05-16-2024, 10:30 AM
(05-16-2024, 09:18 AM)SF22 Wrote:(05-16-2024, 07:29 AM)nms Wrote: Aside from countries with authoritarian regimes, what's a typical timeline elsewhere for an infrastructure upgrade like this one? For instance:
1. We know that the track is privately owned, so negotiations needs to happen with CN before anything happens.
2. We know that there are no existing trainsets waiting to run.
3. We know that various capital budgets (municipal, provincial and federal) often are planned multiple years in advance.
What could be done differently here to speed things up?
I'd really like to know how Montreal/Quebec managed to plan, build and get ridership underway for the REM system so fast. That's a Canadian example that we really should be looking to emulate. The project officially started in 2015, they had contractors by early 2018 and broke ground a few months later, and despite delays (COVID and buried century-old explosives), they still opened the first stations in mid-2023. That's just 8 years to go from concept to execution, and they're still expanding the system.
The sad thing is that Montreal/Quebec are not even emulating it. The REM Est or whatever it was to be called is basically going back to the same bullshit of all usual government planning.
To me, it feels like a power issue more than anything, REM was developed by the pension fund in some way, I'm not really understanding the relationship, but it feels like a power thing.
As for how to make projects like this, I think we have home grown examples we should emulate. A decade before planning for the ION started in earnest, we built the iXpress as a proof of concept for it. We could have a bus service to Guelph tomorrow...the fact we aren't shows we're either bad at this, or not serious about this.