Toronto’s 6.2 KM Scarborough Subway Costs Soar To $3.9 Billion – What Will be The Real Cost Of The BS Line?
I include this article from the Toronto Star to illustrate the escalating costs of subway construction.
The one stop, 6.2 billion Scarborough subway cost has soared to $3.9 billion and climbing!
Vancouver’s 5.7 km six station Broadway subway cost has escalated past its $2.8 billion price tag and now is said to cost $3.5 billion or more.
With five more stations, with costs roughly around $200 million per copy, the BS Line final cost may surpass the TTC’s proposed Scarborough subway!
$3.5 billion or more to move a peak hour customer flow of under 5,000 pphpd to Arbutus!
Memo to Bruce Allen: When shilling for the Broadway subway or BS Line, please try mentioning the insane costs for the subway and the huge tax and fare increaes needed to pay for it.
The Scarborough subway was sold to us with a specific turn of phrase. We should have been paying attention
It’s hard to catch in real time, but sometimes when a professional in the public service uses a particular phrase over and over again, it’s worth paying close attention. By parsing it, you can see that they’re trying to say something very specific in a way that allows them to tell the truth without running afoul of the messaging of their political bosses.
A vivid example becomes clear in the recent reporting of my colleague Jennifer Pagliaro looking back at the 2016 swap of the three-stop Scarborough subway extension plan for the one-stop option with the Eglinton East LRT added in.
Mayor John Tory and Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat, who developed and were unveiling the plan, were telling everyone who would listen it was essentially a two-for-one deal, cost-wise. That both projects in the revised plan would be paid for out of the “same funding envelope” of $3.56 billion already committed.
And what was city manager Peter Wallace saying? He was not contradicting that message. But his phrase was that the budget would remain in the same “order of magnitude.” Keesmaat used the same words speaking to city council.
Many people hearing it at the time, especially alongside the “buy one get one free” talk the proposal was announced with, interpreted it to confirm the political message that the already committed funds would get the job done, more or less. Many or most probably didn’t take the time to consider the particular phrase. As many of us know when we think about it, and as Peter Wallace emphasized in an internal email from the time that Pagliaro has obtained, the “same order of magnitude” doesn’t mean “roughly the same.” It means, “accurate give or take 1,000 per cent.”
The price of a Lexus LS — $103,000 — and of a house in Toronto — around $1 million — are in the same order of magnitude.
Wallace’s statement still holds up — at least for the foreseeable future, even as the cost of the one-stop subway alone has climbed to $3.9 billion. We’re several news cycles and city reports from the cost escalation on that project passing the $35-billion mark that would prove those words false.
But I think we can all agree that in retrospect, order-of-magnitude cost estimates are shown here to be essentially useless. At least from a public planning and budgeting perspective — I mean, if I’m thinking about renovating my house, it might be useful to know if I’m talking about thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. But as a guide for decision making on infrastructure, consider that by at least one estimate, you could add a manned mission to Mars to the swollen budget of the subway extension and the LRT and still be in the same order of magnitude. It’s simply not helpful information.
Another email Pagliaro obtained, written by then-Deputy City Manager John Livey, suggests that cost estimates didn’t need to be particularly accurate to be helpful. “The sole purpose of the report is to get the idea in the public forum.”
It did that. I remain grateful for it. The Eglinton East LRT, which I think is a potentially great project, was off the table at the time. In danger of being forgotten. It is now on the city’s list of planned (if not entirely funded) projects.
The only problem is whether any money will ever appear to pay for it. And that problem, shared with other projects, is exacerbated all the time by the apparently endless swelling of the cost of the Scarborough subway extension. It is an ever-larger budget-gobbling monster that threatens to swallow every dollar in every budget in the city, and I doubt any politician in a position of authority will ever stop feeding it.
It remains a credible possibility to me that the original message about the one-stop switch may have been close enough to essentially correct, in that the one-stop extension and the new LRT line could both be built for roughly the same price as the extended three-stop line to Sheppard. It’s just that the “funding envelope” for the three-stop extension was always going to need to be more of a “funding jumbo-sized packing crate” anyway, and to contain way, way, way more than $3.56 billion. Each report shows the price of this thing going up, higher and higher, a tower of money reaching into the clouds. And we are fixated on digging a hole big enough to contain all of it.
I have recently — not for the first time in this protracted process — tried to make peace in my mind with the idea that this battle over the Scarborough subway extension is lost. Accept as a political reality that it is not going to change and it is not productive to continue debating it. I’m as tired of it as anyone else. But then every time the price goes up, and especially as the premier promises to make it longer and still more expensive, I can’t let it stop bothering me.
Because it is going over those latest developments that I recall again that this super-deep, superlong tunnel is being dug for no good reason at all. The subway line it is extending runs above-ground in dedicated corridors for most of the trip from Victoria Park to Kennedy already. The LRT line proposal this extension replaces would run entirely above ground in a dedicated corridor that already exists and does not go onto the road, and would serve more stops closer to where more people live and work. It wouldn’t just be vastly cheaper and faster and easier to build. It would be better transit for the people it would serve. It is better in every way except for a 30-second transfer between vehicles (like the one many riders make every day at Yonge and Bloor). And except that for some reason people want it underground. There’s this political fetishization of tunnels.
How much are we willing to pay for that tunnel? My revised estimate is that our leaders will be willing to pay anything. Or everything. Within an order of magnitude.
Edward Keenan is a columnist based in Toronto covering urban affairs. Follow him on
Fiasco Brewing In Toronto
When politicians with little knowledge of transit, involve themselves with transit planning, a fiasco is soon in the making.
Vancouver’s BS Line is a good example.
It seems Premier Ford is entering the land of pixie dust and sparkle ponies.
Instead of planning and building what will work, the Premier thinks a cheaper solution will work just a well.
What could go wrong?
What an ‘alternative’ Downtown Relief Line could look like under the province’s subway upload plan
By May WarrenStaff ReporterWed., March 27, 2019
The province is proposing to build the Downtown Relief Line using unspecified “alternative delivery methods” as part of its proposal to take ownership of Toronto’s subway.
The vague and unexpected statement was among major changes to four projects the province outlined in a letter to the city released Tuesday. The province went on to say the relief line would be a “truly unique transit artery” and “free-standing project” separate from other parts of the “technologically outdated” subway system.
Seattle Center Monorail in Seattle, Wash. (DREAMSTIME)
The relief line, which the city has said could open as early as 2029, is planned to run across Queen St. downtown, north to Pape station, and, in Phase 2, further north to Don Mills station to take pressure off the bursting Yonge line. Previous estimates put the cost at $6.8 billion. The province says costs have doubled. The city disputes this.But what does this all mean? And what kind of project could they build beside a traditional subway?
We took a look at public transit projects around the world and came up with some options:
Boston, Mass.: underground bus rapid transit
Boston’s “Silver Line,” constructed in phases beginning in the early 2000s, incorporates buses that duck beneath the road’s surface.
Silver Line buses operate partially in underground tunnels, said Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority deputy press secretary Lisa Battiston in an email.
Using buses both below and above ground was an “economic and geographically strategic decision” for the city, she said. The line’s tunnels operate beneath the Boston Waterfront area and let buses avoid street-level bridges, she added.
An Expo Line SkyTrain rolls across the elevated tracks in Surrey, B.C. (JESSE WINTER)
The vehicles, which take passengers all the way to Logan Airport from South Station in the city centre, also make connections with the traditional subway system. When they’re above ground they sometimes have their own lane, making it easier to escape traffic.
But Ryerson City Building Institute executive director Cherise Burda says tunnels are the most expensive part of subways. So using buses instead of subway cars on the Relief Line wouldn’t save much money.
Vancouver, B.C: SkyTrain
Most of the transit system in the west-coast city is elevated, but some of it does run underground. It’s also completely automated and driverless, says spokesperson Lida Paslar.
It connects downtown Vancouver with Burnaby, New Westminster, Surrey, Richmond and the Vancouver International Airport. The first line was built in 1986.
Matti Siemiatycki, interim director of the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, said the elevated portions of the SkyTrain are the “followup technology” to Toronto’s Scarborough RT.
“It’s a number of generations down the path from that,” he said.
Seattle, Wash.: Center Monorail
Elevated monorail line in Seattle, Wash., that operates along Fifth Ave. (DREAMSTIME)
According its official website, Seattle’s monorail was built for the 1962 World’s Fair.
It now provides a quick, car-free connection between downtown Seattle and Seattle centre, an area home to tourist attractions such as the Space Needle..
The monorail has become a beloved landmark, and carries more than 2 million passengers a year, fitting up to 250 per train. But it only goes about 1.4 km.
Monorails, sometimes found in amusement parks, also run in cities from Mumbai to São Paulo. They run on a single rail and typically go more slowly than elevated rail like the SkyTrain.
Premier Doug Ford has shown an affinity for monorails in the past — one along the waterfront was part of his vision for the area as a city councillor in 2011.
A tram passes along Bahnhofstrasse St. in Zurich, Switzerland. (DENIS LININE)
But Burda said, given the proposed route of the relief line, any form of elevated rail or monorail would require heavy construction and intervention in densely populated, older neighbourhoods such as Leslieville.
“If you’re going to stick an elevated system above those streets you’re going to have a lot of opposition,” she said.
Zurich, Switzerland: Light rail transit with dedicated lanes
Streetcars in lanes without cars are already part of Toronto’s transit network.
But they’re much more common in European cities such as Zurich, Switzerland, where they run like clockwork and also rarely break down or short turn.
This type of transit works best on wider avenues, says Burda, and given Ford’s history of prioritizing cars on the road, this is highly unlikely as an option to replace the Downtown Relief Line.
Montreal, Que.: Le Réseau express métropolitain (REM) public private partnership
This 26-station, 67-km light rail network will link downtown Montreal with suburban communities of the South Shore, West Island, North Shore and the airport. It promises to be electric and completely automated, and will run on the ground, underground and overhead.
The estimated cost is about $6.3 billion, with $2.95 billion of that covered by the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the province’s leading pension fund company. The governments of Canada and Quebec will chip in another $1.28 billion each, according to La Caisse’s website.
This kind of funding model and independence from the rest of the transit system might be what the province is getting at with its phrasing in the letter, says Siemiatycki.
Ryerson’s Burda agrees the wording could hint at interest in a public-private partnership, or just be punting the project down the line.
“I would hazard to guess that that’s just a placeholder for, let’s find different ways to fund this and build this more cheaply, so that we can prioritize the things we really want to build,” she said.
A regular subway that isn’t exactly the same as the one we have now
This is the option that makes the most sense to Siemiatycki, who suspects the province’s careful language reflects wanting to have a separate project, rather than something that existing TTC subway trains and track could feed into.
This could be operated by the TTC, city or province, and possibly paid for with the help of the private sector, like the REM.
It would offer more flexibility in terms of procurement and operation as it wouldn’t need to be compatible with the existing subway infrastructure.
“I think what they mean is a line that isn’t interconnected and doesn’t have integrated tracks, or even potentially the same train technologies,” he said.
May Warren is a breaking news reporter based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @maywarren11
Chaos Wednesday
And SkyTrain never breaks down or stops service?
Just saying.
Commuter chaos amid problems on Expo, Canada Lines
By Simon Little Online Journalist Global News
Passengers using the Expo and Canada Lines on Wednesday had to deal with major delays after both lines experienced separate problems.
The Canada Line was dealing with a stalled train that has disrupted service from Bridgeport Station in Richmond to Oakridge Station in Vancouver that was resolved shortly after 10:30 a.m.
A bus bridge was put in place during the outage, and TransLink warned that while it was in the process of restoring normal service “there are still delays, gaps in service and passenger crowding.”
The bus bridge was left in place to try and cut down on crowding.
On the Expo Line, TransLink said a “medical emergency” had disrupted service at Joyce-Collingwood Station around 9 a.m., closing the station down entirely.
TransLink implemented a shuttle train and a bus bridge connecting Nanaimo and Metrotown Stations.
Service began to fully resume around 12:45 p.m. and Joyce-Collingwood was fully reopened.
In TransLink speak, medical emergency means an attempted suicide or suicide.
Medical emergency at Joyce SkyTrain station leads to major delays
by Martin MacMahon, Estefania Duran and Denise Wong
Posted Mar 27, 2019
METRO VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Commuters experienced long waits and large crowds, after five SkyTrain stations along the Expo Line experienced service disruption due to a medical emergency on Wednesday.
The issue was at Joyce Station, which was closed for about three hours.
A shuttle train and bus bridge were set up between Nanaimo and Metrotown Stations.
At around 12:45 p.m., TransLink advised that the Expo Line was going back to full service and Joyce Station was re-opened.
TramTrain Expands in Germany
As TramTrain expands in Germany, it is time that the mode is considered for Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island.
Why is LRT so popular with transit planners and operators?
It is the inherent flexibility of the system and TramTrain has now enabled simple streetcar routes to expand affordably far into the countryside by being able to operate on existing railway lines.
By providing a seamless (no transfer) journey has made TramTrain extremely user friendly and user-friendliness is the prime reason people take transit.
Mar 26, 2019
Written byKeith BarrowFIVE German transport authorities have signed an agreement to jointly procure up to 240 tram-trains with the aim of achieving significant savings in resources, lead times and costs.
The agreement was signed in Karlsruhe on March 11 by representatives of Albtal Transport Company (AVG), Karlsruhe Transport Authority (VBK), Saarbahn, Erms-Neckar-Bahn, and Central Saxony Transport Authority (VMS).
The partners have been working together since July 2017 through the VDV TramTrain project, which aims to ensure the future viability of the Karlsruhe model for tram-train systems and potentially open it up to new operators. This has led to the development of a standard vehicle concept, which is expected to reduce procurement costs by around €1m per vehicle.
“This lower unit price results from the fact that one-time costs for the development and authorisation of the standard vehicle can be distributed across a significantly higher number of vehicles,” says project manager Mr Thorsten Erlenkötter. “Variants for the respective transport companies can be derived from the base vehicle. For example, the entry level for barrier-free access varies between the operators’ systems.
“In addition, the project partners all want individual equipment and features in the respective company colours. We want to use a vehicle configurator – similar to the car industry.”
VBK and AVG have a requirement for around 150 vehicles and will therefore jointly manage the procurement on behalf of all project partners.
The first vehicles are expected to enter service in 2025. Final order quantities will depend on the outcome of negotiations for new transport contracts. Saarbahn says it is looking to replace its fleet of 28 Bombardier Flexity Link tram-trains with the new design.
AVG says the project partners expect to benefit from standardization by issuing joint maintenance orders and ordering large quantities of spare parts to bring down the unit cost of components.
“The project team has done pioneering work here,” says VBK managing director Mr Ascan Egerer. “I am very proud that Karlsruhe, as the inventor of the two system vehicle, together with strong partners from the tram-train family and the Association of German Transport Companies, has been supporting this.”
Something In The Air
Something is in the air.
Could it be that the sickening stench of the Broadway Subway or BS Line deal has reached the lofty halls of Postmedia?
For decades, the Vancouver Sun and to a smaller extent, the Vancouver Province, refused to print negative stories about SkyTrain or do any investigative journalism about SkyTrain. This, in part has created a very powerful tool for the SkyTrain Lobby, where their repeated lies and innuendo has poisoned any chance of credible transit debate in the region.
That the Vancouver Sun is allowing questioning of the BS Line is nothing short of remarkable and it makes me wonder if the senior editors are aware of a distinct change in the air with transit in Metro Vancouver and in BC.
One wonders with only seven such proprietary light metros built since the late 1970’s (with 7 name changes) and with Bombardier Inc. all but abandoning manufacture or marketing of the proprietary ART Movia metro cars, may have something to do with it?
Has Postmedia sensed that the end is near for the proprietary ART Movia metro?
Elizabeth Murphy: Better, cheaper options than SkyTrain to UBC should be considered
Elizabeth MurphyUpdated: March 24, 2019
The recent McElhanney Consulting draft report used to justify a Broadway subway extension of the SkyTrain Millennium Line to UBC raises many questions regarding SNC-Lavalin involvement, assumptions, costs, ridership, mode shift and development. As a draft that has yet to be signed off by the engineers who wrote it, there are elements that look like it has been adjusted into a public relations document to favour a subway. This report is an update of the 2012 report prepared by SNC-Lavalin and Steer Davies Gleave.
However, on Jan. 30, 2019, before the SNC-Lavalin corruption scandal broke in February, Vancouver council was rushed into endorsing SkyTrain technology for a subway extension to the University of B.C. based on the theory that with the federal budget fast approaching in an election year it was critical to move ahead immediately. Same with the TransLink Mayors’ Council.
But now we know there is not likely new federal funding in the 2019 budget for the project, so the rush was unwarranted.
SkyTrain is what TransLink calls the Vancouver regional rail system. It is made up of two types of technology: the Canada Line, which is conventional, and the Expo and Millennium Lines, which are unconventional.
The unconventional Millennium Line technology would apply to the proposed extension to UBC, of which SNC-Lavalin (track and electrics) and Bombardier (cars) partnered to build the SkyTrain Millennium Line and continue to still produce and maintain the systems now in use.
SNC-Lavalin, with Bombardier cars, would therefore likely have significant advantage over other bidders for any extension of the Millennium Line, and it puts into question the ability to get meaningfully competitive bids. In the Canada Line-Cambie merchant court case, then-B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ian Pitfield called the bidding process where SNC-Lavalin won the contract a “charade.”
The current draft report makes assumptions that greatly limit the options, the largest of which is a subway from Vancouver Community College to Arbutus Street. This requires a handicap time penalty for transfer at Arbutus.
The reported cost estimates are also questionable. They use the same 40- to 60-per-cent contingency for both subway and LRT, even though subway has way more risks with underground conditions, water and services that require diversion.
For comparing the subway to surface light rail, rather than comparing actual costs of similar systems, the report refers to the cost estimates in the TransLink and Ministry of Transportation news releases.
While most LRT projects are delivered for $50 million to $100 million per kilometre — like the recently approve LRT in Ottawa — the report uses $240 million to $282 million per kilometre, creating a further handicap against LRT.
Although the bus system upgrades provide the greatest cost savings, the bus option costs are not provided at all as part of the comparison.
The minor costs to electrify the bus system to eliminate diesel and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by expanding the trolley network to the B-Line or for expanded service would only be about $1 million per kilometre, plus $1 million for each additional articulated double trolley bus. Since the distance from VCC to UBC is about 13 kilometres, it would be a minimal cost to upgrade the whole length of the corridor to electric trolley with doubled lines for bypass of the B-Line plus new articulated double trolley buses.
The current bus system throughout the corridor is far from maximized. Nor is it the busiest bus route in North America, as claimed. There are many more active areas such as in Ottawa and Mississauga, and many larger cities in the U.S.
There is a list of bus optimizations in the report, but the option that has the most promise is only mentioned once, without a bullet. It is to add an express bus that goes from the subway terminus to UBC.
If there was an electric express bus from VCC to UBC, it could take all UBC-bound ridership from the Millennium Line off of Broadway altogether, including the recent increase from the Evergreen Line. A new express route could further avoid congestion from VCC, along Second and Fourth avenues to Burrard Street and along 16th Avenue out to UBC.
The existing No. 84 bus on Fourth Avenue could also be electrified with trolleys with double articulated buses to increase capacity like a proper B-Line rather than the current single buses. Also, the current headway could be reduced from peak hour of six minutes apart to three minutes like the No. 99 B-Line on Broadway.
When comparing the current ridership between corridors, the report assumes incorrectly that all ridership going along corridors for Fourth, Broadway, 16th and 41st avenues would all be diverted to a Broadway subway.
In fact, each corridor is also serving local needs, including even some bus routes on Broadway that have many more stops between the few on the subway or B-Line. This local service will be reduced or eliminated with a subway, like what happened on Cambie Street.
However, would people who live close to 41st Avenue go all the way to Broadway to catch a subway rather than use a 41st Avenue B-Line? Assuming all this ridership would go to a Broadway subway is not accurate.
The McElhanney report identifies that multiple lines of rapid transit had better mode shift from automobile to transit usage. They said that if two LRT lines were provided (such as the addition from UBC along 41st Avenue to Joyce Station) it would have better mode shift and peak hour capacity than one subway.
But because the subway is assumed in all options from VCC to Arbutus, the longer double LRT line option was unfairly dismissed based on the artificially inflated cost estimates assumed for LRT plus the first phase of an assumed subway. But a continuous LRT from VCC to UBC that would cost substantially less, was not an option considered.
Vancouver was designed before the common use of the automobile as a streetcar city. Everywhere is within a 10-minute walk of an arterial for transit. The original streetcar system was replaced with a trolley bus system that is still in use. For a minor investment, the trolley bus system could be expanded and upgraded to multiple routes, including multiple corridors to UBC with some LRT.
This would be the most cost-effective way to broaden the most mode shift and serve the most people. It could be achieved for under $1 billion, while leaving most of the $7-billion subway funding to invest in affordable housing, including student housing at UBC.
Transit should be about affordably transporting people rather than adding expensive SkyTrain infrastructure for delivering luxury condo development for foreign capital. We do not have to repeat the mistakes of the Cambie Corridor and Oakridge. Each neighbourhood can provide more housing choice and affordable options while maintaining character and scale through neighbourhood-based planning.
Elizabeth Murphy is a private-sector project manager and former property development officer for the City of Vancouver and B.C. Housing. info@elizabethmurphy.ca
How does the BS Line Compare To Edmonton, Calagary and Ottawa?
The proposed 5.7 km Broadway SkyTrain subway, just to Arbutus is funded up to $2.84 billion, but not including cars. The cost is expected to rise to $3.5 billion before the project is completed.
A comparison with Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa easily demonstrates that taxpayers in those cities are getting a far bigger bang for their buck by building with light rail.
Please compare Vancouver’s 5.7 km, $3.5 billion subway BS Line with Calgary’s, Edmonton’s and Ottawa’s new LRT lines and extensions.
Stage 1 for Calgary’s Green Line.
• 20 km from 16 Avenue N to 126 Avenue SE
• 14 stations
• 8 bridges
• 1 km of elevated track between Inglewood/Ramsay to 26 Avenue stations
• 4 km Centre City tunnel from 16 Avenue N to Macleod Trail (this constitutes over one half of the cost of the project)
• 1 light rail vehicle (LRV) Maintenance & Storage Facility north of 126 Avenue SE (Shepard)
• Approximately 70 low floor vehicles
• $4.65 billion capital construction cost
Edmonton’s Valley LRT Line Stage 1 & 2
Stage 1 Valley Line Southeast (Building)
The Valley Line Southeast will run 13 km from Downtown to Mill Woods, and will feature:
- 11 street-level stops
- An elevated station with a 1,300-spot Park and Ride facility and a full transit centre located in the Wagner industrial area
- The new Tawatinâ Bridge across North Saskatchewan River
- A short tunnel from the north face of the River Valley through to the Quarters redevelopment
- An interchange point at Churchill Square to access the existing Metro and Capital LRT lines
This project has a capital cost of $1.8 billion, and is being delivered as a public-private partnership (P3).
Stage 2 Valley Line (Funding Secured)
Total Cost $2.67 Billion
- 16 stations, (14 surface and 2 elevated)
- 14.2 km length Lewis Farms to downtown stage 1 end of track on 102 Ave.
- 42 More Low Floor Light Rail Vehicles
On both Stage 1 and 2 station platforms will be 120 to 125 metres long, which allow for 3 car train sets. Initial operation will start with 2 car trains. Each car is 42 metres long.
Confederation Line Stage 1 (about to open)
- 12.5 KM, (2.5 in tunnel, includes 3 stations)
- 13 Stations in total
- 34 Alstom Citadis LRV’s
- 100 metre long station platforms, expandable to 120. Tunnel stations already have 120 metre long platforms.
- Total Cost $2.137 Billion
Confederation Line Stage 2 (Starting construction in April 2019)
- 44 km of line service over 2 lines.
- 6 km is below grade (very shallow).
- 8 km of existing line to be refurbished. 24 stations in total.
- Total Cost $4.66 Billion
- Station platform length 100 meters, easily expanded to 120 metres. All below grade stations are already 120 metres long.
- 38 more Alstom Citadis Spirit LRV’s (Confederation Line, Line 1)
- 97 Metre long 2 car train sets
- Each individual LRV is 48.5 metres long, which can be expanded a further 11 metres by adding a fifth section. Making each 2 car train 119 metres long!
Ottawa O-Train Network
- 7 Stadler FLIRT DMU’s 80 meters long each. (Trillium Line, Line 2)
- Diesel Propulsion Unit can be replaced with Electric Propulsion Unit when required.
When Will The lesson Be Learned?
When will the lesson be learned?
In today’s world, the lowest bid is not always the best bid, rather it is the lowest bid that will make profit for the company bidding. Thus the lowest bid does not produce the best product.
Like the Canada Line with its many problems, SNC Lavalin, which heads the P-3 consortium operating and maintaining the line only care about profit margins and not operating an acceptable product for the public.
Here are the problems for SNC Lavalin and Bombardier Inc for the BS Line.
From what I have been told, the federal portion of money for the BS and Surrey Lines must be included in a P-3 funding format. With a proprietary railway (which Bombardier Inc. is telling everyone that will listen that the ART/Movia proprietary light-metro is not a proprietary light metro), very few companies will bid on the P-3 because Bombardier and SNC Lavalin will have an insider’s edge and if SNC Lavalin is convicted in federal court for bribery, holding the engineering patents for the proprietary light metro may disqualify them from entering into the P-3 process altogether.
Makes one wonder with the BS Line, is the fix already in and all the bidding process, nothing more than an elaborate “charade”, as what Judge Pittfield called the Canada line P-3 bidding process, during the Susan Heyes lawsuit against TransLink?
Has the Trudeau and Horgan governments paved the way for SNC Lavalin and Bombardier Inc. to further increase their profit margins by allowing the two companies to flaunt the bidding rules for the two light metro projects?
SNC-Lavalin failed to meet technical threshold for $1.6B LRT contract: sources
Montreal-based company’s rivals easily met technical score, sources tell CBC
Joanne Chianello · CBC News · Posted: Mar 22, 2019
SNC-Lavalin won the $1.6-billion contract to extend and maintain Ottawa’s north-south LRT line even though it didn’t achieve the minimum technical score to qualify for the project — a threshold its competitors met easily, CBC News has learned.
The Montreal-based company beat out two other consortia to extend the Trillium Line from Greenboro into Riverside South, a decision cemented with a 19-3 vote by Ottawa city council on March 6.
However, sources with direct knowledge of the Stage 2 evaluation process told CBC that SNC-Lavalin failed to achieve the minimum technical score of 70 per cent, a requirement set out in publicly available documents.
CBC is not naming the three sources because they are not authorized to speak with the media.
SNC-Lavalin, currently at the centre of a major political controversy, is also one of the key partners in Rideau Transit Group, the consortium building the thrice-delayed first stage of Ottawa’s LRT system.
The troubled company was one of three pre-qualified bidders for the extension of the Trillium Line. The other two — Trillium Link and Trillium Extension Alliance — scored well above the minimum technical grade of 70 per cent, according to CBC’s sources.
City ‘stands by’ process
City officials and their hired experts overseeing the procurement process have steadfastly refused to confirm whether SNC-Lavalin met the technical threshold.
When council debated and ultimately approved the spending for LRT Stage 2, which includes extending both the east-west Confederation Line and the north-south Trillium Line, Coun. Diane Deans asked if the winning bids had met the minimum 70 per cent score.
She was told the scores were commercially confidential. Deans replied she wasn’t asking for the score, only to be assured the winning bids met the threshold.
Again this week, the city refused to say whether SNC-Lavalin made the minimum grade, citing commercial confidentiality of the process.
Given more than two business days to respond to inquiries, the city refused to provide an in-person interview, sending instead an email attributed to Chris Swail, the director of O-Train planning.
“The city stands by the overall integrity of the procurement process in no uncertain terms,” according to Swail’s statement.
The statement also says city officials “are all satisfied with the results” of the procurement process and in “the winning proponent’s ability and capacity to design, build and maintain the Trillium Line extension.”
SNC-Lavalin has built rail systems all over the world, including the award-winning Canada Line in Vancouver.
“We are very proud of the proposal we submitted and look forward to getting started,” said an SNC-Lavalin spokesperson in an email.
The engineering and construction giant said it has no knowledge of the breakdown of the score as the process is confidential.
How the bids were evaluated
The procurement process was overseen by law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, consultants Deloitte, fairness commissioner Oliver Grant, city-hired engineering experts and the city’s own staff.
According to the statement from Swail, the three technical proposals were reviewed by a team of experts for “completeness” and “conformance” to make sure the submissions met the requirements of the contract.
In order to receive a passing score, a technical score threshold of 70 per cent for each of the criteria was required.
– City of Ottawa report
But these “completeness” and “conformance” reviews are not the same as the technical scoring, and in fact were conducted before the bids were scored for their technical merit.
The technical evaluation for the shortlisted bids occurred in two stages, according to public city documents.
Individual expert evaluators reviewed and scored the submitted bids for the Trillium Line on a number of criteria including project design, engineering and operations.
“In order to receive a passing score, a technical score threshold of 70 per cent for each of the criteria was required,” states a city report.
The evaluators then came together to decide on a so-called “consensus” score out of a maximum of 500 points.
It is common in procurement processes that a bid that doesn’t make the technical grade be disqualified and barred from the financial evaluation round. This week, the city would not say whether this was the case with the LRT Stage 2 procurement.
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We Were Warned By Experts!
We were warned by the experts of the day to avoid the proprietary ALRT transit system, otherwise known as SkyTrain; we were warned by the best!
No one listened and today, we continue to spend up to ten times more to build with a dated proprietary light metro that no one else in the world wants!
The future is very bleak and I have nothing but contempt for the politicians agreeing to build more and more of what is now a museum piece.
A politician can be forgiven if he/she is unknowledgeable about transit, because they can learn, but if a politician refuses to learn and wishes to remain unknowledgeable, then that politician is ignorant and ignorant people cost the taxpayer dearly!
To day, metro Vancouver is infested with ignorant politicians who insist in doing the same thing over and over again, ever hoping for different results.
Prediction: The B.S. Line will break the back of Translink financially and may never be completed.
Bombardier Is Building SkyTrain at LAX…..But, It ain’t Our SkyTrain!
Bombardier's SkyTrain, a rubber tired people mover system.
Los Angeles Airport (LAX)t is building a $5 billion SkyTrain system, which may cause confusion because in Bombardier’s line of transit systems, SkyTrain is a rubber tired people mover system and not the trains used on the Canada, Expo, and/or Millennium lines.
Cries of shock and disbelief!
The name SkyTrain, which was chosen by contest, is the name for the Metro Vancouver regional rail system and not the vehicles.
Bombardier’s proprietary ART/Movia Metro is now the official name of the Expo and Millennium Line’s cars and ROTEM, a subsidiary of Hyundai, supply the electric multiple units (EMU’s) for the Canada Line.
So calling the actual trains SkyTrain is wrong as the SkyTrain regional rail system operates two distinct railways, the conventional Canada Line and the unconventional proprietary ART/Movia lines.
They are not compatible in operation.
I would surmise that Bombardier Inc. liked the name SkyTrain so much that they use it for their airport people mover system, which is far more marketable than their now obsolete ART/Movia metro system of which only seven have been built in the past 40 years!
The White Elephant Line
A white elephant is a possession which its owner cannot dispose of and whose cost, particularly that of maintenance, is out of proportion to its usefulness.
To recap, the Canada Line is not a true P-3, rather a mock P-3, where SNC Lavalin/Bombardier, bid against, SNC Lavalin/ROTEM.
Judge Pittfield who presided over the failed Susan Heyes lawsuit against TransLink, called the bidding process a “charade”.
The Canada Line is the only heavy-rail metro built in the world as a light-metro and being only able to operate 41 metre long, two car trains, has much less capacity than a modern tram costing a fraction to install!
At a minimum of $110 million to the SNC Lavalin lead consortium to operate annually, calling the Canada line a “White Elephant” is too kind!
The Canada Line can only operate 41 metre long two car trains, which is smaller than many trams on the market today. Thus the Canada line has less capacity than a modern tramway.
Surrey urged not to repeat Canada Line P3 mistake
- by Jeff Nagel – BC Local News
- posted Jan 29, 2016
Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan says Surrey must avoid repeating the costly mistakes made when the Canada Line was built as a P3 partnership now that the city is clamouring to build new light rail lines.
Corrigan has been pushing TransLink to disclose details of the Canada Line arrangement, which he says forces the transit authority to pay the private partner not just a higher interest rate than if it had borrowed directly but also additional inflationary and other adjustments.
Those payments cover the cost of operating the line as well as the $721 million in private capital nearly one third of the $2.1-billion rapid transit line that was fronted by the partners after direct contributions from TransLink and senior governments.
The deal to secure and repay the “magic money” through the P3 has financially hobbled TransLink, leaving it unable to afford better transit service in the years since the Richmond-Vancouver line opened in 2009, Corrigan told the Metro mayors’ council Jan. 27.
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