How This Small City Built Light Rail For Cheap
The ION’s capital cost was about $818 million in 2017 (1.06 billion in 2026 dollars) for 19 km of greenfields construction or $43 million/km to build ($56 million/km in 2026 dollars), complete.
Compare this with the Expo Line extension now costing over $400 million/km to build not including signalling, cars and much more.
Phase 2…ie today’s cost for something similar is estimated to be 182 million per km
Zwei replies: The much higher costs is due to major engineering and not the tram/LRT itself. Here lies a big problem in Canada, transit, especially light rail, is deemed inferior to road traffic and is both planned and treated as such. In Europe, road traffic is deemed inferior to the tram and given precedence. Because of this huge amounts of money are wasted on engineering projects so the tram does not interfere with traffic, thus driving up the costs.
In metro Vancouver, road traffic is deemed far more important than transit, thus now over $17 billion is being spent, extending the Expo and Millennium Lines on a fully segregated R-o-W for a mere 21.7 km. The ridership profiles are so weak on both lines, that there is now planning for a second highway up the Fraser Valley, to Vancouver.
What the new costs don’t tell you is that, those phase 2 costs, include the increased 23 year operating costs of the operator because of the longer line and greater number of LRV’s as well as construction costs.