nfitz
Superstar
In the peanut gallery where no one with a clue how it all works criticizes work that they aren't qualified to pass judgement on?
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Ottawa Confederation Line LRT (City of Ottawa, U/C)
- Thread starter green22
- Start date
unimaginative2
Senior Member
And no doubt you're one of the well-qualified "experts" that has produced these massive cost overruns.
Haha...and P.S. isn't this the guy who shrieks "PERSONAL ATTACK!!!!!!!!!" at the mildest criticism of anything he says?
edit: I might add that it was the "peanut gallery" that proposed the change in Ottawa that we're all praising while the "experts" wanted the panned cross-country alignment.
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Mapleson
Active Member
I can't seem to get to $350m/km. Did you use $1718m in capital costs, excluding the $397m in design, management, and risk? Also, 12.7km total length and 2.5km tunnel length are more reflective of the revised design.
$397m + $1718m - $493m = $1622m (non-tunnel costs)
$1622m / 12.7 km = $127.7m / km (non-tunnel costs per km)
$493m / 2.5 km = $197.2m / km (tunnel-only costs per km)
$127.7m + $197.2m = $324.9m (tunnel cost per km)
Use the same above with 12.5 and 2.4 km only gets me to $335m/km though.
nfitz
Superstar
...uh ... no ... why would you think that?
Your original comment wasn't clear ... you said that shows where the problems lie. What do you mean by "that"?
??? I don't see how this relates to anything in this thread. What are you talking about?
??? I thought the changes in Ottawa came from public meetings and professional consultants? It came from the Interweb?
Mapleson
Active Member
So it was random third-party comments, and not the additional geotechnical investigation and value engineering that came up with the revised design?
The cross-country alignment used more conservative assumptions that could have as easily been revised as switching to the Queen St alignment. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like more of the peanut-gallery praise has been for shallower stations and decreased construction cost, while most of the peanut-gallery concerns has been about station spacing and increased walking distances.
rbt
Senior Member
The Ottawa numbers do not appear to include inflation either. There were comments about the $2.1B number being 2009 dollars and the value engineering being necessary because construction wouldn't start until 2013.
I wouldn't be surprised if Ottawa found themselves $500M over budget in 2017 due to inflation during construction if they tender multiple independent contracts.
TTC numbers for Spadina and Eglinton do include inflation to end of project.; adjusted both for interest earned on bonds (essentially 3% at this time and inflation of construction costs).
rbt
Senior Member
The Value Engineering which was applauded earlier in this thread for Ottawa tends to cost the TTC tens of millions for a line like Spadina.
We can't applaud things like value engineering saving on construction costs while simultaneously complaining about the cost of engineering.
waterloowarrior
Senior Member
unimaginative2
Senior Member
In the peanut gallery where no one with a clue how it all works criticizes work that they aren't qualified to pass judgement on?
It came from a city councillor based on citizen comments. That certainly fits your definition of the peanut gallery. The engineers proposed the cross-country alignment. The peanut gallery questioned them and suggested a different alignment.
It would not cost tens of millions of dollars to "discover" that an elevated alignment might be cheaper than an underground alignment for the Spadina line.
Ah, but that's the beauty of a properly-designed fixed-price contract.
nfitz
Superstar
That would be a public meeting - that's what I mentioned.
No ... that would be the interweb.
Really? Normally that's planners ... who was the engineer? Should be a sealed document somewhere.
Does it matter if it would be cheaper? Both the past and current administrations have made it clear they have no interest in building els ... not that there is much alignment that it would actually work on ... other than perhaps the stretch from Steeles to north of 407.
rbt
Senior Member
Normally I would expect construction dollars to include inflation BUT they indicated their value engineering would recover a large part of inflation between the time of announcement (2009) and construction start (2013). If they took the time to carefully analyse actual construction cost escalation as contracts are awarded; why wouldn't they include that bit of inflation before contracts were tendered?
I obviously don't have the details on exactly what was done; so I anticipate the worst and that cost escalation during construction has not been considered.
unimaginative2
Senior Member
Wow...here's an interesting nugget from the report:
This is interesting too:
These travel times are also pretty impressive:
The stations also look quite beautiful.
This is interesting too:
These travel times are also pretty impressive:
The stations also look quite beautiful.
CapitalSeven
Senior Member
A number of the "value-engineering changes" that have occurred in the last few months (and apparently last few days) are options that were on the table as far back as 2008. The 2008 study documents show the Queen street option with a dip down to Rideau. It's not exactly what we are getting now. The current plan is a hybrid of the original Queen option and the cross-country route. It looks as though it's designed so that the section from the flats can be built cut-and-cover if that works out to be more economical. The section from Metcalfe almost certainly has to be a bored tunnel, since it passes under several large buildings, the canal and a few trunk sewers, not to mention that one end of Rideau station now sits about 75 feet below the conference centre.
The option for Campus on the surface with the portal north of that was also in the original options. And so was putting the rail platforms at Blair on the elevated level, which was discarded as cheaper but possibly leading to bus congestion. I guess they decided to gamble, but it looks like the bus platform will be about 750 feel long, so it should be OK. This is mostly a case of climbing down from a lot of expensive decisions that were reasonable when some operationial factors were taking precedence over cost.
A page or so back there was some speculation about converting this to another technology since it will be completely grade separated. I don't think that is going to happen. The updates that came out in the last few months made it clear that, while the east-west line will be completely separated from cars, the planners are allowing for pedestrian/cylce crossings in a few places such as LeBreton Flats or the Parkway / Byron alignments. The flexibility of light rail allows for such solutions which can lessen the impact on the area and save a lot of money in the process.
While converting the O-Train to LRT seems to be many years off in the future, the concept is still to interline it through the tunnel. At the south end, it would run through Riverside South at grade on or beside the street.
The option for Campus on the surface with the portal north of that was also in the original options. And so was putting the rail platforms at Blair on the elevated level, which was discarded as cheaper but possibly leading to bus congestion. I guess they decided to gamble, but it looks like the bus platform will be about 750 feel long, so it should be OK. This is mostly a case of climbing down from a lot of expensive decisions that were reasonable when some operationial factors were taking precedence over cost.
A page or so back there was some speculation about converting this to another technology since it will be completely grade separated. I don't think that is going to happen. The updates that came out in the last few months made it clear that, while the east-west line will be completely separated from cars, the planners are allowing for pedestrian/cylce crossings in a few places such as LeBreton Flats or the Parkway / Byron alignments. The flexibility of light rail allows for such solutions which can lessen the impact on the area and save a lot of money in the process.
While converting the O-Train to LRT seems to be many years off in the future, the concept is still to interline it through the tunnel. At the south end, it would run through Riverside South at grade on or beside the street.
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Northern Magus
Active Member
That would be correct: he clearly can't handle even the slightest punch whatsoever. Starts claiming victimhood, demanding apologies, and clamouring for others to do his research for him. Now he's thrown a small hissy fit over the meaning of the word "that".
Speaks volumes about him.
Regarding the LRT, if anyone can finally get this done for Ottawa, it's Jim Watson. Barring a sudden cancellation of funds from a Hudak government, I fully expect this to get built.
nfitz
Superstar
Let's get back to this ... there seems to be an assumption that there is no value engineering on the Spadina extension, and that the Ottawa system should be applauded for doing value engineering. And yet the Ottawa project seems to be more expensive per kilometre than the Spadina project - and TTC has had at least 11 value engineering workshops on Spadina.