ION Phase 2 - Cambridge's Light Rail Transit

[Bob_McBob]

I came across this interesting recent article about escalating LRT construction costs.

https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-re...-cost.html

[jeremyroman]

Slides for Council committee meeting later today, discussing costs.

[ac3r]

If our probably-not-gonna-happen Cambridge Line is 4.5+ billion, I can't imagine what an LRT in Hamilton would end up costing. Their geography is way more challenging than ours.

And sadly, these sort of absurd costs are just going to make voters not give a shit about public transit. I can't blame them. I personally am not in favour of connecting Cambridge with LRT with this price tag and will absolutely be trying to encourage our region to not set fire to billions of our tax dollars over this crap.

[westwardloo]

So they assumed a construction inflation rate of 3.6% per year. That is not out of the realm of possibility, but is probably on the higher end of what is likely to happen. The last 2 years were crazy for predicting costs. I don't know what the historic rate of inflation for the construction industry is, but I imagine it is closer to 2 - 2.5%.  Which would still equate to roughly 4B with a 20% contingency.  The region will probably need to foot roughly 40-50% of the cost to construct to get phase 2 approved by the province and Federal Government. Similar to the city of Ottawa.  Assuming the Region is close to 700K by 2030 that would be roughly $2,800 per resident to build. That assumes no development fees help. So if the Region put a decade long $300 tax levy to pay for the Rapid Transit we could have enough in the coffers to pay our share. My math was done very quickly so do not hold me to it. haha

[taylortbb]

So they assumed a construction inflation rate of 3.6% per year. That is not out of the realm of possibility, but is probably on the higher end of what is likely to happen. The last 2 years were crazy for predicting costs. I don't know what the historic rate of inflation for the construction industry is, but I imagine it is closer to 2 - 2.5%. 

Unfortunately construction inflation has been much higher than that. During the 2010s, when the original ION construction happened, construction inflation averaged 6% annually. Covid spiked that into the double digits. If they're assuming "only" 3.6% annual construction inflation, they're likely severely underestimating the costs of stage 2.

If we can't figure out, as a society, how to get construction inflation under control we're getting very close to not being able to build anything. Nevermind transit, we won't even be able to build housing for our population.

At 6% annual construction inflation we'd be looking at:
- $2.72B capital cost (2022$)
- $2.44B construction inflation (2033$)
- $1.03B contingency (2033$)
Which would give a $6.2B total cost (2033$).

It is important to adjust for "regular" inflation when talking about 2033$, as we can expect wages, etc (and therefore the tax base) to approximately track general inflation. Assuming 2% annual inflation then $6.2B (2033$) is about $5B (2022$), or the official estimate (3.6% annual construction inflation) would be about $3.6B (2022$). $3.6B in present-ish-day dollars is still far too much to be spending on the Cambridge extension though.

[bravado]

I have a fun compromise... No LRT to Cambridge but the next big arena and hospital have to be built here and you can only drive to it.

[ac3r]

Hah, zero chance. 99% it ends up in Kitchener.

I know I've posted against redeveloping Rockway Golf Course (at least for generic residential rather unattainable condo/apartment rental units), it would be a great place for a new acute care hospital. Highway 7 and 8 have on/off ramps nearby. The LRT has a stop right next to it. It is close to some of the most important arterial roads in the region such as King, Weber, Courtland and Ottawa. It's all within the Rockway PARTS plan so they could hopefully develop it very, very high density to future proof our local healthcare system. It's a 20 minute drive to Cambridge Memorial, 10 minutes to St. Mary's General, 10 minutes to Grand River Hospital - Freeport, 10 minutes to Grand River Hospital - KW (just using driving times for patient transportation and such - public transit times are slightly longer, obviously). It's got to be one of the best pieces of land that belongs to the City of Kitchener that could be repurposed for another institutional need.

My partner is a health care professional at GRH and has said that South Kitchener-Cambridge is being looked at, though. But I find that odd. Sure you've got Highway 8 and 401. There may or may not be a Guelph-Cambridge GO train spur on the Kitchener Line. The LRT isn't guaranteed. Generally speaking it just sounds like a shitty place to build a brand new, state of the art acute care facility.

The only other place I can think of that exists centrally is the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium complex property, but it has flaws of its own in terms of where it is. And I think if you asked citizens what they'd rather lose - their main auditorium and sports complex or a golf course - they'd choose the latter.

Anyway off topic heh.

[westwardloo]

Looks like the mayor of Cambridge wants the lrt down Dundas instead of downtown Galt because that is where all the "growth" is haha. She also doesn't want any lane reductions on hespeler. The city of Cambridge continues to elect the brightest minds 

https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/i-find-that...-1.6411408

[bravado]

Looks like the mayor of Cambridge wants the lrt down Dundas instead of downtown Galt because that is where all the "growth" is haha. She also doesn't want any lane reductions on hespeler. The city of Cambridge continues to elect the brightest minds 

https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/i-find-that...-1.6411408

It’s not surprising that the Mayor doesn’t know or care about induced demand, but I think this is another double standard that I’m kinda sick of. Would any big Kitchener councillor publicly accept a proposal to reduce drive lanes on Fairway, University, or Victoria? No, it’s political suicide and a bad headline. They couldn’t even close a highway ramp without a knife fight in council.

Thank goodness Cambridge council isn’t actually in charge of Hespeler Rd.

[danbrotherston]

Looks like the mayor of Cambridge wants the lrt down Dundas instead of downtown Galt because that is where all the "growth" is haha. She also doesn't want any lane reductions on hespeler. The city of Cambridge continues to elect the brightest minds 

https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/i-find-that...-1.6411408

It’s not surprising that the Mayor doesn’t know or care about induced demand, but I think this is another double standard that I’m kinda sick of. Would any big Kitchener councillor publicly accept a proposal to reduce drive lanes on Fairway, University, or Victoria? No, it’s political suicide and a bad headline. They couldn’t even close a highway ramp without a knife fight in council.

Thank goodness Cambridge council isn’t actually in charge of Hespeler Rd.

Sadly they didn’t close the highway ramps.

[ac3r]

Kitchener + Waterloo segments of the LRT did in fact reduce lanes/driveways/ease of traffic flow in a lot of areas. The main difference is these two cities were able to see the benefit of approving the project regardless, whereas Cambridge doesn't seem to see the benefits even if we ignore the absurd price tag attached to it. They're still too worried about disrupting the status quo.

[Bytor]

Cambridge Mayor Jan Liggett doesn;t seem to know what she's talking about, part 1.

https://www.tiktok.com/@bytor1970/video/...2538551558

She thinks that Downtown Galt roads are two narrow and thar Stage 2 ION would take away all the space for cars. But the only place downtown that it is currently planned to be on-road is along Wellington and that preserves the same number of vehicle lanes there are today.

[Bytor]

Looks like the mayor of Cambridge wants the lrt down Dundas instead of downtown Galt because that is where all the "growth" is haha. She also doesn't want any lane reductions on hespeler. The city of Cambridge continues to elect the brightest minds 

https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/i-find-that...-1.6411408

It’s not surprising that the Mayor doesn’t know or care about induced demand, but I think this is another double standard that I’m kinda sick of. Would any big Kitchener councillor publicly accept a proposal to reduce drive lanes on Fairway, University, or Victoria? No, it’s political suicide and a bad headline. They couldn’t even close a highway ramp without a knife fight in council.

Thank goodness Cambridge council isn’t actually in charge of Hespeler Rd.

Yeah, but Ligget is on RMoW council, and she has the support of Doug Craig who came out as vehemently anti-transit, and probably other more conservative council members.

[bravado]

It’s not surprising that the Mayor doesn’t know or care about induced demand, but I think this is another double standard that I’m kinda sick of. Would any big Kitchener councillor publicly accept a proposal to reduce drive lanes on Fairway, University, or Victoria? No, it’s political suicide and a bad headline. They couldn’t even close a highway ramp without a knife fight in council.

Thank goodness Cambridge council isn’t actually in charge of Hespeler Rd.

Yeah, but Ligget is on RMoW council, and she has the support of Doug Craig who came out as vehemently anti-transit, and probably other more conservative council members.

I think we should start a petition to officially rename it the Doug Craig Cambridge Housing Crisis™ after his glorious tenure in office, leaving the city a sea of parking lots and financial ruin.

[Bytor]

It sucks, but I think you need to keep in mind just how much 4'500'000'000 is...and it would no doubt go well over that.

That's not something that you can say with certainty.

First, something that came out of the Council discussoons on Stage 2 ION on Wednesday was that Stage 1 had an initial budget of $818M and $12M or 1.5% was contingency., so $806M. The Problems with Bombardier and disagreements with GrandLinq on some things added $50M to the budget, bring it up to $868M, or $806M + $62M contingency. That's 7.7% contingency or over budget, whichever way you want to put it.

Second, what also came out of that Wednesday meeting was that the cost estimation was done with only an accuracy of -25% to +50%, a very wide range, and that the numbers publicised re cost were that maximum +50% number. The further you get from the centre of that estimate the less likely the estimate is.

That means the real likely cost is not $2.72B in 2022$, but rather $272B / 150% = $1.81B, far closer to and much more in line with the previous estimates of $1.4B to $1.6B from a handful of years ago.

Further, that means that the $1B of estimated inflation to 2033, which was assumed to be ~3.2%, is really only $670M for a total of $2.48B.

In turn, that means the 20% contingency is not $744M, but really only $496M, bring it to $2.98B in 2033$, not $4.76B.

But, since we now know what do to, what not to do, and how to do it, lesson learned and all that, and we need less than 8% contingency last time, do we really need and would we even use a 20% contingency? 10% woudl bring it down to $2.72B in 2033 dollars.

So why is the Council only harping that top unlikely cost of $4.76B? It's almost like they are deliberately trying to kill the project by doing that.