As someone living in Toronto, we do have the odd underpass grade separation (see Milliken station on GO Stouffville line) but it is legitimately more complex to do with the massive amounts of pumps etc needed to clear the underpass in heavy rainfall and theres an enormous amount of excavation...

Surprised its so low though, less than half of what the Waterloo ION is doing after 5 years despite using trains which are ~3x as big https://www.grt.ca/en/about-grt/performance-measures.aspx

These price increases are not only inflation and higher material costs, it's the "English Speaking World Cost Disease" with that stuff on top Lots of great reading about this here: https://transitcosts.com/

Length is not the only factor in capacity. The low floor LRVs have a lot less flexible interior layout as seen in Toronto, Kitchener, Edmonton etc. which slows down dwell times and leaves less room for standing. You need a longer low floor vehicle to match the capacity of a high floor vehicle...

Yes, thats the big benefit. The Texrail and Silver Line routes in Dallas both use Flirts and TexRail at least interacts with heavy trains. Could get bimode ones that use diesel and overhead wire like in the UK and wire the Airport - Downtown section.

The curves can be managed especially if a train akin to the "FLIRT" being used in Ottawa and the Dallas region (and all across Europe of course) are used - they have smaller "cars" than those used on traditional North American passenger trains. They could also run a frequent electric service...

The research all suggests that "the price" is not fixed. Bad procurements practice, design etc. drives costs up but, it's not a given: https://transitcosts.com/ Tunnels and guideway are riskier, but at grade track on street need not be uber expensive. Alright, then no point in discussing...

Build an at grade non Revenue track south of downtown before the Green Line goes underground connecting to the Red Line? It could be single track down the middle of a street. Clearly if you're trying to be cost effective you are not building underground. AFAIK the Green Line is less than 1km...

Why haven't they built a culvert!

It would be nicer for on street, no doubt. But, you can do on street with high platforms - just need to be more creative with the design. You would need to buy more of course, but less than low floor, since you can pool your spare trains with the existing fleet. You cannot do that if the trains...

Ultimately why using a different train technology doesn't necessarily make a ton of sense. Stations are slightly easier to build yes (most on SE are not going to be in the middle of the road and even if they were a lot of the cost is electrification, trackbed, utilities anyways). I remember the...

No no no, Sydney Metro is replacing the commuter service - the line will be converted so it won’t be using the same infrastructure. Total line rebuild. As was mentioned, we probably shouldn’t be designing the system such that we’d want to move stock between L1 and L2, they are both substantial...

I would suggest the reduction in delays from people on the tracks would be the much bigger savings. Especially for a P3 operator who loses money if they don’t provide reliable service

Making a ton of people make one stop trips is bad, that’s why. STC is already an important node, no reason you can’t divert back north after connecting to it.

Good thing that it will actually be DB running the trains soon enough, and Germany happens to be one of those places