. Just wait until they open up that can of worms, they will start to dither on where to locate it and that decision will probably take 5+ years when the time comes. Fred Eisenburger should be very proud of himself.
 
allengeorge said:
2.5B for 9km? That’s almost 277M per km. For an at-grade LRT?! Where is that money going?

EDIT: For comparison, Finch West is 11km at 1.2B. There’s no way construction costs doubled in a decade.
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Finch West is actually $2.5B capital cost. I believe Metrolinx "capital cost" values are the sum of all non-operating payments at the time they are paid, and due to financing some payments are far-future.

See point #4.

The 2010 equivalent value of Finch West is $1.2B. Different accounting techniques get wildly different numbers but they basically mean the same thing.

Sometime around 2015 we went from trying to make transit investment numbers sound as small as possible (Net Present Value at the date of the proposal, ignoring financing, operations, etc.) to as big as possible (typically future values often including decades of operating & maintenance costs). First time I'd seen that value inflating approach was the Gardiner East rebuild.

It's a bit like putting in a $400k bid for a house then adding 30 years interest, property taxes, heating bills, maintenance, etc. and telling your parents you got a $1M house. Business does this all the time (compares full life-cycle cost of various options, with various cash-flow smoothing options), but for individuals who typically think in the present only, the values seem dramatically inflated.
 
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duffo said:
If I recall correctly a good chunk of that was for miscellaneous civil works that are being bundled into the project. Replacing century-old sewer mains, etc. Not sure if that's still the case.
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If thats the case it needs to be properly documented. It sounds like they are trying to shock people with the sticker price to consider alternatives.
 
Can I get a yikes?
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