officedweller
Senior Member
They can reduce cost in ways one might not think.
For example, in the Canada Line, they reduced cost, by meeting the design specs, and only building the platforms 50 metres long (with 40 metre long trains), seriously compromising future expansion (by contrast, the Eglinton line trains will be over 90 metres long). They also reduced cost by doing the construction in a way that it seriously messed up Cambie for a couple of years - rather than doing it in less intrusive, but more expensive ways, like planned on Eglinton.
And of course there was all the foreign labour that was brought in from Asia and paid relatively low wages. Something a government agency would never do.
Note that the Canada Line 40m trains are 3.0 m wide (same width as a TO subway car).
So instead of the 80 m SkyTrain Bombardier MKII that is 2.6 m wide, you have a different vehicle used to meet the capacity specification (15,000 ppdph).
I think the CrossTown LRT vehicles are 2.6 m wide, aren't they?
The shorter platform also allowed shallower gradients between some stations (i.e. Olympic Village Station and Broadway - City Hall Station), which in turn allowed stations to be closer to the surface and cheaper to construct. Longer station platforms would mean digging level sections of track deeper "into the hillsides" so the guideway and next station may be very deep - adding to station excavation costs.
The winning bidder also chose to build the tunnel under one side of Cambie, not down the median, meaning lower utility relocation costs and that allowed a longer tunnel. The other bidder (Bombardier) didn't think of that and proposed an open trench guideway south of 49th Ave.
One question would be whether the CrossTown is too far along to allow a DESIGN, build, finance, opeate and maintain contract. If the line is built to uneconomic specifications (like Sheppard) then that may deter bidders.
Last edited: