Waterloo Region Transit Developments (ION LRT, new terminal, GRT buses)

[allengeorge]

Price tag for bringing ION to downtown Cambridge set at $4.5 billion

'No government is going to give $4.46 billion to Cambridge around an LRT,' said Coun. Doug Craig

www.cambridgetoday.ca

I have to agree with @Reecemartin on this: the new costing is absolutely egregious, and if we don’t get cost inflation under control transit projects will become untenable in Canada.

Tweet via Michael Druker on the staff rationale for the costs:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1643800745647505409

 

[allengeorge]

From the tweet above. The cost escalation of 30% seems egregious.

 

[Northern Light]

I agree that the above cost escalation is problematic ( * @allengeorge you'e missing a zero in that last line)

That said. I can see where some of it is coming from........

1) For a class 4 estimate, they've added 50% to their actual estimate (contingency risk). So where you see 4.4B, you need to know their real number is 2.9B

2) Second, they're envisioning construction starting in 2030, so 7 years from now, and they are factoring in on-going construction cost inflation between now and then.

From the Report to Waterloo Region Planning Ctte:

***

"For the purpose of
calculating cost escalation it was assumed that construction will occur from 2030 to
2035."

Link to actual report: https://pub-regionofwaterloo.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=3179

If you look at the Construction Inflation Index numbers (for all types of projects) they're brutal.

Its worth noting that general inflation was ~7% last year; but construction inflation ran closer to ~11%

I don't know what numbers they used for their go-forward here, but I think you can safely assume they're adding more than 3% per year.

If you work backwards, the cost is still high, but nowhere near as brutal as the headline number makes it seem.

 

[robmausser]

Our economy will crash before we start construction on this and eventually, after we have picked up the pieces from a decade long depression we can start building again.

This way of existence is completely unsustainable. We are ironically in the roaring 20's all over again right now.

 

[Cobra]

Price tag for bringing ION to downtown Cambridge set at $4.5 billion

'No government is going to give $4.46 billion to Cambridge around an LRT,' said Coun. Doug Craig

www.cambridgetoday.ca

I have to agree with @Reecemartin on this: the new costing is absolutely egregious, and if we don’t get cost inflation under control transit projects will become untenable in Canada.

Tweet via Michael Druker on the staff rationale for the costs:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1643800745647505409

No wonder China and the Global South will be the leaders. That's insane...

 

[ARG1]

I agree that the above cost escalation is problematic ( * @allengeorge you'e missing a zero in that last line)

That said. I can see where some of it is coming from........

1) For a class 4 estimate, they've added 50% to their actual estimate (contingency risk). So where you see 4.4B, you need to know their real number is 2.9B

2) Second, they're envisioning construction starting in 2030, so 7 years from now, and they are factoring in on-going construction cost inflation between now and then.

From the Report to Waterloo Region Planning Ctte:

View attachment 466825

***

"For the purpose of
calculating cost escalation it was assumed that construction will occur from 2030 to
2035."

Link to actual report: https://pub-regionofwaterloo.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=3179

If you look at the Construction Inflation Index numbers (for all types of projects) they're brutal.

Its worth noting that general inflation was ~7% last year; but construction inflation ran closer to ~11%

I don't know what numbers they used for their go-forward here, but I think you can safely assume they're adding more than 3% per year.

If you work backwards, the cost is still high, but nowhere near as brutal as the headline number makes it seem.

Its still insanity that countries like Spain can build Metros for half of the cost of this streetcar. I think we're beyond the point of "This is high but not that bad". As for as I'm concerned our costs are hitting a crisis point, and we absolutely need to do something to address it. Simply put, costs like these aren't sustainable.

Also, they're really planning to build this thing this late? That's a bit... unambitious...

 

[Northern Light]

Its still insanity that countries like Spain can build Metros for half of the cost of this streetcar. I think we're beyond the point of "This is high but not that bad". As for as I'm concerned our costs are hitting a crisis point, and we absolutely need to do something to address it. Simply put, costs like these aren't sustainable.

I agree the numbers are high; though really Spain is not a fair comparison......

Their median income is something like 1/4 less than ours, their construction sector pays a lot less, in relative terms.

There are, of course, other issues at play. But we do need to be mindful when making comparisons in costs things like relative income and land cost.

Also, they're really planning to build this thing this late? That's a bit... unambitious...

I don't remember it being proposed for any earlier than 2028.

Disappointed to see it pushed back; but not surprised.

 

[Bordercollie]

I agree the numbers are high; though really Spain is not a fair comparison......

Their median income is something like 1/4 less than ours, their construction sector pays a lot less, in relative terms.

There are, of course, other issues at play. But we do need to be mindful when making comparisons in costs things like relative income and land cost.



I don't remember it being proposed for any earlier than 2028.

Disappointed to see it pushed back; but not surprised.

Rate of inflation, cost of materials, labor all of these things are going up. Fuel is a huge factor also.

 

[sche]

I agree the numbers are high; though really Spain is not a fair comparison......

Their median income is something like 1/4 less than ours, their construction sector pays a lot less, in relative terms.

There are, of course, other issues at play. But we do need to be mindful when making comparisons in costs things like relative income and land cost

We really need to stop making these lame excuses. That does not explain a 10x difference in cost.

Besides, If you don’t like Spain, compare to Sweden which builds at costs on par with Spain or even France/Germany which are still like 5x cheaper than Canada

 

[Northern Light]

We really need to stop making these lame excuses. That does not explain a 10x difference in cost.

Besides, If you don’t like Spain, compare to Sweden which builds at costs on par with Spain or even France/Germany which are still like 5x cheaper than Canada

Excuse me? I don't do anything 'lame'. If you go back and read the preceding posts, I explain that the cost quoted is not what it appears and explain why; I also acknowledge the cost remains too high though it is certainly not 10x or anything close to that and it is 'lame' to make something like that up; you're better than that. Then I simply note that comparing Toronto blindly to a place with a much lower cost base across the board isn't reasonable either.

Though crude, and error-prone at times, Numbeo can provide a good sense in the difference in cost base between major urban centres:

Toronto

Toronto Projects in Our Database Overview If you have insights into transit-infrastructure projects in Toronto, please get in touch with us at info@transitcosts.com. We are always looking for people to help us understand why projects cost what they do.

transitcosts.com

Stockholm

Stockholm Projects in Our Database Overview If you have insights into transit-infrastructure projects in Stockholm, please get in touch with us at info@transitcosts.com. We are always looking for people to help us understand why projects cost what they do.

transitcosts.com

 

[Sunnyside]

Regardless of the cause, an industry shakeup in NA transit Is necessary… this isn’t sustainable, and it suggests we are building transit out of principle of spending money on it rather than to build it because transit itself is good.

 

[crs1026]

I wonder if part of the problem is simply risk aversiveness by the bureaucracy..... these days nobody wants to put forward numbers that prove too low, so the cushions are added.

The unintended result I see is that if the numbers are proposed more conservatively, the political sticker shock may incent politicians to shelve projects we actually really need.

The other problem is, the padded numbers become the target, and while there may be incentive to the contractor to come in under budget (and pocket the contingency), the offsetting potential is to do the project less efficiently and still make a decent return. The politicians declare victory, but actually a lot of money gets wasted - they buy their victory at a premium, where the target and end prices could have been a bit lower if people overlooked the odd bit of overrun.

I worked with one very senior project executive who had built some pretty large infrastructure - their strategy was to hold all the contingency at the top and be ruthless in not handing it out without breaking somebody's spirit. It wasn't pretty, but it sure worked. Maybe we should not bake so much contingency into the contract.

I have a lot of trouble with iOn Phase II because it seems to have played to every business lobby and community along the way - leading to a winding, slow routing that won't actually work that efffectively. I can really get behind a higher order transit link between downtown Cambridge and Kitchener - but this doesn't feel like that higher an order. I can even get behind a Cambridge LRT - if you look at the incremental cost of the Ainslie-Delta and Delta-Pinebush segments, these are not out of line for an LRT. With the right develeopment strategy and LRT, Hespeler Road could become the next Hurontario. It's the link to Fairway (and the winding route north of there) that seems like throwing away money.

- Paul

 

[Sunnyside]

I wonder if part of the problem is simply risk aversiveness by the bureaucracy..... these days nobody wants to put forward numbers that prove too low, so the cushions are added.

The unintended result I see is that if the numbers are proposed more conservatively, the political sticker shock may incent politicians to shelve projects we actually really need.

The other problem is, the padded numbers become the target, and while there may be incentive to the contractor to come in under budget (and pocket the contingency), the offsetting potential is to do the project less efficiently and still make a decent return. The politicians declare victory, but actually a lot of money gets wasted - they buy their victory at a premium, where the target and end prices could have been a bit lower if people overlooked the odd bit of overrun.

I worked with one very senior project executive who had built some pretty large infrastructure - their strategy was to hold all the contingency at the top and be ruthless in not handing it out without breaking somebody's spirit. It wasn't pretty, but it sure worked. Maybe we should not bake so much contingency into the contract.

I have a lot of trouble with iOn Phase II because it seems to have played to every business lobby and community along the way - leading to a winding, slow routing that won't actually work that efffectively. I can really get behind a higher order transit link between downtown Cambridge and Kitchener - but this doesn't feel like that higher an order. I can even get behind a Cambridge LRT - if you look at the incremental cost of the Ainslie-Delta and Delta-Pinebush segments, these are not out of line for an LRT. With the right develeopment strategy and LRT, Hespeler Road could become the next Hurontario. It's the link to Fairway (and the winding route north of there) that seems like throwing away money.

- Paul

The worst part is the iON today isn’t even faster than a bus. Forget Phase II with its winding route.

 

[tmlittle]

I wonder if part of the problem is simply risk aversiveness by the bureaucracy..... these days nobody wants to put forward numbers that prove too low, so the cushions are added.

The unintended result I see is that if the numbers are proposed more conservatively, the political sticker shock may incent politicians to shelve projects we actually really need.

The other problem is, the padded numbers become the target, and while there may be incentive to the contractor to come in under budget (and pocket the contingency), the offsetting potential is to do the project less efficiently and still make a decent return. The politicians declare victory, but actually a lot of money gets wasted - they buy their victory at a premium, where the target and end prices could have been a bit lower if people overlooked the odd bit of overrun.

I worked with one very senior project executive who had built some pretty large infrastructure - their strategy was to hold all the contingency at the top and be ruthless in not handing it out without breaking somebody's spirit. It wasn't pretty, but it sure worked. Maybe we should not bake so much contingency into the contract.

I have a lot of trouble with iOn Phase II because it seems to have played to every business lobby and community along the way - leading to a winding, slow routing that won't actually work that efffectively. I can really get behind a higher order transit link between downtown Cambridge and Kitchener - but this doesn't feel like that higher an order. I can even get behind a Cambridge LRT - if you look at the incremental cost of the Ainslie-Delta and Delta-Pinebush segments, these are not out of line for an LRT. With the right develeopment strategy and LRT, Hespeler Road could become the next Hurontario. It's the link to Fairway (and the winding route north of there) that seems like throwing away money.

- Paul

Right on the money here. I am a local resident who has been riding ION regularly through the whole pandemic and since launch. I've seen all the ups and downs (the crashes, crowding already starting to appear in the central uptown-downtown section, empty trains in the suburban sections, mysterious and unjustifiable-seeming outages on perfectly normal days) though obviously it is not on the level of Ottawa. The Ion feels like a great system and is comfortable to ride, easy to get on and off, feels integrated into the urban landscape especially in areas where redevelopment has matured/slowed down and there's a lot of pedestrian activity. At Frederick station for example you'll see a ton of Conestoga College students or people going to places in the south end of downtown using it. However the directional running and constant twisting through streets are its Achilles heel.

I find myself getting more and more critical of the Cambridge extension because it even looks like a boondoggle on the map. It feels as if the whole time, the potential of the Ion system has been held back by the "flinch" toward serving suburban bus terminals and transfer points over going straight through downtown areas and using higher-speed dedicated rail corridors to actually cover distance (e.g. terminating at Conestoga Mall). It's these suburban areas where a lot of the problems are. But the biggest problem of all feels like the attempt to have one single line perform every function (the Jack of all trades) and noodle its way everywhere rather than having a branching system, or just more-effectively utilizing bus transfers. If you look at the historical systems in Cambridge, there was a separate Hespeler branch and the Kitchener-Galt tracks via Preston were extremely direct if not an exact straight line. In theory geometrically you would want transit corridors to be a Galt-Preston-Hespeler triangle. The way things have been structured, reaching Pinebush and the 401 is treated as a do-or-die priority, which feels reminiscent of McGuinty-era transit planning mentality-wise. Coming down through Cambridge Centre, that's a pretty suburban corridor that's going to be heavily reliant on bus transfers. The Region has continually promised to build up better bus service in Cambridge but you'll come across endless excuses and strange apologism (e.g. blaming historical underfunding under the municipality as an excuse for why that historical underfunding has been continued under the Region), or just handwaving it as suburbia problems and that Cambridge is difficult to serve. Yet if they are serious about planning for higher-order transit like LRT, that bus ridership needs to be boosted over the new few years one way or another, or else Stage 2 will be low-ridership on top of all its other problems.

I think LRT development in the region has ultimately been positive (cost-effectiveness aside) and has had a corrective influence on development to help compensate for decades of thoughtless suburbanization and de-densification, but it would have been much more helpful if there had been a less conservative conceptualization of it as more or less just a single-line system running sinuously through the tri-cities, and more as an actual system with branching/intersecting lines similar to what's been explored in Ottawa. It feels however (like what you alluded to with the Fairway connection across the river being difficult) like what's always taken the front seat is the vision of the LRT as a "regionalizing" project that the regional government has used to actualize itself. Kitchener and Waterloo have obviously always been linked and are very close together, but Cambridge is a different beast and you have to wonder if something more creative might have delivered superior value -- building a depot somewhere in Cambridge, having one or more small lines within Cambridge itself to connect the former town centres better and provide an upgrade from the existing iXpress service, and then keeping the existing 302 as a bus bridge via the highway between Fairway and Pinebush or some other northwesterly station in Cambridge? I've taken the 302 numerous times and it's a great way to get to Sportsworld or Pinebush. I find it's often quite crowded but it could definitely have better frequency and schedule harmonization with the 206 iXpress (which partially duplicates its route). Forcing people to transfer multiple times isn't fantastic but if it saves a billion dollars that could theoretically be poured into feeder bus routes for the system in Cambridge? Then I think we'd be cooking with gas. But that's the kind of creative possibility that's seemingly never come up because the LRT was conceived overwhelmingly as a Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge link, with the actual service within Cambridge as an afterthought (not a good sign).

This is just my feelings on it, I'm not an expert or anything but watching the lack of progress or concrete goals is frustrating and I'm concerned stage 2 will not end up being what Cambridge needs.

 

[Reecemartin]

I agree the numbers are high; though really Spain is not a fair comparison......

Their median income is something like 1/4 less than ours, their construction sector pays a lot less, in relative terms.

There are, of course, other issues at play. But we do need to be mindful when making comparisons in costs things like relative income and land cost.



I don't remember it being proposed for any earlier than 2028.

Disappointed to see it pushed back; but not surprised.

It's easy to dismiss the Spanish cost because of cost of living, etc, but the Transit Cost project (which you cited) already adjusts based on PPP, so it really is just super bad.

They also mentioned land costs in the report and they were a pretty low number relative to the overall cost. At the same time as tends to happen, they are cross comparing their own costs with other Ontario projects (though seemingly not the much less expensive original segment) which all have very high costs by international standards and even based on our own historic standards.