im going to pipe in here.
Sorry, I was quite busy last week and then forgot to reply here.
@Urban Sky if you insist this is unprecendented. Instead of comparing to Sydney which urbanclient has done and attempted to refute.
I've already identified Perth as a comparable city in a comparable country which has already achieved something which is comparable to what GO Expansion was (and still more or less is) expected to deliver over the next few decades. As my analysis has shown, these corridors were progressively upgraded and electrified over the last 35+ years with constant budget and timeline overruns:
Let's follow the recommendation of
@Reecemartin and go with Australia, where I find Perth to be quite a reasonable comparison:
| Toronto/Metrolinx | Perth/Transperth |
|---|
| Population (metropolitan) | 6,202,225 (CMA, 2021 Census) | 2,384,371 (Estimated Resident Population at 30 June 2024) |
| Network length (rail) | 532 km | 270 km |
| (of which: electrified) | 0 km | 270 km (100%) |
| Electrification type: | 25 kV@60Hz AC (planned) | 25 kV@50Hz AC |
| Track gauge | 1435 mm (Standard Gauge) | 1067 mm (Cape Gauge) |
| Annual ridership | 53,492,000 (2024) | 59,723,266 (year to June 2024) |
| Number of rail corridors | 7 (excl. UP Express) | 8 |
| Number of stations (rail) | 68 | 85 |
Let's have a look at the timeline of each
Transperth Corridor:
As you see above, the government started to get really serious in the 1980s and the electrification of 3 lines (in 1991) was probably the most significant milestone. But even 4 decades (and many significant cost and time overruns!) later, they are still not finished expanding their network...
Sure, but it’s useless to agonize about the past - and completely unnecessary when we currently live in the period with the most political will & funding, as well as construction activity in anyone's lifetime. Sure, we all wish it would happen faster, but the change we are watching is still probably the most ambitious in any rich country governed by the rule of law...
I unfortunately don't have the time myself, but if someone wants to take 2 hours to scrape through the Wikipedia articles of the various transit corridors in Sydney (or any other metropolis somewhat similar to Toronto), then we can also discuss the evolution of transit networks in more cities.
can you respond to why specifically this is unprecedented?
As the example of Perth demonstrates, it's not unprecedented to reach the initial scope of GO Expansion, but I'm not aware of any network which achieved such an advanced state in just 20 rather than 50 or more years. It's not the scope, which is unprecedented, but the intended
pace...
Metrolinx has continuously under promised and underdelivered.
Talk to railfans across Europe and you will hear the same complaints as we hear here. Entire academic research careers are dedicated to study the global phenomenon of megaprojects (especially transportation ones) ending up way above budget and behind their timelines:
Adding a single track to hundreds km of existing railway where you already have ROW? Why is this so hard?
It's so hard because you neither have the financial nor engineering resources to move the tracks multiple times. Nor do you have a public which would tolerate closing entire corridors for multiple months. That means you have to a thousand moving parts when trying to identify a staging which minimizes the number of individual measures and closures. I just had the chance last week to chat with some of the most senior leaders involved in GO Expansion and I honestly don't know how they manage to not go crazy with all that insane complexity.
Recent MX board meetings have talked about "green and red zones". again, brand new expanded railway where you have so much room right?
I haven't heard about these "green and red zones", but I would welcome any articles or documents mentioning them...
Define "ambitious". Why specifically is this so hard? we have talked in this thread of "stringing wires up" why is this so hard and difficult? what makes it worth scaling down?
There is no point to electrify tracks before they have been moved into their final position (which may not have been determined yet, in many cases) and have been re-ballasted to sufficient maintenance levels. Same goes for electrifying any Corridor before Union Station has been sorted out…
These 250 million grade separations are a bit ridiculous don't you think? Skipping Grade Separations are a massive limitation on the service, right?
I'm not sure which grade separations you are referring to and what the latest information on their status is...
Why are we excusing these excessive cost increases? These contractors are singlehandedly causing MX to scale back a program that
Because anyone who is at least tangentially aware of the global developments in the rail engineering industry knows that none of this is a Toronto-specific phenomenon. As I wrote in the comment quoted below, unit costs of electrification in Germany have tripled over the last 5 years, so do we want to blame Metrolinx for that too?
I really don’t understand what your problem is: you are paying more than anyone else has ever paid for a metropolitan rail network transformation in North America and you are getting more upgrades than anyone else in NA has ever received. It costs what it costs and prices naturally explode if a country like Canada suddenly makes more metropolitan rail infrastructure investments in a single decade than it did in the preceeding century. Just ask my colleague in Germany who works for the infrastructure owner of a short commuter line (the one which tested the Hydrogen trains with very underwhelming success) and tells me that the unit costs for rail electrification have effectively tripled in the last 5 years…
Edit to add: here the translation of the header and summary of an article by the German institute for Economic Research:
Are more government funding for the railway primarily a price driver?
Parts of the special infrastructure fund could be allocated to Deutsche Bahn. Is this the tidal change? Or could price increases occur? How? The articles refer to the volumes and prices of the documents over the past few years. The result is devastating: Construction volumes have not increased, but rather prices have exploded. This raises the question of whether and how government stimulus programs are driving up prices in specialized sectors such as railway construction.
Again, We know you know alot, but sometimes a small piece of insider information settles alot of disscusion
I really don't know that much more than other people commenting here and I can only share a fraction of it, but almost every bit of information I just responded to you has already been provided multiple times in this thread alone...
urbantoronto.ca
