ION Phase 2 - Cambridge's Light Rail Transit

[KevinT]

I honestly believe we as a society are close to new infrastructure never being built. The prices have been inflated like crazy for large scale construction projects, everyone needs to be consulted, everything needs to be studied to death. The fact that they are looking at a completely separate LRT for Cambridge and have a bus connect the 2 systems is crazy. I know they are even debating breaking phase 2 into a couple phases.

I do wonder though if continuous construction in multiple smaller phases may not be the way to go to keep costs down. Right now there is no 'local' institutional knowledge on how to build and maintain LRT systems, and so we end up farming out to consultants and massive one-off international consortiums. Can you imagine if 2 years after phase 1 had opened, we had extended it one stop to Freeport, then a few years later we tackled the Grand and got it to Pinebush, and then a few years later we extended it again to Dundas, etc.? All with semi-local trades that were also bouncing around to small chunks of Hamilton, Finch, and Hurontario? I bet there'd be value in that.

[Vojnik_Vahaj]

I honestly believe we as a society are close to new infrastructure never being built. The prices have been inflated like crazy for large scale construction projects, everyone needs to be consulted, everything needs to be studied to death. The fact that they are looking at a completely separate LRT for Cambridge and have a bus connect the 2 systems is crazy. I know they are even debating breaking phase 2 into a couple phases.

I do wonder though if continuous construction in multiple smaller phases may not be the way to go to keep costs down. Right now there is no 'local' institutional knowledge on how to build and maintain LRT systems, and so we end up farming out to consultants and massive one-off international consortiums. Can you imagine if 2 years after phase 1 had opened, we had extended it one stop to Freeport, then a few years later we tackled the Grand and got it to Pinebush, and then a few years later we extended it again to Dundas, etc.? All with semi-local trades that were also bouncing around to small chunks of Hamilton, Finch, and Hurontario? I bet there'd be value in that.

I remember watching and Alen Fisher video talking about how to lower costs.

[danbrotherston]

I honestly believe we as a society are close to new infrastructure never being built. The prices have been inflated like crazy for large scale construction projects, everyone needs to be consulted, everything needs to be studied to death. The fact that they are looking at a completely separate LRT for Cambridge and have a bus connect the 2 systems is crazy. I know they are even debating breaking phase 2 into a couple phases.

I do wonder though if continuous construction in multiple smaller phases may not be the way to go to keep costs down. Right now there is no 'local' institutional knowledge on how to build and maintain LRT systems, and so we end up farming out to consultants and massive one-off international consortiums. Can you imagine if 2 years after phase 1 had opened, we had extended it one stop to Freeport, then a few years later we tackled the Grand and got it to Pinebush, and then a few years later we extended it again to Dundas, etc.? All with semi-local trades that were also bouncing around to small chunks of Hamilton, Finch, and Hurontario? I bet there'd be value in that.

I agree with this in theory...but this should have been the strategy from the beginning. That being said, this only works if we actually have everyone on the same page and working together, and if the first phases go well...I don't think any of these are guarantees in the region.

That being said, I don't have a better option.

[KevinL]

The 'bouncing around to different projects' is something that could use centralized scheduling, probably from an entity like Metrolinx. Unfortunately that's not how this province works.

[Vojnik_Vahaj]

The 'bouncing around to different projects' is something that could use centralized scheduling, probably from an entity like Metrolinx. Unfortunately that's not how this province works.

Should be though. Down with stupid bureaucracy!

[coriander]

I honestly believe we as a society are close to new infrastructure never being built. The prices have been inflated like crazy for large scale construction projects, everyone needs to be consulted, everything needs to be studied to death. The fact that they are looking at a completely separate LRT for Cambridge and have a bus connect the 2 systems is crazy. I know they are even debating breaking phase 2 into a couple phases.

I do wonder though if continuous construction in multiple smaller phases may not be the way to go to keep costs down. Right now there is no 'local' institutional knowledge on how to build and maintain LRT systems, and so we end up farming out to consultants and massive one-off international consortiums. Can you imagine if 2 years after phase 1 had opened, we had extended it one stop to Freeport, then a few years later we tackled the Grand and got it to Pinebush, and then a few years later we extended it again to Dundas, etc.? All with semi-local trades that were also bouncing around to small chunks of Hamilton, Finch, and Hurontario? I bet there'd be value in that.

I think there's a bit of a misconception here. Indeed, an agency like GRT probably doesn't have the ability to independently pursue projects like these short extensions, and that's a shame. That the operating model seems to preclude that kind of thing doesn't help.
However, it's not like projects is done from a base of no experience. At a low level, many of the people I worked systems with on ECLRT, for instance, were coming from the Confederation Line, iON, etc, and I believe at a higher level too. Many subs were working multiple of HuLRT, ECLRT, FWLRT, but these were on the contractor side and not the client side.

It's definitely true that dependence on outside consulting & on the design-build scheme is strangely high, here. Metrolinx has higher staffing per service area resident than many Euro agencies which are capable of lots of internal engineering work and of management of large DBB expansion procurements. It's not like they're all planners, either; Metrolinx has a very large number of FTEs. Why it prefers various kinds of odd procurements and not designing big projects would be interesting to study.

[coriander]

We refuse to treat cost inflation seriously and it affects much more than just transit.

When Spain and Italy can build subways cheaper and faster than we can build at-grade light rail, the failure is with government who don’t take procurement and corruption and planning seriously.

If you don’t care about transit and whatnot, that’s cool - but a 10x cost in random train projects is also being matched by 10x increases in new schools and hospitals too. It’s absurd and the government is failing all of us when they rely on continuous consulting and engagement instead of just getting jobs done.

I really would like to see what the methodology for the cost assumption that makes headlines is. A lot of the time cost estimates are inflated multiple times by ridiculous contingency, calculating in year-spent dollars, adding random margin, and in the first place working off averages rather than real estimates. I beleive Marco Chitti has written about this problem in Quebec transit expansion cost estimates, which haunt the Montreal tramway plan as it did the REM de L'est.