Shitty transit planning thread
Today opens a new subway extension in Barcelona, although it's not really an extension because the line it's part of hast it's central part still incomplete and with no work being done on it (because spaniards are retarded at planning infrastructure and we can't pay for it now).
This is almost 20km of new subway line, the largest single stretch ever put in service. Howwever, the line is godawfully designed (just look at all those ridiculous twists and turns), and this is the line that reaches the airport, rendering it's function of getting people from downtown to the airport moot, since the commuter train is way faster. Also the commuter train has no extra cost, so with a 10-trip ticket it costs less than 1 euro to get to the airport, while the subway costs 4,50 in addition to the regular fare.
Apart from the airport, this line only reaches peripheral boroughs which aren't densely populated, and a satellite city of 60.000 which also has commuter rail which is way cheaper and faster. It's highly unlikely that this subway will be anywhere close to a reasonable demand for a subway line. Also it's actually a branch line of the whole line, so it'll only get half the regular subway frequency at best, which would be about 5-6 minutes.
>>923346
Holy shit that looks like a local bus line, not a rapid transit line.
>>923347
The best part is how they try to hide this in the schematic
>>923348
What was the alignment proposal like prior to political intervention? I don't imagine transit planners came up with such a fucked up alignment.
>>923349
That huge bulge that looks like a dick, around the middle of the line, was done just so that the satellite town of El Prat could have a shitload of stations. So the project went from looking like somewhat of a mirrored "L" to this aberration. In fact, at the top of that "bulge", there's supposed to be another station, which would be right in the middle of a huge vacant lot. The idea was that by the time this line were finished there'd be a big ol' industrial complex there. Evidently and as usual this was wishful thinking, and this never happened. The station was built and is finished (because they were so retarded to privatize the construction of the stations, so there was no turning back), but will evidently never open in a foreseeable future. But hey, we've got a subway station ready for when we need it in 50 or 100 years, that's good r-right?
>>923350
Where are they finding the funds to expand the subway network anyway? I know it cost practically nothing to build subways in Spain (relative to construction costs in other countries anyway) but isn't the city practically broke and already filled with failed attempts at stimulating TOD-related growth?
>>923351
Actually, Barcelona is an exception in that it is far from broke. However, the subway is built and paid for by the regional government, which is as broke as it gets.
In this case the thing is that work was started almost ten years ago, and by the time shit hit the fan in '08-'09 this stretch was advanced enough that it could be finished, although it took some years just to put in the tracks and stuff. By now even though it's opened, the last stretch runs single track and has a station along the way which can't be opened because of that, since the other tunnel is still being used as part of the construction site for the center part of the line, where there's no work being done.
I don't get where this idea comes from that building subways is cheap in Spain. Maybe it's because the costs cited at public tenderings are always way low, and inevitably have a shitload of cost overruns. It's estimated that the day this line is finished it'll have cost about 16bn euros, that's about 350m per station, or 300m per km of subway line.
Fuck you for complaining. Any American city would kill for 20 km of grade seperate rail. We have fucking nothing.
>>923357
>muh relativism
Fuck off.
>>923353
>Actually, Barcelona is an exception in that it is far from broke. However, the subway is built and paid for by the regional government, which is as broke as it gets.
Was the debt of the network always assumed by the regional government or was it at some point financed directly by the municipalities?
>I don't get where this idea comes from that building subways is cheap in Spain. Maybe it's because the costs cited at public tenderings are always way low, and inevitably have a shitload of cost overruns. It's estimated that the day this line is finished it'll have cost about 16bn euros, that's about 350m per station, or 300m per km of subway line.
Can you point to sources on those figures (I can read a bit of Spanish or French if that helps)? Every time Spanish HSR or subways get brought up in the anglophone press it just cites some incredibly low number per km. For example:
>https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-rail-construction-costs/ (I would be curious to know how accurate the numbers for the Spanish projects are)
You can see more examples of this if you browse places like /r/transit on leddit (which is a pretty good sub but it tends to be very American-centric).
>>923353
[sarcasm]As a person from a financially responsible northern state with strong economy and no debt problem at all this lax attitude revolts me.[/sarcasm]
>>923351
EU money, Spain is an expert on leeching EU funds for retarded infrastructure projects
Metro lines thru fields
Airports with 0 passengers
High speed railway connecting such small cities that in Germany or France they wouldn't build such lines at all
>>923362
>Was the debt of the network always assumed by the regional government or was it at some point financed directly by the municipalities?
Complex issue. Public transit has always suffered from unclear financing. Debt generated by operation is assumed partly by the regional government, partly by the municipality, but to what extent is hard to tell, since it then runs through certain public transit administrations and whatnot. Burocracy is always complex in corrupt countries like Spain, it makes it easier to fuck up financing while putting blame on some other administration, and of course it makes it easier to appropriate public funds.
>Can you point to sources on those figures
Again, it's hard to know exactly what cost how much, especially referring to HSR. There's calculations saying that since 1992 there's been 40bn euros invested in HSR, others say it's been 60bn, other say 30. The whole system is absurdly convoluted to precisely hide these numbers. There's no other point to it, since in the end it's the central government that pays for HSR construction.
Referring to the subway example, the 16bn are pretty conclusive:
http://www.europapress.es/catalunya/noticia-govern-cifra-coste-final-l9-16000-millones-euros-20111127112050.html
Clearly your link is out of date, but as you can see in the link I'm providing, the original estimate was 2.6bn euros. The number just kept growing as time went on. The 6.5bn your link states were an accepted number for some time, until eventually it was recalculated again and again until reaching 16bn.
Often it's just that when politicians are promoting some project they'll state ridiculously low costs to make their proposal seem reasonable, without even backing them up (not like people will question those proposals -- those in favor will defend them no matter what, and those against will oppose it no matter what).
>>923393
ffs THIS right here.
Albeit by now they're barely getting any funds from the EU, and those they do get they often won't invest where they're supposed to.
As we speak they're building an HSR line from Madrid (pop. 5m) to Galicia (whole region has pop. 2.8m), with the largest city along the way being Valladolid (pop. 400k). The whole Madrid-Galicia HSR line will serve less than 10m inhabitants. And it's not like this line is being built across vast plains where it's easy to build, no, it's built across a shitload of mountains and valleys and swamp and whatever terrain makes it expensive to build rail lines.
The infrastructure politics in this country are absolutely depressing. Spain has the largest HSR network in Europe, second in the world only after China, and yet is the 16th country by rail passenger/km in Europe.
>>923443
That doesn't sound that bad actually, those city sizes. Definitely better than a HSR to bloody Alicante or Malaga.
There's a public discussion of building a HSR in my country (not that it would happen sooner than in 20 years anyway) and they want to connect the capital of metro size like 1.5 million to the second largest city of ca 0.5 million metro population. The distance is ca 200 km through a hilly terrain. Madness if you ask me. But try to oppose that and you are "not enough progressive", lol.
Also look how many highway rings are there around Madrid. Even London doesn't have single one finished.
Or that madness of highways south of Madrid, like Spain, wtf? Public funds well spent I see.
![800x800_vrt02[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/9AHc58u.jpg "800x800_vrt02[1].jpg")
>>923633
pic related, the proposed network of HSR in my country. The RS 1 is the one that would be probably the most useful. The international corridors are imho absolutely unnecessary as I can't see that the daily usage would be more than 10k passangers on any of them.
The blue lines are the current railway network, where thicker lines are the main lines
Metros are rarely built for speed but to move large numbers of people. The commuter train which is more direct will deal with fast point to point times. If a metro is designed in green fields it is often to encourage development outside of overpopulated and congested towns and cities. Hence why they get funded by central governments.
>>923633
I just opened OpenStreetMap on London for the first time to observe the "THE FUCKING M25" and immediately came to my pants from the amount of rail around that city. That's just incredible, breathtaking, astounding, glorious.
>>923668
build rs5 czechbro pls
>>923353
>300m per km of subway line
That's still cheap compared to the latest cost estimate for extending the MBTA Greenline, which is like 380m Euro per km of track in an open cut.
>>923688
What, just so Poland can into HSR?
>>923353
>16bn euros, that's about 350m per station, or 300m per km of subway line.
top lel
And people over here kept bitching about a 5.2km metro extension that went over budget ans still only cost 143m per kilometre. The press in this city need to get fucking grip and needs to realize how cheap subway construction is in this city.
>>923353
What shits me is that anyone even pays any attention to all the alarm bells regarding government expenditure on public transport
>implying the government won't recoup 1/3rd of the cost directly from the income tax on the individuals contracted to build the subway
>implying the trains weren't manufactured in Europe anyway, encouraging more jobs and growth
>implying good public transport doesn't pay for itself a million times over of the course of it's life through fares, efficiency improvements and congestion reduction
Right wing austerity is the only plague i know.
>>923682
Metros are build for speed and capacity at the same time. That's why they are grade separated and the most expensive form of public transportation.
Commuter rail won't do the same job as it usually shares the infrastructure with other trains.
>>923786
That's what you get for incredibly overpriced manual labour and all types of pathetic safety standards. What your trade unions wanted they now have.
>>923828
OP here. Everything you say can be said just as well about other means of transportation. What bothers me isn't that they're building a fuckhueg subway line, if it were necessary (and part of it -- the part that's had the least work done -- is indeed necessary). What bothers me is that the money put into the useless parts of the line would've been much better spent on other public transit needs. I'm by no means advocating right-wing austerity, just not wasting money uselessly. Despite everything, public transit here is far from ideal, and being a dense and overpopulated city we have huge traffic problems, it's not like an american city which has very low density and huge roads. We depend on public transit, it's simply not an option not to have it, even with our huge subway it's still full to the brim in many parts, and we still get lots of traffic problems. We are in dire need of improvements to the commuter rail system, and public transit in the periphery would be much better handled expanding our tram system, which is constantly overlooked in its potential because of this obsession to build subways everywhere. The cost of the 20km of subway that's been put into service would've allowed for about 3-400km of tram line, which would've allowed to spread capacity evenly around the peripheral boroughs. Instead, we get a high-capacity corridor through low-density areas, while loads of other areas of the city got jack shit.
My complaint isn't about the concept of a subway, it's about concentrating too much investment in an area where it would be put to much better use if you spread it more thinly and evenly.
>>923862
>>>923682 (You)
>Metros are build for speed and capacity at the same time. That's why they are grade separated and the most expensive form of public transportation.
>Commuter rail won't do the same job as it usually shares the infrastructure with other trains.
Not strictly always true. Frequent stops make the journey time longer. The Barcelona commuter trains are fantastic, quick and not too crowded. In London it is possible to get across the City faster on foot than by Tube in many circumstances. As I said previously there is usually a hidden plan to regenerate or just generate industry or housing in green or brown field sites.
>>923976
It doesn't apply everytime, that's true. There are commuter rail systems that are basically the same as metros as they have all grade separated double track lines that are built specifically only for those commuter trains. Such as in London (some of them) or Berlin (most of them) or whatever.
>frequent stops make the journey longer
not necessarily, frequent stops are not an essential element of metro systems. There are express metro trains in NYC or London or some Asian cities.
Commuter train is a very vague term that could mean basically anything. But mostly commuter trains share the old railway infrastructure and that's their weak spot. Therefore the frequency of trains can't be as high as for a metro line, the speeds might be low mainly at the stations and large junctions, etc.
>>923976
Typical old-style subways like the one in Barcelona, which is built to a 1924 standard, are quite slow, even for an urban transport. Lines here have an average speed of 24km/h, while a modern LRT can get 20km/h and even more. As a purely urban transportation subways are relatively fast, but you can't get much speed out of a transport that needs to cover all the area it passes through, so stations will not be further apart than about 1km (here they're on average about 700-800m apart), which is why speed-wise this kind of subway has little advantage over LRT, and a at many times the cost of construction.
With the advent of modern LRT, old-style subways are no longer the only fast urban transport. Their main advantage is their large capacity. So it's really complete bullshit to build subways anywhere where you don't need such capacity, and where you can get a good LRT system going.
>>923862
>Commuter rail won't do the same job
Of course not. That moves people longer distances at higher speeds and with fewer stops.
It's possible to use commuter rail like LRT or a metro, but that's usually because of historic infrastructure constraints that make converting awkward/expensive.
>>923443
>a shitload of mountains
I've driven that way, and at least to Valladolid it's mostly simple except for needing to punch through one range. (Dunno about beyond.)
Spain's big advantage on this stuff is that land is mostly pretty cheap. The equivalent projects in the UK are eyewateringly expensive because of land prices.
>>924092
It's past Valladolid where the mountains start. Spain has a large plateau in the middle which eventually and abruptly ends, so whenever you're getting to the coast you'll have to overcome a large height difference and very rocky terrain.
Yes, land is rather cheap, but terrain is extremely difficult. This has also historically been the reason that many rail lines where slow, due to the mountainous terrain and private companies not being able to make large investments (this back in the 19th century when all the mainlines where being built)
That's an impressive fuck up OP but I think the SAS (or at least the 3 stations "phase 1" project) still holds the crown for shittiest transit project.
Seriously, 1 billion dollars for every mile built.
>>923633
I literally just came back from Madrid and as I flew in at what should have been rush hour I saw a total of 11 cars on the motorways. Not one motorway but all the motorways around the entire city.
>>925915
In Madrid there's toll-free motorways, and parallel to these motorways with toll. The latter ones are always empty because everyone just uses the toll-free ones. For this reason the concessions for the toll motorways went bankrupt, and obviously had to be bailed out.
Is it possible by any chance you drove on the toll motorways?
>>925918
Sadly no, but as I landed the pilot swooped all around the entire of the city and I honestly didn't see one motorway that looked to be worth it's construction. It looked the same as I took off to leave aswell. It was similar going around Madrid with many of it's roads being empty outside of a few major ones in the centre like the Grand Vía or the area round the Plaza de Espana.
>>925926
That's Spain for you, shitload of useless infrastructure, mostly roadways, and those things that actually ARE necessary are completely ignored, like our commuter trains which are in shit state, regional trains which are even shittier, main lines with a lot of traffic which have single-track sections, all that.
>>925922
>I-I-It's da unionz fault!!
Nice try Governor Walker.
Just about every study done ever has concluded that labor costs have nothing to do with the high cost of transit projects (this is more of a phenomenon in the U.S. mainly). It has more to do with land acquisition, contract bidding, inter agency co-operation, and local laws (think lawsuits from NIMBYs)
>>925942
Labor costs in capital construction are usually manageable (unless you're dealing with NY's sandhogs, which retained powerful bargaining powers through the 20th century), but labor costs in operations are a severely intractable problem in American transit.
https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/why-labor-efficiency-is-important/
>>923346
BART not building 2 transbay tubes so the system can't run 24 hrs.
>>925977
>quoting Levy
>ever
That prat has no hard data to back up his theories. He just rambles on about factors and never investigates what are the true cost drivers.
>>926075
>FTA National Transit Database
>TfL Annual Report
>precompiled CAHSR, RENFE comparative estimates
Did you even fucking read the post?
This is Seattle's monstrosity to the south.
>>926460
Jesus fuck what is it with transit planners these days designing transit lines with these ridiculous detours?
>>926485
It's the politicians making decisions like this, not the planners. I kid you not: McDonald's was one of the businesses they didn't want to 'impact' by choosing a straight 99 alignment.
>>926488
Don't they realize that such detours make the travel time longer and thus the public transportation less atractive and convenient or is this not the primary purpose?
>>926508
Of course I think they know that. It also adds to the cost. In this case, the goal is to get to Tacoma come hell or high water and they are willing to make sacrifices to do that. Politics, politics, politics.
No one is going to ride this thing every day from Tacoma to Seattle. That trip will be nearly 2 hours, especially if it zigzags like this the whole time.
>>926460
>Midway Landfill
>Visual impacts
Phew, yeah, wouldn't want to ruin the view of the landfill!
>>923346
Tell me, where's the money for this coming from?
>>926624
From underfunding everything else.
you want the worst public transit in the world?
try the Greater Toronto Area
>shit tier subway- "4" lines which are really 2 lines that they split halfway so they can say they have more than they do
>periphery trains are hella expensive and mostly only operate in peak hours
>no transfers between different municipal systems
just general shit really
the urban planners of the past 30 years should be persecuted for negligence
idk how the mississauga subway extension never happened either holy fuck
>>926656
>shit tier subway- "4" lines which are really 2 lines that they split halfway so they can say they have more than they do
What are you even trying to say here? the BD and YUS have never been split. Sheppard exists because politics and the SRT is the SRT.
>Blaming the urban planners and not putting the blame solely on the politicians
This is why we are going to spend billions to extend the BD one stop to the Scarborough Town Centre, even though every transit planner under the sun says it is retarded.
>idk how the Mississauga subway extension never happened either holy fuck
Couple of reasons here. Hazel didn't want a subway to Mississauga, and Toronto didn't want to pay for it nor was there any ridership at the time to justify it.
The Vaughan extension is literally a politics extension that should never have gone beyond Steeles. The ridership north of steeles is going to be shit and I don't think Vaughan will have to subsidize it even though it's in their jurisdiction.
Is this truly the best you could do?
>>926769
Is Grafton like super narrow preventing that route?
>>926769
They should've just put the Luas on the new bridge they built rather than have the split on O'Connell Street. They also did fuck all about the side effects of the route, there's no plan of where most of the buses which go through College Green will go now that the trams are there, or that they built this directly on top of where the planned metro was going to go, there's not enough money for that now but they should've dug out the station boxes for the city centre stations and build the rest later, it'll be difficult to do later when there's tram tracks.
>>927048
It's a pedestrianised street, one of the main shopping streets in the city. It really should've gone there, Dawson Street is pretty narrow too, originally there was only a southbound stop planned there, but the shops and businesses there would complain. That's the reason we're only building this line now rather than 12 years ago, the government didn't want to upset the businesses in the city centre, leaving 2 disconnected tram lines.
I'll drop the DC streetcar here as an example, even though Opening Day is tomorrow.
So many delays, highly publicized issues, disillusioned potential passengers, no dedicated lane, and hardly goes anywhere yet, it's been just an example of poor planning by city government and lack of transparency about the issues facing the city.
