04-05-2023, 10:20 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-05-2023, 10:21 AM by the_conestoga_guy.)
(04-05-2023, 12:29 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: RM Transit has some interesting discussions of construction cost but none of his explanations seem to apply here. If we can’t build a simple at grade LRT line for less than 4 billion then we simply aren’t going to succeed as a society.
I couldn't agree more. This reminds me of the story in London, where cost overruns (combined with much stronger NIMBYism) led to their LRT plans being abandoned in favour of a half-baked BRT system.
That $4.5B figure is insane, though. Based on this 2022 article, we could buy a hybrid bus for $905k or an electric bus for $1.1M. So would we rather have an LRT that isn't even completely grade separated, or would we prefer to add like 4,000 busses to our fleet to have 2 minute headways on every route? Obviously there are extra costs involved with expanding our fleet, I'm just trying to give context to that massive figure.
https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...-year.html