One thing I learned about on my recent trip to Australia was a proposal to build five “metro” (i.e., subway) lines in Sydney. The first line on the agenda is expected to cost AU$12.5 billion (which, at current exchange rates is US$12.5 billion) for 38 kilometres (which, at U.S. exchange rates, is 24 miles), or about half a billion dollars a mile.
The fact that $12.5 billion is about three-fourths of the money that New South Wales plans to spend on transport over the next fifteen years doesn’t bother transit officials a bit. In fact, I suspect they are rather proud of it.
One plan is to privatize New South Wales’ government-owned electric utility to fund the metro. That’s a great way to waste public assets. It might be better to keep the electric utility public until the state’s leaders come to their senses.
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Of course, some naysayers think that the metro plan is just a fantasy. Sydney isn’t dense enough to support a subway, and this particular plan is infeasible from an engineering viewpoint. The scuttlebutt I heard in Sydney is that the tunnels they want to build in (they already have tunnels and it will still be half a billion a mile?) are too steep for the railcars they want to run. Other scuttlebutt says that the plan has only been raised because it is an election season.
How dense does a city have to be to justify a subway? The Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Miami subways are pretty much failures. New York’s subway works, but the cost of building new ones is (or should be) prohibitive. But here is a subway that actually makes a profit. (Sorry about the annoying pop-up ad.) Not that any of us would enjoy riding it.
I thought I could sit down, relax, read the paper and have a morning coffee on the train.
Does this remind anyone of a cattle car?
Thanks
JK
Oh, and wouldn’t that be assault or battery or something in the USA?
Do they have separate cars for male & female?
Thanks
JK
Did you drive to get to the train you took? What was the amount of subsidy embedded in your train trip?
I understand that they had those push guys on American trains also years ago, including on the Long Island Rail Road, before our tort system wiped out that sort of thing.
Cattle car? Well, we know planners carry cattle prods….
“for 38 kilometres (which, at U.S. exchange rates, is 24 miles)”
ummmm…. the conversion from km to miles varies? 🙂
Mentioning the electric company funding the Sydney subway reminds of something I was wondering. How are operating costs for LRT changing versus BRT?
Great lets make our argument by only showing extremes that support our argument. Lets only show transit service where there are either too many people or too few people. I think I’ll start a blog where I show non stop car accidents, road rage, congestion (oh right, thats the planners fault for not spending half of GDP on raod construction), road rage, and maybe I’ll throw in some scenes of Johns picking up prostitution and blame THAT on the autmobile as well – wht not, the Antiplanner is biased as h*ll, so why shouldnt I falsify, exaggerate, lie, or ignore reality.
The key quote is this:
“(and) once we start building the first line we have to complete the vision.”
Imagine the implications.
Okay, sustainibertarian, you don’t like the porridge too hot or too cold. So tell me, where is transit just right!
On the subject of subway construction, an article on Rome’s new subway line. Imagine the task of the engineers — you have to mitigate construction impact for both the living and the dead. It seems tho’ that it would be a perfect candidate for a central subway–the existing perimeter lines are useless.
I am sure you are correct about the Sydney metro plans. It is an announcement for political purposes – the system will never be built.
Sydney is probably too sparsely populated for any capital intensive commuter rail system and would be better served with more roads and buses.
Looking at Tokyo, London, Paris and a few other cities, it seems to me that a rough measure of whether a subway system is successful is whether it is well used during the day, outside rush hour. In those cities, it is. In Sydney, absolutely not, so a capital intensive system is built to support a few hours of reasonably heavy demand five days a week.
Is there a better measure that has been suggested?
Ken Nielsen
Sydney
“But here is a subway that actually makes a profit. (Sorry about the annoying pop-up ad.) Not that any of us would enjoy riding it.”
I came across this while working on a monorail line. The carrying capacities quoted in the glossy brochures depend on having high passenger densities. As an experiment, try to see what 8 people per m2 looks/feels like. You will have to know the other people quite well, though.
8 people/sq. meter (1.35 square ft./person?) is almost beyond comprehension in the U.S. Unofficially, 1.6 sq. ft./person is the about the max possible on a NY IRT subway car. Last time I looked, the APTA considers less than 3 sq, ft./person to constitute crowding.
“Last time I looked, the APTA considers less than 3 sq, ft./person to constitute crowding.”
That is the standard for a spacious appartment in Tokyo 🙂
The Japanese Railways remain profitable because they are allowed to engage in real estate development near stations. This is where they make their money. Their operations continue to incur losses.
Ken,
Urban travel demand in general tends to be peaked during the traditional rush hours, though transit demand is even more pronounced than for other modes. You’re right that this makes such capital-intensive systems a questionable choice.
Transit managers have historically used a measure of passenger boardings per vehicle hour (or revenue hour — the time that the vehicles are in service) as a measure of service effectiveness, since it incorporates both demand and supply characteristics. Incorporating some measure of cost (e.g. $/revenue hr.) allows for a cost-effectiveness measure, such as cost per boarding.
In terms of evaluating the system, you need to find out what objectives the system’s proponents claim that it will serve. Along with the usual pleasantries about peak oil/climate change, I’m sure there will be some mention of traffic congestion and probably air quality. If the system can provide these things, that’s great. However, worldwide experience suggests that cities that have high transit ridership also have unbearable traffic congestion, poor air quality, a large low-income population, or some combination thereof. It is a much better idea to begin with the objectives in mind, then design a system that meets those objectives in as cost-effective and unobtrusive a manner as possible. Unfortunately, very little of transportation planning practice works this way.
I should mention that the University of Sydney is also home to David Hensher, one of the world’s preeminent transportation economists and researchers. He has written extensively on the bus vs. rail issue, as well as on competitive tendering schemes for bus service. I recommend reading some of his writings on the subject.