Marcanadian
Moderator
There's been some talk about the operating cost issue in the comments section of one of Steve Munro's articles, which basically clears it up:
http://stevemunro.ca/?p=6126#comments
So that basically puts it to bed, and confirms other posters' assertions.
Norman Wilson: Chong also asserted that operating costs for LRTs are much higher than those for subways. He claimed he based that on figures from APTA, and you can find them right there on APTA’s web site. I spent half an hour over lunch, and other time at odd moments during the meeting Wednesday, looking around http://www.apta.com, and couldn’t find any such figures; the nearest I came were the many different statistics in their annual Fact Book, from which one might synthesize some such numbers if one tried really hard and made some assumptions.
I’d like to know the basis for that assertion, if only because I don’t see how such a general assertion could stand: surely operating costs vary widely in different cities and lines and operating conditions. Any idea where Chong’s numbers really come from?
Steve: I am going to do a write up on Chong’s report, just to drive a well-deserved stake through its heart, in the next few days. I believe that he used average per passenger (or per passenger mile) operating costs for LRT and subway systems in the USA. This is totally misleading because, by definition, the subway systems exist only in very dense corridors (many over a century old) where the higher absolute cost of running a subway is spread over far more passengers and miles.
Also, some of this depends on how major capital maintenance projects are booked. For example, the TTC has been repairing the tunnels north from Eglinton to Sheppard for several years, but this is a “capital” project and does not show up on the “operating” budget. That’s only one example of how reported “costs” of subways can be lowballed.
http://stevemunro.ca/?p=6126#comments
So that basically puts it to bed, and confirms other posters' assertions.