09-13-2025, 03:51 PM
(09-12-2025, 04:20 PM)bravado Wrote:(09-12-2025, 03:47 PM)tomh009 Wrote: A big part of the reason for the high phase 2 costs stems from having to cross the river and the 401. That would have been expensive even if built at the same time as phase 2.
That makes me think that "proper" BRT (with protected lanes) would be far less expensive, as it could potentially leverage existing bridges or underpasses. It's still much faster than buses in transit, and semi-permanent (routes not easily changed). Not as "nice" as LRT, but would that make sense as a compromise? Maybe a better routing could even be achieved?
But even that statement is accepting that the cost estimates are normal. We're getting fullytunneled underground metro costs per km for an above-ground, normal concrete light rail system. The Speed River isn't the grand canyon, but the price seems to imply that it is.
$210M per km is a wild cost estimate for completely above-ground light rail on flat land and I don't want anyone to treat it like that's "just the cost of doing business".
Go look at the post I made last week but the cost we have per km is one of the more sane cost estimates of LRTs in Ontario, at least for ones that are comparable. Phase 2 is arguably even more complicated then some of those and still comes in cheaper so it is arguably the cost of doing business.
210M is no where near fully tunneled metro fyi. The line 2 extension is about 1 billion dollars per km. Line 1 extension to Vaughan was roughly half a billion per km so by no means are we getting fully tunneled metro costs.