Transit takes longer and costs much more to build. Why?
The Trudeau government announced a $30 billion public transit fund to build (obviously) more transit, which is badly needed to provide sustainable alternatives for mobility. The question I ask is whether billions of taxpayers' dollars will also end up supporting public transit projects whose cost escalations and construction delays are now beyond scandalous in Canada.
When I was a doctoral student in transportation engineering in the late 90s, I learned that the cost of a streetcar was about $2 million. Guess how much a streetcar costs now? Hint: the price of an articulated bus is higher now than a streetcar's earlier cost. Moreover, the time required to build public transit projects, particularly rail-based infrastructure, was not as horrendously slow as today.
From our experiences with all public transit construction in places like Toronto (the disappointingly delayed and over-budget Eglinton Crosstown) and Ottawa, where the rail-based transit that replaced the most efficient BRT in the developed world struggles to offer reliable service without breakdowns, one can see that these transit projects are taking disappointingly long periods to complete and are over budget.
Additionally, the price escalation for transit vehicles and infrastructure construction is much higher than for similar regular fleet acquisitions in the private sector and the construction of civil works.
Recent opinion polls have demonstrated a lack of satisfaction with infrastructure in Canada. Canadians expressed higher satisfaction with their national infrastructure than Americans, but the Ipsos survey put Canadian satisfaction with infrastructure at the bottom of the pile.
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Public transit spending already consumes a ton of public expenditure. A list of Canada's most significant infrastructure projects being built is populated with public transit spending.
The new public transit fund promised by Prime Minister Trudeau is welcome. However, this money may fall into the same pit, supporting expensive transit projects whose cost escalations have yet to be sufficiently scrutinized.
Some journalistic accounts of the escalation in transit construction costs in Canada exist. In January 2024, Matt Elliot questioned "What the dickens is going on with transit construction costs?" Also, the carefully executed study by Stephen Wickens for RCCAO addressed why subway-building costs have soared in Toronto . Yet, engineering and scientific studies of cost escalation for public transit infrastructure construction and fleet acquisition are missing or rare.
The lack of research on why it takes so long to build transit in Canada and why transit fleets cost so much more now than before is contributing to the continued frustration with the lack of proficient transit building in Canada. I recommend that the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) invite infrastructure engineers, transportation economists, and transport planners to undertake studies to benchmark construction costs/times and fleet acquisition costs in Canada against similar economies. This would determine whether Canadian taxpayers have been excessively burdened with paying more for transit that arrives late and costs more than other countries.
No doubt the cost of construction and fleet/rolling stock had gone up, perhaps at a faster rate in the recent past. This also highlights the perennial problem of allocating scarce funds between expansion and upkeep/rehab. Studies/research that benchmark costs and implementation times for transit between OECD ecomies have been done in the past. I recall in the late 90's/early 2000's, the Madrid example of rapid expansion of its Metro system was an envy of many comparable cities.
President of RESCON - Strategist with Board Leadership Expertise
4 个月Good idea. There are a host of problems here including the approvals process, procurement problems and a lack of accountability.
Project Manager and Planner - PMP, MCIP, RPP, MES, CVT, H.BES
4 个月I recommend also getting Prof. Bent Flyvbjerg to provide feedback given his previous research and book on major public projects and how they end up going overboard
Associate Professor at University of Waterloo
4 个月Thanks for the insightful article Murtaza. I would add to the list of disciplines forensic accounting (or similar) - obviously these are very complex projects, bids, and contracts but as you suggest - something must be going very wrong. Could it be the "x-inefficiency" associated with the regulatory regimes where termination or "firing" is not ever an option and the pursuit of profit is lacking?
Mostly retired Transportation Researcher and Urban Affairs Journalist
4 个月I would add, Murtaza, that nobody seems the least bit concerned about cost estimates for the new and much-needed fleet of subway trains for Toronto's Line 2.