08-13-2016, 06:53 AM
(08-12-2016, 07:55 PM)Canard Wrote:(08-12-2016, 12:26 PM)nms Wrote: The Ion agreement includes a refurbishment at the end of the agreement so we'll inherit a slightly used system as opposed to either a brand new system or a worn out system.
Cool, that's news to me! I assume that's buried away somewhere in the Project Agreement?
I'd wondered about this - with the lifespan of embedded track being somewhere around 20-30 years. I bit my tongue on bringing that up!
I’m a little concerned about that sort of issue too. Toronto went through that in the ’20s, I believe it was, when the franchise holder (is that the right word?) stopped maintenance near the end of their time, leading to the TTC inheriting a very rickety system.
However, I’m not too worried. Even if all the track was worthless, and the OCS in bad shape, re-creating all of that would cost a small fraction of what is being spent now. There would be no utility moves, no tree removal, no property acquisition, no road re-routing, and so on: just re-build the actual track structure itself, and replace the overhead.