Why Subways are So Expensive to Build
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
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Cities from New York to Singapore are famous for their big transit networks but incredibly expensive transit building, and we might now finally have an answer as to why these projects cost so much.
The Transit Costs Project: transitcosts.com/
Their final report: transitcosts.c...
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Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!
Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.
I work in infrastructure litigation. Your point number three is spot on: You shouldnt just use the lowest bidder. By law, California public projects must choose the lowest bidder. I can’t tell you how many projects I’ve worked on in California even though I don’t live there. Contractors often will undersell the cost initially to inflate it later. Seen it a dozen times and I can’t believe it’s not considered fraud.
Agreed that it's a horrible method. To explain for others: Bidders win by interpreting every spec and drawing in the mostly nitpicky way, omitting any scope from their price that isn't clearly specified. Since no design is clear and complete until the contractor scrubs it, there will be a lot of these gaps. Then they upcharge for each fix. Bidding also creates adversaries anytime an issue comes up, when you really want/need partners.
In Mexico when a contractor is found to have constant irregularities can be sanctioned by Hacienda (mexico's IRS), worse case scenario they can't participate in public auctions. Although, most corruption comes from judges that grant amparos for such irregularities.
This seems like the type of law that was made to solve a real problem but introduces other problems. The alternative to having it is that a bureaucrat can select whichever bid they want without having to justify it, which seems like a situation that would result in bribes and corruption. There needs to be some rule on bid selection, and all we've learned so far is the obvious rule of "always pick lowest bid" can be gamed. Any ideas for what a good reform would look like?
Maybe the solution is that they need a pass new law that if the contractor said how much the total price thats the government only pay no more no less. And thats the contractor fault if they dont know how to estimate the construction .
Meanwhile I remember Singapore had previously confirmed that only 17% of its transport construction contracts didn't go to the lowest bidder. Probably because our gov't is more hawkish about fiscal control, with opposition lawmakers who'd proposed policies that'd reduce both state income & costs being accused of "raiding our reserves, plain & simple". I've also heard that our gov't departments can take up to 1/2 a year to approve a budget. Such policy hascoincidentally
The part of this that I find most troubling is that a lot transit agencies haven't seemed to figure any of this out yet. If repeatedly getting hit over the head with ever increasing project costs isn't enough to make them figure this kind of stuff out themselves, what is?
As long as Ford Motor Company keeps leasing Jaguars to transit agency heads, they won't care (I'm making up this specific example but the corruption is real).
I think another reason why transit is so expensive here in Canada, is that we have to have way more studies and consultations than are necessary. Moreover, we have a lot of public pushback that makes transit more expensive. For example, residents who insist on an LRT being built underground instead of on a skyway because it would "ruin the aesthetics of the city" 🙄. Underground may be nice, but it's significantly more expensive.
I think the skytrain in Vancouver looks nice even tho it’s above ground lol
Especially since what I've seen of Eglinton and Finch from UA-cam videos is that the "city" is really suburban in character, in which case the LRT needs to be on the surface in its own right-of-way, not in the median like a tram.
Agree. We have millions of community meetings only for a small group of people along the corridor to try to block the project anyway and the result is no surface LRTs and huge gaps between underground stations.
@@fallenshallrise Yup, and then the underground stations are forced to be so deep due to their complaints, that the cost goes up even more, and accessibility becomes worse.
@@fallenshallrise Yes, NIMBYs are everywhere!
Biggest problem: local government. Whether it's NIMBY groups, or union hire requirements, or anti-cut-and-cover sentiment, or anti-elevated-rail sentiment, local opposition always makes transit bad. Regional transit agencies should not give one second of attention to these spurious concerns, and the only public involvement should be about stuff like artwork. The station locations, rail line type, etc. should be 100% decided by the engineers.
imo there can be valid concerns like potential environmental things, and sometimes i really hope that the engineers and the rest of the planners fully understand what they're doing
but otherwise yeah 100% agreed
@@The_Jazziest_Coffee That's the most ironic thing. Environmentalists advocating against public transport, so people use cars instead.
@@Ruzzky_Bly4t yep. pure, bitter but beautiful irony
I’ve said for years that the US Interstate program funds need to be expanded in scope to be useable for public transit and I’ll keep saying it. Federal dollars would be a huge enabler of public transit growth in the US
Solution is let the expert do the project. the problem most politicians highly opinionated in the project but the politicians had no idea in construction
2nd change the law that if the bidder said that project is for exmple 100m then the bidder and the government agree on the price . Then after the year the bidder had no power to ask another budget because the bidder cant estimate well.
@@carloconopio6513
To be fair, the system dictates that the politician suck off the most vocal group, and it just so happens that vocalness tends to correlate negatively with intelligence.
It's not exactly a surprise that you get politicians that muck up an expert when the people he has to listen to are at odds with the expert.
I feel this video should be mandatory review work for any currently or graduating civil engineers or city planners. Make them write an essay on the values of learning from others and expanding knowledge.
This is a high level skim of the concepts that Civil Engineers at exposed to in their years of training. It's not groundbreaking. Most of the topics discussed are actually more relevant to public organization processes, intergovernmental relations, and large project contract management.
Montreal seems the most bizarre place to show as examples because in the same market you have the 68km long REM costing shy of 7 billion while the 6km expansion to the Blue Line is costing about 6 billion.
When french speakers build rail vs when English speakers build rail
It really just highlights the difference between multiple projects
@@illiiilli24601 the two programs are in the same city
@@ZontarDow And if I'm not mistaken, that same city has a large population of both English speakers and French speakers? like 25% English and 75% French?
@@illiiilli24601 Well yes but actually no, Montreal the city is majority French by a large margin, however the Island as a whole has a large English minority that's closer to about the amount of French
Future RMTransit video idea: An idealized version of what should be built in all categories... streetcar, subway, skytrain... Or is the answer some version of all three... Personally my idea would be for a London Tube deep level sized train (maybe a bit bigger) that could use automated operation and induction power. Short, small metro trains that could be run every 90-120 seconds... Why London deep level tube trains you may ask. It is because they could run down a Boring Company tunnel which is 12 feet in diameter which would save on construction costs while induction power would be safe to operate as an emergency walkway with no risk of being shocked or burned or fried. Also why I love using induction power for my cooktop!
Love this nerdy channel. Good explanation. And here I'm thinking that, at least in Canada, the high costs were due to a peculiar form of Canadian graft where every interested party tries to get their hands in there so that things get over analyzed, over managed, and over built, coupled with the tendency for private contractors to charge ludicrous sums, charge again for change orders, then do it poorly requiring revision. Put simply, Canadians just sort of suck at controlling large infrastructure projects.
But of course, this isn’t just a Canadian thing! And Canada used to be better before we learned from those who weren’t as good, but who we thought were better!
Another issue, at least in the USA and Canada, is that infrastructure planning, construction, and funding is very decentralized. So instead of having one planning org, we literally have thousands that must work together in order to get things done. Then on top of things, you have multiple transit agencies who often get into turf wars instead of cooperating.
I think you can have an annual TOSCAR ceremony which gives awards to the last expensive subway in each category and region to highlight the efficiency/inefficiency. For example, top 10 projects in North America by cost. Winner of the least expensive mile is ...
@@RMTransit This is such a poetic response 😄
There is a subtext for a number of the challenges you talked about with the logistics - and that's NIMBYs. A lot of businesses like complaining about construction (especially cut and cover) as disruptive to their foot traffic. This is part of why the deep tunneling has been emphasized or the like, anything reducing construction impacts. So they're not seeing it that way.
Politically difficult subjects like transit are also fraught with issues in the USA due to class issues and such. Also some of the NIMBY complaints are sorta in bad faith, but they have political efficacy so they win!
Some people object to deep bored tunnels near them as well... see the community of Bel Air in the L.A. area, where the residents are fuming over a proposed tunnel that would go underneath their town (not actually stopping there, not that they'd want that anyway). The proposed tunnel would be very deep and they'd never be aware of it in either construction or operation. But psychologically it bothers them so they're trying to stop it before it can be built.
I think it may even be less expensive to just pay the businesses for their lost income or pay them to move than to build a much more expensive project around them. But there's no mechanism to do it that way.
It's actually race issues disguised as class issues given how Black people have been routinely screwed over by urban planning decision.
I also wonder just how much the existing sprawling car infrastructure adds to the cost... you gotta build more tunnel if everything is further apart, right?
That wouldn't really matter in Manhattan for the Second Avenue Subway. And the cost comparisons are per kilometer (or mile).
In Montreal is does which is part of why West Island is not getting a Metro line anytime soon. Never mind that West Island is an Anglo-majority stronghold despised by the province and the STM execs.
I've been giving you the benefit of the doubt but so much of what you say doesn't hold water. The density of the construction in NYC is so much more than practically any other city in the world. Many buildings in Manhattan go several stories below the street. Utilities. Besides the obvious of electricity, water and sewer there's also gas and the extensive ancient gas lines. Then there's steam. So many buildings in Manhattan buy heat from Con Edison. The cost of real estate. Protecting the value of what are multi-million dollar buildings adds a tremendous cost to any construction project.
I supposed everyone needs to be heard and you're being heard.
Great video, really liked how you explained this issue in such an easy to digest way. Hoping more transit planners in the US get a chance to see this.
"Full length mezzanine" I feel like we have a few of those in Toronto? Don Mills STN (Fairview)? In fact, most of the stations on that line?
Hey Reece, could you please make a video about the transit system of Jakarta?
I personally find it pretty interesting, as it has the longest metrobus system in the world, and has an extensive metro too; Jakarta really deserves a video of it's own..
These numbers make me cry.
"Q. The California High-Speed Rail Authority was established 23 years ago.
During that time China has built 16,000 miles of high-speed rail. We are still working on the first 119 miles. What are we doing wrong?" nytimes 2018-Jan-18
Makes me wonder how many costs are bureaucratic, legal, and corruption...
And the cities themselves not being particularly dense so it cost more to cover more distance.
This was such a great video. Will absolutely refer to it going forward!
10:10 Perhaps the funniest example of over optimizing for capacity that was never needed is Baltimore. Charles center especially has like 2 mezzanines and tones of fare gates for not a whole lot of passengers.
more transit in vancouver and surrounding areas would be nice.
you know things are getting serious when shirts have buttons and collars. another banger. big up!
Hahaha! I like your language!
Cut and cover might be cheap in grid layout North American cities where an underground line can be mostly be dug under a wide straight street, but as the London Underground learned unless it is doing “ slum clearances “ ( gentrification ) as part of its cut and cover threading a railway through densely populated areas with winding streets end up being expensive, slow and compromises the route of the railway. I suppose Sydney could have dug up the pacific highway in North Sydney to lay down its metro to Chatswood, but as that is a main traffic artery into Sydney CBD it would have made some people unhappy. Doing cut and cover parallel to the highway where each house block , that has to be bought up and demolished, costs over one million dollars Australia doesn’t sound cost effective to me. Looking at the rest of the metro, the underground sections all seem to have the same issues with cut and cover.
Meanwhile the above ground sections are reusing previous infrastructure built on the “ build it cheep and expand later “ principle. Well now is later. So the station expansions have to happen in an existing working railway system without causing too much disruption. Weekends, special access, rerouting existing services. They definitely saved money 50 or 100 years ago. But now there is a price to pay.
Cut and cover is basically impossible in a lot of North America since it requires (temporarily) closing a street to cars, which is a non-starter.
@@1978dkelly Finally, someone gets it.
Very informative video
can u plz do an explained glasgow subway
The main reason Metro trains ie subways/El third rail rolling stock trains are more expensive the options like light rail and even regular rail is simple. You're moving stuff that's on its own proprietary rail that requires it's own rolling stock. With Metro trains they're rarely at grade level and either above ground or below ground.
You tend to have to develop your own rolling stock. The last one is population density, when you have a city that's dense and compacted metros are very efficient at moving people.
This is why it makes sense to Build a Metro line in downtown Dallas but it doesn't make sense to Build one in Oklahoma city.
PS, I tend to be skeptical of academic papers about development economics. They seem to focus a lot on illusory correlations in an world where every project is unique.
Cut and cover does speed up construction. In a city like Beijing where there are lots of ancient buildings and busy roads, if the stations are not built in this manner, it will take more time to complete the stations (compared to digging tunnels). However, if the stations are built with this method, it will atek less time to build stations.
Another interesting fact is that construction in HK seems to be way more expensive than that in mainland China. When they built the HSR into HK, the cost of the project was said to be extremly high. Yes, it was built underground and digging tunnels/building underground stations can be expensive. But it is way too expensive.
To some degree I am sceptical about "micromanaging" by government officials being a bad thing. Just to demonstrate an example, in the Netherlands the HSL Zuid was built by a consortium with relatively little government oversight. The result was that the ETCS signalling system used in the HSL is outdated and not compatible with the ETCS back end that will be used on the main railway network, the two signalling systems (although looking the same from the perspective of the train) have different backbones that can't communicate with each other. Guess who's going to pay the bill for refitting the HSL ETCS system? The taxpayer...
I mean, that sounds like a case where the contract should’ve guaranteed intercompatibility
If you don't specify enough what the project should look like (standardized or on a case by case basis doesn't matter), you won't get what you want. Government intervention is key!
Most of these issues can be traced back too corporate greed, they directly drive up the cost of everything, as well as use lobbying too delay, or end public transport projects all together.
Building metro stations in the US is expansive for the same reason why manufacturing is so expensive, the US runs a massive budget deficit that pushes inflation high, the budget deficit is high because of high military spending. The solution is reducing militar spending (together with other kinds of spending) and redirecting the money to public infrastructure such as public transportation.
That same high military spending that defends the likes of Taiwan, South Korea, Scandinavia, the oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchies and Canada.
I enjoy my derail-prone metro for the big $5 MXN
Very relevant in Brussels right now :-(
"A share of the take." NYC has banking. Other people want to compete. The price, therefore, is the willingness to pay including delays. Not "what does it cost to make" but "it would be a shame to walk a mile to the subway. What it worth to you?"
This is the most important topic. I wish someone could dissect the $100 billion+ cost of CA HSR? How can more high speed rail be built if this is the cost? What's the cost/ mile in Spain? If you make a video on where the money went/ is going, I will personally forward to 100 people.
Regarding the standardization of stations, why not use a basic design that can be replicated across a system while designing them to have unique characteristics and more that can be added onto them?
The Copenhagen Metro uses a standardised station box design . Almost all underground stations are identical except for decoration.
@@nikolajmadsen7640 Imagine if that happened here, I want an elevated metro station to be styled like a New England house while having a basic standardized design.
Too many hands in the pot in New York. It's a shame. Wait until they start building that Inter Bourogh Express Light Rail. Man the budget is going to go out the window!!
Can you please make a video about Bangladesh,dhaka mrt network
a feature on Manila's please?
you should make a video about the cologne tram/subway system! it's the biggest of its kind in Germany (and i ride it everyday lmao)
Answer I thought of before seeing the video: good infrastructure is expensive, even more is there's no legal/ procedural framework to support it.
Japan and Spain built good infrastructure at around half the price or even less, so no, it shouldn't be THAT expensive. My example for this would be HART in Hawaii. It shouldn't be that expensive to begin with, since it's all elevated.
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s that, but you can find out what it is in the video :-)
@@ianhomerpura8937 Not only that, it's all automated, like the Skytrain. Somebody's getting rich off of this.
Why not make the station standardised designs that way it's easier to build you can see this in the United States with the space-age Metros built in the 1970s assuming they have the same standard design in addition to day one accessibility
Most major cities in America refuse condo housing, mostly single family homes. So it is very difficult to want to build a metro subway in a single family house type environment, different from cities in Europe, the average condo and remember that taxes are very low in America, different from European countries, almost 40%. The government doesn't want to fund public transportation because it's not profitable, but the government wants to subsidize companies that want to invest in America because it creates jobs and taxes. LOL The majority of public transportation in the US is funded by private companies.
Look at Japan's transportation managed by government-owned enterprises, different from the US.
Ditto for public infrastructure.
Nice footage of a van cutting off a car on a motorway at 17:10
cool, it's kinda hard to google 😊
Everyone loves to diss Elon Musk and his Tesla tunnels, but if you put a narrow-gauge EMU inside them rather than chauferred Teslas, they have the potential to be completely game-changing.
The Boring Company's tunnel boring machines are hands-down the best out there, and operate for a miniscule percentage of the cost of "conventional" tunneling...
Great video! I would argue that while it seems like stupid local laws that increase cost are separate and not part of the whole "we need to build more transit to build cheaper transit" argument, they really are. If a city in a country that builds a lot of transit at low cost tried to have some ridiculous requirement such as building extra space to store dirt because it could only be trucked out during certain hours, higher up government agencies would squash that requirement real fast. Reductions in cost aren't just made at the technical level. A lot of what building more transit will do to reduce our cost is teaching our political classes how to manage transit construction projects.
Is there anything the public can do to improve things, or do we just have to hope these transit agencies figure it out?
Maybe if the national government in each high country made some kind of cost standards for transit agencies?
Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, Seoul and Moscow are the best systems inn terms of multiple factors combined, IMO
Also, you’re failing to mention how corrupt some of these agencies are and cities are and it cost billions just to grease the right palms to get something done
I doubt building transit has ever been affordable, it’s always been expensive, just in the old days the political will to build them was there.
I always get the impression town/city leaders and councils built them to make their area better which then leads to further investment from companies building factories there, which leads to more transit.
Stroads could lose a lane each way from tram tracks and traffic wouldn’t be affected much, but the trams would be faster, which cuts car traffic
Except in the United States where the state or local highway department refuses to give the trams traffic light priority, causing the trams to bunch up and run slower than the cars and maybe the bikes!
@@edwardmiessner6502 This might be for environmental reasons, believe it or not.
See, if street running trams always had the right of way, a lot of cars would have to wait. And when cars wait, their engines idle. And when cars engines idle, they pollute.
So, to reduce pollution, you can't give the tram strong signal priority.
(Of course hybrids, electric vehicles, and even some non-hybrid gas cars don't idle while waiting, but these are rather older environmental rules.)
I find it interesting how there are so many subway stations in Toronto that were built cut-and-cover or even above ground in dense areas, with some stations in very central locations having small platforms that can occasionally feel under-built. And yet, nowadays it seems like the trend in Toronto is to build huge stations deep underground in suburban areas where cut-and-cover or above ground transit with smaller stations would honestly be fine. I feel like Montréal’s blue line extension also might have this issue of using more expensive methods of construction than necessary.
What could possibly have been built properly of a subway system in a 'world class' city with only two major lines? One that goes side to side and another going up and down? What kind of a 'world class' system resorts to shuttle buses on a regular basis due to 'maintenance' and 'safety incidents'?
Cut and cover would disrupt traffic (cars) which was no problem back in the 1950s, 60s, and even 70s. Impossible today because the NIMBYs are afraid they won't be able to get out of their own street, subdivision, or even driveway, because of the diverted traffic!
1. Geology of the area
2. $$
3. not have TBM machine yet in the past
@@edwardmiessner6502 NIMBYs gonna NIMBY, but I feel like in reality building cut-and-cover, trench, at-grade or elevated along wide suburban arterials or otherwise wide rights-of-way shouldn’t really cause that much disruption. It’s already the case that building LRT and even BRT requires diverting traffic for construction and moving utilities, so I feel like there’s no reason it couldn’t be done for metros too, at the very least in less dense areas.
@@edwardmiessner6502 don’t care about the disruption. The faster it gets built the less nimbyism future projects
US projects go through 12 studies, 25 public outreach phases, 36 lawsuits, all just to build a new bus stop
This was really well done. At the same time, I feel like there's this cost disease in North America and the Anglo world that has infected a number of industries and we can't seem to pin down exactly what it is. You could have just as well made a video titled "why healthcare is so expensive", "why college is so expensive", "why building anything is so expensive". Maybe they really are all just coincident with each other, or maybe the answer to your title isn't something specific to transit. I honestly don't know.
Definitely some overlap. There seems to be a general lack of awareness of what factors are pushing costs so high across the board. It isn't that things aren't transparent per se (to some degree though absolutely) but they are so buried in paperwork and far-reaching that it takes a group of experts years just to examine the one project studied in this video.
Maybe on the bright side, even some minor changes would save lots of money???
The answer to those things is no public option.
@@michalandrejmolnar3715 That's absurdly reductionist and a bit of an extraordinary claim to leave without backing.
@@IIAOPSW It's easy. Supply and demand. Is that reductionist? A public option creates supply and undercuts prices with lower prices, lowering prices in two ways.
@@michalandrejmolnar3715The fact that there are public college options and public hospitals in the US and that healthcare and college is still incredibly expensive completely undercuts your entire point.
In Shanghai, China, it is so interesting to see how has metro evolved over time. I personally live in one of the older sections while my school is at the part of a newer section of metro. I fully agree that stations should develop over periods, for example, alot of Shopping malls are connected directly to an exit, even the mall is clearly built after the completion of the metro. The connectivity of local entertainment facilities with transit is superb in Shanghai.
In china you can build big infrastructure compare to other countries why ? Cheap labor you cant complain no NIMBYs, the government have power in right of way , the project can go 24/7 one government power no opposition. No environmentalists. Thats the pros in authoritarian gov .
Meanwhile Singapore has been dismantling escalators at its stations' exits barely 5 years after they open as a new building is completed adjacent to the station, & the exits need to be rebuilt to provide direct underground access to the building (e.g. Esplanade station & S Beach, Paya Lebar station & Paya Lebar Sq)
Yeah, China is really great at this.
It helps that the state legally owns all the land, and that they're so callous about historical significance and personal rights when they want to "modernize" a space. Other governments have to pay through the nose to get inhabitants out of the way.
In Poland we have a weird tendency to build all the metro stations underground and also make them art galleries for some reason which results in Warsaw line M2 being one of the most expensive projects in the history of the country.
How about the project by PKP in Lodz?
@@ianhomerpura8937 I'm not quite sure but I think the tunnels for are close to being done and for me it seems promising
Considering how (I’m fairly certain) the Polish metro system has a lot of Soviet influence and what sort of philosophy was followed in the construction of the Moscow Metro (aka: each station is the “representation of the hard work of the workers FOR the commuter workers”), it only makes sense for the metro in Poland to follow Soviet-style stuff IF people in Poland and the government still like it. Which… seemingly they do.
Yep, underground is typically going to be more expensive! Often much more
@@mewosh_ why do I feel that those metro tunnels also serve as air raid shelters, just like what the rest of the Warsaw Pact countries did before?
If you look for example at the vast amount of money Edinburgh paid to build half a tram line, I think a big part of the reason is that nobody at Edinburgh City Council had ever built a tram line before, and they didn't have a clue about how to do it.
Of course they should have talked to people in Croydon or Manchester who did have that experience, but they thought they knew better, even though they knew nothing.
Yep, experience is critical!
and also the SNP was against it so they weren't given government funding
Certified Scotland Moment. It would do them well as a nation to collectively pull their head out of their arse, especially if they want to be an independent state.
@@notthatntg Would love to know why, as you'd think that it would be right up their street, politically.
@@86pp73 cost issues and doubts I think, also turning down another project that would generate the revenue for it
Interesting that almost all countries mentioned in 3:30 that have way too expensive railway projects are all from the Anglosphere. English-speaking countries seem to tend to be more car-centric as well.
While it could be cause and effect its more likely that they all have learned similar practices from each other.
@@guppy719 I wouldn't be surprised if it's to do with litigiousness.
@@guppy719 that’s exactly the right idea
@@RMTransit I have seen people argue that anglo-American property law and common law legal system affect project costs because private landowners generally have a lot of power and civil law systems can be marginally more predictable/less taxing about some kinds of litigation. But I haven't seen a serious attempt at testing this and it probably matters a lot more for land use anyways.
It’s definitely a cultural thing
In the USA there are rules about sourcing things like parts, equipment, etc: 55% of everything must be made in America. This was a huge reason why the Hudson Yards station was delayed: the Inclined elevator was Italian made. So 55% of it had to be removed and replaced with parts from American companies. The resulting Frankenstein monster just did not work! (Which should have been obvious considering what they were trying to do.)
yeah biden just announced that now all of which has to be made in the US. well, good luck.
That seems like a planning issue. If 55% of parts need to be US-made, why not plan it like that from the start? That way you'd also have a more accurate cost approximation to begin with versus finding out later that your project went millions overbudget.
Dang. Copenhagen could definitely learn something here. We do have some standardisation, heck many things here are actually underbuilt, but we CONSTANTLY lowball and choose the cheapest bid imaginable, sometimes even changing procurements mid tendering to prioritise cost the few times other things like life time quality is prioritised. One of the most infamous examples of this being the new Storstrøm bridge. A big road and high speed rail bridge that was awarded to a shady low balling italian consortium and which was expected to be finished in 2023, but now won't be ready until 2027 at the earliest.
Whats the most annoying is that the public sees these lowball projects going way overbudget, and instead think "This is why we should spend less on transit infrastructure" and induce even more lowballing and to a more extreme degree. They think they can get 50% of the benefit for 50% of the cost when the reality is more like 20% of the benefit for 120% of the cost.
This is very true, and it’s a silly thing because it could be prevented by just making the consortiums assume the risk of over budgeting.
@@rashidnassermartinez646 Or choosing the most plausable bid over the most fanciful when it comes to projected budget.
I love the Taipei metro's full length mezzanines, they're not entirely in the fare area so they also function as underpasses underneath busy roads
A nice feature, but definitely not necessary in most cases! (In other cities)
@@RMTransit yeah probably not applicable to NA projects but I'm always a little bummed when they aren't implemented in cut and cover projects since the same amount of space needs to be dug up for the station anyways
It’s nice indeed. Funny I read that comment while riding it
Just curious about the Taipei mezzanines: do they also have giant underground shopping complexes like the eki-naka complexes in Japanese railway stations?
I recently used The Elizabeth Line platform to walk from Moorgate to Liverpool St
I feel like another major factor is the lack of accessibility for mass transit equipment and other construction components in North America. For instance, Europe utilizes off-the-shelf catenary structures to quickly electrify lines and make repairs. In the US, something as simple as catenary components are not as available since there is no industrial sector for electrified mass transit. Additionally, North America also has very few production plants for rolling stock, especially when considering stipulations that require trains to be manufactured in the US only (meanwhile our cars and trucks are mass produced overseas…)
North America’s ability to produce transit systems quickly, efficiently and economically is hampered by a limited industrial sector and outdated production regulations/policy. Simply put, North America refuses to subsidize transit. Unfortunately there is no political will to change or modernize our regulations to make transit projects more widespread
At least in my country, I do see that quite a number of our public transport/transit equipment are made by American companies/factories though e.g. our older train lines used fixed block signalling systems & platform screen doors from WestingHouse (though the former would later be sold to Invensys), some of our ticket machines are from Cubic, while some of our APM cars are made at Bombardier's Pennsylvania's plant
These deep bore tunnels are insane, the cost and time associated with the huge depth, the time it takes passengers to get to the platform from the street but also results in fewer entries into the station... Often only one or two at most instead of 4 or more (like at each street corner) with cut and cover. So you end up with one entry into an overbuilt station with mezzanines and concourses. I'm thinking in particular of SF's Central Subway but also Seattle's Link.
As far as London is concerned it is impossible to build new public rail transport as cut and cover.
There are to many thinks in the way and would be to disruptive. Imagine trying to build the Elizabeth line as a cut and cover.
@@oldman4353 Absolutely, though they could be built much closer to the surface. As Reese mentioned (13:08), centralizing utilities and tunnel construction can make moving services much less expensive and much more fluid.
@@isaacanderson5083 Not really the London sewers & the Underground railway tunnels are in the way. Then you have all the buildings that you cannot move (Especially the tall buildings with deep foundations). For a line like the Elizabeth Line. Deep bored tunnels were the only option.
NYC 2nd avenue stations have entrances at both ends and on both sides of the street, though at some the elevators are used instead of stairs or a bank of escalators.
The West Seattle Link line that they keep talking about... it's never going to happen, because the requirements that the NIMBYs over there are putting on the line will ensure that it's both unaffordable, and will take forever to complete.
In Los Angeles, there is a huge problem with the requisition of environmental reviews and reports that treat highway expansions and transit development as the same in practice. This delays construction and considering how volatile the prices for construction materials have been, it easily causes cost overruns. Not to mention, the time spent for public outreach is terrible and performative at best.
This feels like a lot of the issue is that we don't build much rail in the US so it isn't standardized. We're reinventing each time we build because building is so rare.
I don’t know if I would agree, the light rail systems are quite standardized and still very expensive
@@RMTransit That's an important point.
But that's something he debunks in the video ._.
@RMTransit But they are different between city to city, and it can take decades for a city to build a new line, which means most institutional knowledge is lost. And also, since every part of the process, from planning to construction is contracted out, no institutional knowledge is ever gained.
@@Truman5555 Yeah, that's kind of how I feel, we aren't doing enough of anything to be really standardized.
Wow. 4 BN for 3 stations and 3 km tunnel is wild. We are getting 82km delhi-meerut RRTS for 4.5bn and that includes new trains which I expect, are not included in 2nd Avenue subway coz obviously you won't order new trains for 3 km extension.
I do think building more transit helps reduce cost and time alike. From what I see here, we often see companies complete a metro tunneling project, take out the TBM'S, refurbish them and with a few months redeploy them for a new project. This surely reduces cost coz TBM's don't come cheap. This can only be done if there are sufficient projects to sustain this cycle.
Similarly if a team is working on a project it is easier to redeploy them to another similar project instead of making new teams every time. This saves on time and hence money as well.
Fir example, in my home city of indore, a company was awarded the contract to construct 10km viaduct with 10 stations in September 2021. They had an ongoing project nearing completion in Kolkata. So they decided to send that team and all of that machinary here when they are done there. And so they did. They started utility shifting, tree transplantation and pile load testing works in December 2021. Most of the team is brought form Kolkata because both projects are very similar. It has been about 14 months and work progress stands at 60%. They say they will finish all works and hand over for systems work by December 23 I expect it by March 24 . But in any case, this speed would not have been possible if they did not have a team ready to be deployed. And they had a team ready because they are getting continuous orders. Also about 50% of the machines used are brought from Kolkata. So all that definitely reduces cost.
Here in Manila as well. We're currently building the North-South Commuter Railway, from Clark in the north, through Manila, to Calamba in the south - a total of 147 km (91 mi). Phase I will be opened by 2025, and the entire project will be done by 2029. The total cost? PHP837.6 billion (USD15.8 billion).
Building more is good, of course but that’s contingent on improvement rather than decline
@@ianhomerpura8937 The problem is the bedrock that encompasses Manhattan and the number of utility lines spaghetti-ing near the surface.
Anything in regards to tunneling in NYC is gonna be damn expensive.
Second Avenue subway is a victim of this issue
Labor is a bit less expensive in India. I don't know the typical share of labor in overall costs, but whatever the case (and for everyone from project engineers to laborers) it's pennies on the dollar when you compared India and the US.
Ayy yooo, a fellow Indori, cheers bro!
From what I'm seeing here, I think the key to building transit cheaper is to stop speaking English.
The problems aren't transit specific. The places where transit projects are expensive are places where all government projects (and probably private projects that have to interact with the government in any way) are ridiculously expensive.
Short answer : lack of political support, lack of commitment, insane opposition from lobbyists, etc.
Yeah I hate local neighbourhood lobbying groups who’re predominantly white boomers driving in to protest against transit to save 5 trees, this actually just happened last week in Toronto. Disgraceful lack of respect for the millions who will ride the Ontario line over 5 trees.
Lobbying is basically legalized bribery. Graft and corruption is just as bad in North America, but it isn't discussed because it is perfectly legal to do things there that would otherwise horrify judicial and auditing bodies in other countries.
Actually, as it turns out, even in places with great political support projects are still super expensive. They usually just don’t get built in places with no political support.
You need a bit of lobbying, but it gets to much really quickly
9:00 I still can't find the correlation between overbuilding stations and poor transit culture. It's clear that there is a correlation, but why? Why do they build enormous stations in places where service quality is poor, whilst courtiers with a lot of service and riders builds minimalistic stations?
Considering all the benefits of public transit and the enormous cost that is already wasted on unsustainable car infrastructure I think even projects that might sound expensive are actually very cheap and in the long run even profitable. There is so much more involved than simply moving people from a to b. Just think of the economical boost alone and that's not even all by far. Well executed public transit pays for itself multiple times over.
... Car infrastructure is cheap, we spend $200b in US that's $600 a person and 3/4th paid by gasoline tax and license fees. Compare to transit which takes $5 per rider per day so 250 days a year is 2x ways $2500 cost a person. I'm not saying cars themselves ain't costly, but no roads are cheap, don't believe every unsupported claim you hear. ... Per urban org """"In 2019, state and local governments spent $203 billion, or 6 percent of direct general spending, on highways and roads.""""" Govts spend more on college than on roads. .... """"In 2019, state and local motor fuel tax revenue ($52 billion) accounted for 26 percent of highway and road spending while toll facilities and other street construction and repair fees ($22 billion) provided another 11 percent. The rest of the funding for highway and road spending came from state and local general funds and federal funds.""""". We also raise $100b from sales tax on cars.... Roads are cheap, we spend more on college for 10m kids than on roads for 340m Americans .... Darn facts...
@@mostlyguesses8385 Shame on you to discuss about costs when government is sending trillions of dollars to foreign countries, at least spend few billions inside
But I'd say hire Asians or Europeans in public transport projects, they can do it million time better than any American
@@pranaym3859 .. What "trillions" are going to foreigners? US economy is $20t and we spend of that $100b on foreign aid .... Its not a good argument that cause we waste money on X let's build my neighborhood nice transit.... go buy a car, I myself walk lots...., when did inner city people think they alone get govt to give them rides? We ain't communists..
No nation in west is far PER STATISTA COM NUMBERS ABOUT 80% take car to work, 10% ride transit in inner city, and 10% walk or bike... So there is no Solution that avoids this, it's a false claim that ooohhh why can't we be like France or Spain they are at 15% on transit vehicles NOT that impressive... Maybe US can get to 5% on transit.... I do walk lots, with phone can do most of what I'd do at home, it's so much nicer than my long boring walks to school in 80s noww that was torture.... My grandma walked hour in mud to work in MN so toughen up lazy communists....
Add in the increased cost to everyone due to anthropogenic global warming (AGW) from all that CO2 emitted pushing cars around to transport a million people being greater than pushing a million people around by train and suddenly costs of cars goes way up.@@mostlyguesses8385
The environmentalist made everything outrageous. It's that simple. I feel like you completely left out that environmental reviews take years and are essentially another whole project on their own. No other place on earth does it like America and its the number one reason for the high construction costs here.
7:48 this point is so true! We always feel the need to do things on our own terms and pretend the rest of the world doesn't already provide great learning opportunities on what we should and shouldn't do. We end up constructing projects that many years down the line we'll regret because we never bothered to look at other cities as inspiration and a learning opportunity.
plus the builders charge far more than it needs to be for corporate profits
Transit projects tend to become more expensive and not less with each repetition? Someone's learning something, and I'd guess it's the private sector, learning to extract more and more money from the public purse. Which isn't surprising when you consider the extent, in the English- speaking world, of government capture by the corporate sector. I'm not knowledgeable about politics in other jurisdictions with high transit building costs; perhaps something similar is at work?
Although I don't mean to imply there's just this one reason for ballooning transit construction costs. I'm sure there's more than one mechanism at play!
I can feel China laughing in the corner with their mouths closed.
Let's hope they don't send another spy balloon to dc
Insane incompetent decisions by people who don't use public transport is why it costs so much.
Can't wait for a review of NY's L.I.R.R. aka Long Island Railroad.
Hi there! Transport planner from Ukraine here. The subject of the video is totally my pain.
In our cities rapid transit has to be planned ahead in the Master Plan which is set in stone and it is hard to deviate from (unless you’re housing developer, of course). The problem is that the approach to the master planning is typically Soviet and is far beyond real fiscal constraints - and Master Plan does not vaguely describe the system as “rapid transit”, no. It already declares it a “metro”.
In the end of the day there is an unrealistic Master Plan with 0 chances to be implemented, couple of planned metro lines with skyrocketing cost and nothing is built. And there are officials that don’t even try to think towards more affordable solutions even though they can build BRTs and LRTs all over the place for the cost of one single line of soviet heavy metro
Cut and cover gets no support because it will mean disruption to surface traffic, that is, cars. Good luck getting political support for that in North America!
Cut and cover only has disruptions for like a few months (the cover part can be done before the cut part is completely finished) so not even more than some other construction work
I believe the reason for "go big" with subways and other mass public transit is NOT to drive costs down via economy of scale or experience (which I agree is a tenuous reason that may never materialize). It's to raise revenues - offsetting costs or even running at a profit - by making the network useful enough that you actually attract significant ridership. If a subway can only get you to a few select places in the city and you have to walk miles through dangerous areas (traffic or crime) to reach a store or a friend's house, or to get out of the city for a day or two, you're just going to take your car instead. If the network is so good that you don't need a car, you're going to support the network nearly every day (and you're going to save all of the $ associated with car ownership).
With that said, excellent video!! I really loved learning about the common-sense planning techniques you highlighted that DO save costs when planning, designing, procuring for, and building these systems. Learned a lot!
It’s sounds like more agency confidence and competence to work with contractors and be flexible on some level is what’s needed in part. North American agencies have a reputation of being frustrating for contractors to work with compared to European and Asian agencies. We should understand why that’s the case
Agencies are less confident and competent largely because they themselves don’t have experience with designing these tough projects but instead hire consultants. Not having this level of control makes things pretty directionless
They add all kinds of bidding requirements on the contractors resulting in one or maybe two bidding on the project. One more reason for simplifying construction and design as well as eliminating most of these self imposed bidding requirements so that more contractors can bid.
They don't have experience managing these projects either so they hire management consultants. So it's contractors and consultants from top to bottom, each entity getting its own cut!
I know it’s not exactly relevant to this video but I think a big problem facing North America (specifically the US and Canada) are zoning laws which favour single family homes on large plots of land. Transit can work in low dense areas but it’s much easier to justify spending a lot of money on a project that goes through a high density area. If zoning laws were reformed to allow more density then it would be much easier to build projects
The problem with your thinking is that housing prices and values in the US are notoriously fickle, and developers are wary of tampering with anything that may upset the golden goose. It is easier to kill land value in the US than to raise it, mainly because of the high mobility of Americans in the housing markets. The ability to move at will in the US is considered insane to the rest of the world, and the ability to abandon/sell or flight is something other nations do not make easy.
I was shock that the government didn't use the subway as a money printing machine like in Hong Kong get the developers to pay for the subway if they wanna build on-top of the station. People want to pay premium on the condos if they can just walk downstairs to take the subway
This would be more difficult in Singapore as many new stations are built in places already built up decades earlier (otherwise our gov't would probably worry that the station would be underutilized), with not much more land to sell for a premium after the station was complete. The gov't probably got 'lucky' with Tampines E station though, as it announced that the school beside it would be effectively closed down soon after the station opened in 2017 due to dwindling enrollment caused by our lower birth rates. The school could possibly be rebuilt into something else that could fetch a higher price
@@lzh4950 not in Toronto. Usually there is nothing on-top of the station
Doesn't build small and expand stations mean that you have to choose between expanding every station on the line, or having the annoying set-up (see LIRR) where not all cars make the platform at all stations? I think it's better to overbuild stations and avoid the complexity. There's no NYC subway station (anymore) where all the cars don't make the platform. The last one was the old South Ferry loop.
Why are some metro trains not having walkabililty throughout the train from one end to the other?
Open gangways are mechanically more complex than no gangways which may be one reason, though particularily in the US, also commonly cited reasons are inertia (which might be the reason MTA ordered only a handful of open gangway trains for the NYC subway) and separation from lower class people. Technical limitations may also play a role like for the Chicago L and the London Underground deep tube lines whose curves are too sharp to have open gangways, though the latter (at least some lines) are going to switch to open gangways in the near future.
Maybe they should use those full-length mezzanines to carry 2 more tracks for an express line haha. Such stacked stations are not uncommon in NYC already.
It doesn't matter if it is expensive. Build it anyway. They'll do it for additional highway lanes.
We are in a strange time right now where construction costs change quite quickly due to the state of the world right now. My spouse's employer is doing major renovations to their building and saw their construction costs go from 11Million to 18 million dollars in a span of a year.
One always has to wonder with such things: how much of that was Actually caused by the things that are claimed as the reason, and how much was someone (or multiple someones) in the chain using actual, Minor increases as an excuse to Majorly bump up their prices, and thus increase profits (in the short term, but that's often all that matters for the way things are run in many places).
@@laurencefraser it could also be compounding delays, one thing gets held up, and everything else has to wait, and time is money.
This covers some good points, but misses on others. A big part of any US project will be local construction costs (highly variable), US safety standards for construction and system design/operations, overly-long entitlement and funding processes, and absurd mitigation measures to reduce annoyances during construction. As covered, standardization might be the biggest factor. Also, soils are a gigantic variable.
Those absurd mitigation measures were made because past experiences with disruptive NIMBYs have terrified planners so much. They're basically SLAPP cases designed to bankrupt the government so they won't be able to finish the project.
Even in Australia, Western Australia complete projects at a much lower cost than Victoria. Their Airport like which consisted of 8km of twin tunnels 2 Underground stations and 1 above ground for $2.5 Billion where as the Melbourne Airport Rail Link which will consist of 12km of above ground track 6 of which in an existing corridor, 2 bridges and 2 above ground stations slated to cost $10 Billion.
They just announced the latest price for the 1.3 mile Caltrain extension into the San Francisco Salesforce Transit Center (which already has a giant cavern in the basement for the future station)... $6.7 billion!!
Always got to wonder how much of that cost is down to just straight up corruption/graft.
@@laurencefraser Keep in mind, boring through sand with skyscrapers above weighing the soil down several millimeters per year into a transit center this is rather heavy is not gonna be done cheaply.
Is it worth it?... Sure, but the price is gonna match that worth
Double the price and that’s the final cost
I was kinda surprised when I took Line 16 in Beijing for the first time last year to find out that it's completely underground despite the northern section traveling through some wide open spaces. Not sure why they did that, NIMBYism perhaps. We seem to be building less and less subway above ground in recent years, which can't be good for the cost. Especially with the wide 6-8 lane trunk roads that cover much of the city, there seems to be more than enough space to put an elevated subway line above the road.
It's not really nimby. It's mostly just preventing future overground railroad which end up disconnecting the two side of the community.
Also china have money and do not allow nimbism
@@chunchoi4434 yeah, no such thing as nimby in China. The government legally owns all the land and locals have no say over what gets built there. New projects often results in many people getting evicted off the land where it’s built
The Metro in Santiago, Chile, is perhaps the most cost effective metro in the world. they are planning to build lines 7, 8 and 9, each between 15 and 20 kilometers long, for only around 2 billion dollars each. That is a much lower price than almost all other cities in Latin America and tiny fraction of what they would cost in the US, even though they will be very high capacity, have great technology and will be almost completely underground.
Thank you for including Columbus in the shame list, we need all the current transit shaming we can get here.
How can a city afford public transport? How Can It Not To?!?!?!
Sure, world class subways can cost a fortune but a cheap-but-functional decent tram and bus system will pay itself back! Almost anything is cheaper than car infrastructure!
One thing that confuses me every time I see a new station being built is all the superficial design elements, especially in NYC with the 2nd ave line or WTC station.
What's with all the stainless steel strips on the ceiling, murals on the walls, cladding on the support pillars, glass elevator shafts, cavernous rooms, etc?
Most older stations are smaller, have bare concrete ceilings, mass-produced tile on the walls, and painted I-beams for supports and that's all they need. I'd even argue that their utilitarianism is what adds to their distinct NYC charm.
They would save so much money at the scale they build at if stations were meant to be functional first and foremost like they used to be built. Even the new subway cars are unecessarily over designed. Look at a brand new R211 with it's angular LED lights compared to the (in)famous R32 and its halogens and corrugated steel side panels.
Simple, exempt transit projects from ALL “environmental reviews” and just stop government spending on all infrastructure projects. Car infrastructure will necessarily degrade and (likely) will be replaced with street cars and interurbans. See 1890 to 1940 USA…
A few years before it opened, I talked to someone I knew who was an architect on the second avenue subway. I was really excited for the project because my school is near second avenue. He said that the project was supposed to complete by this year.
It’s been 6 years since phase one was finished, and they haven’t even started on phase 2. By the time the station near my school opens, I could be married with a full time job and have children. It’s ridiculous
(The architect is not responsible for doing a bad job just want to clear that)
Our host didn't do enough research here. First, he spends the first 7 or 8 minutes or so saying nothing at all. After a 2 or 3 minute intro he could have gotten into the meat of it. Then he confuses two issues. First, he says that cut and cover construction is cheaper than doing a deep bore tunnel. Then he says that utility relocation raises expenses. In New York, deep bore drilling can be cheaper than cut and cover construction because it requires far less disruption at the street level and does not require thousands of work hours to figure out and reorganize the spaghetti of utilities near the surface. Deep boring, depending on the depth, can also avoid another huge expense, which is the underpinning of old brick buildings, elevated lines and other structures sitting on top of the transit expansion. The Second Av Subway's Phase 2's cost has reached over $6 billion, in part due to inflation and material shortages; but the section under Second Av itself will be a small part of that. The real expense will be in building the expansion to the 125 St station, where the MTA will have to underpin not only buildings and the existing station, but the Lexington Av subway and the Metro-North viaduct and station as well. Lastly, while he is correct about the "micromanaging" of "street furniture," he conveniently neglects to explain that citizens ask their elected officials to build a subway and stations in way that they want. Yes, that pushes the price up. But if you can't ignore their requests - that isn't democracy, is it? The last part of the video is spent discussing why "best practices" should be used and why "stupid local rules" like prohibiting truck traffic at night interfere with said project. Our narrator does not actually know what a Best Practice is, nor does he know which ones (and how) the new York MTA uses them. Local rules are implemented in response to residents' complaints, and respecting their wishes is important and helps build political support for the project.