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$11billion sounds about right for a ~14km-15km underground railway with 15 or so stations (at least 4 of which would be interchanges according to the published maps). For comparison's sake, the second phase of Sydney Metro's 1st line - dubbed City and Southwest, is 15.5km (twin single bore...

Just out of curiosity, why is this an issue? Whether the traction power comes from another rail on the ground or above the train is just splitting hairs. There's clearly electrical experience in the current setup you have - the subway, should an electric railway be built in future and it's...

I've no doubt that it's calibrated well for the task in Montreal, to clarify from my original post, if we did use an off-the-shelf system like how Montreal and Sydney have done (with obvious city-specific calibrations in each), the passenger carrying task is likely to be bigger for this single...

The Alstom/Metropolis train platform is looking to be extremely popular these days and the Montréal project and one closer to home, Sydney's new metro, provide some really good / up to date data on how to use these off-the-shelf (well sort of off-the-shelf) systems for local applications. No...

We're about 6-12 months away from finding out how Qantas' latest challenge to Airbus and Boeing has gone. "Project sunrise" was a challenge to the big aircraft manufacturers to design a plane that could economically fly 250-300 people across 3-4 classes from Melbourne & Sydney non-stop to...

Aie, three tracks - they're ok when your peak frequency isn't all that 'rapid' (i.e 5-6 minutes for express and 5-6 minutes for a stopper), but with higher frequencies on either track or both: where do the trains 'go' once they reach the end of the line? Yeah, they can be turned but the...

A bunch of random (rare) tornados took out the main transmission lines between the state's mid-north and Adelaide - that's actually what took SA off-line after the interconnect with Victoria was suddenly overloaded (and shut down as a safety precaution, doing what it's supposed to do in that...

Speaking as someone who went through school in Australia, and our hottest month is February, the first month after the 5-6 week summer break (a week-ish before Christmas to Australia Day-ish (26th Jan)), we didn't have air con at primary or high school - and this was 1987-1999 - re: major...

Also - this tower is in Sydney Olympic Park, right next to the train loop: https://goo.gl/maps/WKAqr3THtPo

This case is going to expose the underbelly of the construction industry, and for what it's worth, the entire economic & business model of development. There's a good article in the Australian Financial Review about the culture of not-paying invoices on time to subbies which in turn puts...

Anyhow - to keep things in a Toronto context, I whipped up a quick gmap with an equivalent(*) Suburban Rail Loop in Toronto. * basically a 55-60km underground line (which is what the Melbourne SRL will be through the east and north to the airport, with the remainder to be on the surface through...

~80% of the Melbourne tram network is mixed with traffic - just like this (a pic from my balcony 5 minutes ago), save for cars driving on the other side of the road, this should look familiar.

Just a bit of background on the above. The Suburban Rail Loop came out of nowhere - literally. It was a policy developed within a non-transport related state department (Development Victoria - which either develops or aids in the development of brownfields sites around the metro area) and the...

Can confirm, UM was most definitely inspired by UT! My late good friend/bus. partner was a walking-talking encyclopedia of dev/planning knowledge and I said to him - have a look at Urban Toronto, I need that info out of your head and put into a similar database. For us to cover the entire...

Hydrogen powered trains was more of an off-the-cuff remark - who knows where things will be in 10 years time. On the plus side, Victoria (and South Australia) are building oodles of wind energy over the next 5-10 years to transition away from brown coal (SA already has) and there's a bit of...

In a freakishly uncanny twist of fate on what is already a freakishly uncanny similarity between Melbourne & Toronto - our primary airports are roughly the same distance from the central areas (and even in broadly the same direction from aforementioned areas!) - last week we saw commitment at...

Just a quick FYI: that project is coming up on 10 years old (and therefore the cost assumptions are out of date). The next electrification-of-existing-diesel-line project will happen soon and the Victorian Government is getting better at disclosing project component costs. Likewise, even...

...that really only serves the peak periods well :) Like what you lot are doing with creating cross-town routes, after the second Metro tunnel (east-west from Clifton Hill to Newport on that map above), we need to build an orbital route in the middle ring of 'burbs to link up all the major...

By-the-by, the mock-up and internals were unveiled for the new HCMT (high-capacity metro train) recently, and will on public display next week if any of you want to hot foot it to the southern hemisphere to get away from winter :) Current train sets in Melbourne are around about the same...

While the overwhelming majority of people live south of the 'Brisbane Line' (a line from about 100km north of Brisbane to 100km north of Adelaide, drawn during WW2 as the last-line-of-defence line should any AXIS power be stupid enough to land anywhere north/west of that line - in the...