Highway 401 Transit and Auto Tunnel

[DirectionNorth]

This caught my attention:
"The 27-kilometer (17-mile) long tunnel"...
"at a cost of approximately 25 billion Norwegian kroner (about $2.4 billion). "

Seriously? Compare that transit tunneling costs on Ontario...

The main cost driver of underground (and TBH overground) transit are the stations and systems. Tunnelling is not really where the budget goes, it's all the downstream effect of tunnelling (ie. stations) that eat money. At least, that's how it works in most of the world.

At Metrolinx, the main cost drivers are consultants and contingencies. Keep in mind that the comparable projects in Italy might be cost half of the same thing here in Toronto. (source)

I have not looked closely at road tunnels, but I would imagine that interchanges, ventilation, and (possible?) underwater mitigation measures are where the cost comes from.

In theory, you could build that tunnel in Toronto for $100 million/km, possibly even less, assuming we adopted Norwegian practices (we wouldn't, even looking at Kitchener-Waterloo is impossible). In practice, I'd expect the thing to come out at multiple times of what the Norwegian example costs. If Doug wants to add interchanges onto this thing, that's easily another few billion added on.

Perhaps it doesn't include 50-years of operations and maintenance costs? And rolling stock? And signalling?

Maybe it's just the tunnelling contract - which if you recall from the numbers released for TYSSE and Eglinton were a pittance compared to the entire project cost.

Norway builds equivalent infrastructure for far, far less than we do.

 

[duty free]

This caught my attention:
"The 27-kilometer (17-mile) long tunnel"...
"at a cost of approximately 25 billion Norwegian kroner (about $2.4 billion). "

Seriously? Compare that transit tunneling costs on Ontario...

Seoul's GTX-A.

81 km for $5.4 Billion CAD. That's the dream.

 

[nfitz]

At Metrolinx, the main cost drivers are consultants and contingencies. Keep in mind that the comparable projects in Italy might be cost half of the same thing here in Toronto. (source)
View attachment 701561

All that shows is the accounting is different. It's easy enough to run the budget in year $0 than year of spending $, and get rid of the escalation. It doesn't make the cost any different.

And Metrolinx includes not on the borrowing costs to build it, they include decades of operating and maintenance. This makes it not possible to do a comparison so simply. Really the only thing that surprises me is that in Italy's "Systems's" cost is so much more proportionally.

And come on ... Italy? Aren't they notorious for large-scale systemic cost increases because of the impacts of organized crime?

 

[DirectionNorth]

All that shows is the accounting is different. It's easy enough to run the budget in year $0 than year of spending $, and get rid of the escalation. It doesn't make the cost any different.

And Metrolinx includes not on the borrowing costs to build it, they include decades of operating and maintenance. This makes it not possible to do a comparison so simply. Really the only thing that surprises me is that in Italy's "Systems's" cost is so much more proportionally.

And come on ... Italy? Aren't they notorious for large-scale systemic cost increases because of the impacts of organized crime?

They already removed O&M cost before calculating the data. You can see for yourself, even Finch West slower-than-a-bus-T cost $2.3 billion ($230 million/km) before a single passenger had boarded a tram, per Metrolinx's latest board meeting. And escalation is lower elsewhere because they do not use 35% contingencies (what the fu-), not because they don't know what inflation is.


These days, Italian infrastructure corruption is somewhere between Germany and Norway. And it's not just Italy; Spain, France, the Nordics, South Korea, etc. all have low costs. Maybe our overlords at the TTC and Metrolinx can learn from another city for once.

 

[nfitz]

They already removed O&M cost before calculating the data. You can see for yourself, even Finch West slower-than-a-bus-T cost $2.3 billion ($230 million/km) before a single passenger had boarded a tram, per Metrolinx's latest board meeting. And escalation is lower elsewhere because they do not use 35% contingencies (what the fu-), not because they don't know what inflation is.

That's not how contingency goes.

If you use 0% of your contingency you are on budget. If they plan on using all their contingency, every time, it's just a book keeping tick to keep the initial numbers down.

When we've dug down here on some of these "comparisons" we've seen that the cheaper one doesn't expensive things like land acquisition (which, hey, is free in some brutal backwards tyrannical military dictatorships), rolling stock, vehicle yards, control centre upgrades, incidental road allowance and hydro rebuilds (which is what destroyed the St. Clair budget - not the actual streetcar work).

 

[nfitz]

These days, Italian infrastructure corruption is somewhere between Germany and Norway. And it's not just Italy; Spain, France, the Nordics, South Korea, etc. all have low costs. Maybe our overlords at the TTC and Metrolinx can learn from another city for once.

That's what we said about Quebec too, after the 1970s and 1980s. But it turned out to be far worse than anyone ever expected.

Still, it's not like there's a magic button that makes the grass so much greener there. It's often the same companies and systems. Same technology. Sometimes even THE SAME design engineers. I don't know why people go to such extent to create dialogues about how it's our problem, and not just the nature of the beast. How late was the Elizabeth Line?

Though at least they had the sense to run service simulation for more than 30 days before getting any riders on it! It feels to me that Line 4 was longer than that, from the late-at-night vibrations you could feel at that movie cinema on Bayview, many months before it opened.