Slick Vik Posted October 15, 2013 Author Share Posted October 15, 2013 I personally believe that jobs will continue to disperse and that downtown will continue to shrink as a percentage of jobs. Therefore, I don't think commuter rail makes sense. You're playing God here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slick Vik Posted October 15, 2013 Author Share Posted October 15, 2013 (edited) Yes they do. One of the board members had the idea of the city fronting the cost for the streets/utilities with METRO only having to pay for the actual rail infrastructure. This would have allowed METRO to begin construction on the University line a lot sooner. Of course everyone hated this idea. The whole street issue inflates the value of light rail construction here. Curitiba, Brazil is building a subway system for $72 million per mile. A real metro system. Why can't this cost level be brought to the USA? Edited October 15, 2013 by Slick Vik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Houston19514 Posted October 15, 2013 Share Posted October 15, 2013 The whole street issue inflates the value of light rail construction here. Curitiba, Brazil is building a subway system for $72 million per mile. A real metro system. Why can't this cost level be brought to the USA? Curitiba is building an 8.7 mile subway for on a budget of US$1.16 Billion. My calculator says that is $133.33 Million per mile. (And who knows if they will actually do the project on or near budget...) (Still probably lower than we could do here. It has seemed to me as I travel around the world that we seriously over-engineer a lot of our infrastructure. Maybe it's worth the money to make our systems marginally safer and completely accessible, but it does add a lot of costs. Plus, of course, I believe any project getting federal money has to pay union scale wages. That adds huge costs to our projects. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DNAguy Posted October 15, 2013 Share Posted October 15, 2013 Yes they do. One of the board members had the idea of the city fronting the cost for the streets/utilities with METRO only having to pay for the actual rail infrastructure. This would have allowed METRO to begin construction on the University line a lot sooner. Of course everyone hated this idea. Yet when Wal-Mart in the 'Heights' was built, all the 'improvements' to the street were credited back to the company in tax forgiveness. What about 380 agreements with Metro? The city can give back some of their amount of that 1% sales tax they now get for the next 20 years or so in exchange for street improvement. To ask METRO to carry the whole burden is not fair in my opinion. Oh well. Reasonable solutions rarely get enacted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
livincinco Posted October 15, 2013 Share Posted October 15, 2013 You're playing God here. Actually, I expressed an opinion regarding the future based on my observations of current events. Hence the statement "I personally believe". One thing that's always true about predictions is that most of them are going to be wrong, mine included, but that doesn't stop people from making them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slick Vik Posted October 15, 2013 Author Share Posted October 15, 2013 Curitiba is building an 8.7 mile subway for on a budget of US$1.16 Billion. My calculator says that is $133.33 Million per mile. (And who knows if they will actually do the project on or near budget...) (Still probably lower than we could do here. It has seemed to me as I travel around the world that we seriously over-engineer a lot of our infrastructure. Maybe it's worth the money to make our systems marginally safer and completely accessible, but it does add a lot of costs. Plus, of course, I believe any project getting federal money has to pay union scale wages. That adds huge costs to our projects. 22 km is not 8.7 miles The original estimate was 1 billion, I see it's been increased to $1.16 billion, still that would be $84,856,110.37 per mile Pretty good for a subway system. I think the massive amount of environmental studies add to the cost somewhat, and of course wages. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
august948 Posted October 15, 2013 Share Posted October 15, 2013 You're playing God here.No. It's called being realistic. In 50 years Houston will be a city with distributed cores. There'll be a built out light rail system inside the loop and an extensive, bus-based system outside the loop. Transportation planners will flock here to see and copy what we have done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Houston19514 Posted October 15, 2013 Share Posted October 15, 2013 (edited) 22 km is not 8.7 miles The original estimate was 1 billion, I see it's been increased to $1.16 billion, still that would be $84,856,110.37 per mile Pretty good for a subway system. I think the massive amount of environmental studies add to the cost somewhat, and of course wages. No, but 14 km is 8.7 miles. The first phase is 14 km and is budgeted at $1.16 Billion US. Curitiba will have 14 kilometers of subway united with the existing public transit system. Edited October 15, 2013 by Houston19514 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mfastx Posted October 15, 2013 Share Posted October 15, 2013 Yet when Wal-Mart in the 'Heights' was built, all the 'improvements' to the street were credited back to the company in tax forgiveness. What about 380 agreements with Metro? The city can give back some of their amount of that 1% sales tax they now get for the next 20 years or so in exchange for street improvement. To ask METRO to carry the whole burden is not fair in my opinion. Oh well. Reasonable solutions rarely get enacted. Agreed. METRO is already giving 25% or more of it's revenue towards street improvements. It is pretty silly that they would have to pay for street improvements related to light rail in addition to that. Especially since with our without light rail, those street improvements would have had to happen eventually anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mfastx Posted October 15, 2013 Share Posted October 15, 2013 Yet when Wal-Mart in the 'Heights' was built, all the 'improvements' to the street were credited back to the company in tax forgiveness. What about 380 agreements with Metro? The city can give back some of their amount of that 1% sales tax they now get for the next 20 years or so in exchange for street improvement. To ask METRO to carry the whole burden is not fair in my opinion. Oh well. Reasonable solutions rarely get enacted. Agreed. METRO is already giving 25% or more of it's revenue towards street improvements. It is pretty silly that they would have to pay for street improvements related to light rail in addition to that. Especially since with our without light rail, those street improvements would have had to happen eventually anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slick Vik Posted October 15, 2013 Author Share Posted October 15, 2013 (edited) No, but 14 km is 8.7 miles. The first phase is 14 km and is budgeted at $1.16 Billion US. Curitiba will have 14 kilometers of subway united with the existing public transit system. I can find many links saying it's 22 km http://curitibainenglish.com.br/government/urban-mobility/curitibas-park-ways/ http://theoverheadwire.blogspot.com/2009/03/curitiba-subway.html http://www.bnamericas.com/news/privatization/TPI_eyes_Curitiba_subway_project https://sites.google.com/site/globalisingcities/article-1/is-a-metro-the-solution-for-curitiba http://164.67.121.27/files/UP/Posters%202010/1%20ruiz.pdf Edited October 15, 2013 by Slick Vik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slick Vik Posted October 15, 2013 Author Share Posted October 15, 2013 No. It's called being realistic. In 50 years Houston will be a city with distributed cores. There'll be a built out light rail system inside the loop and an extensive, bus-based system outside the loop. Transportation planners will flock here to see and copy what we have done. Bus based system? Hahaha. There will be light rail, commuter rail, and buses will feed into this. It's almost like people are holding on to Houston as the last beakon of hope for automobile ruled cities, because it's the last stubborn one resisting mass transit initiatives as much as possible. Even ORLANDO is making a major rail system. No transportation planner will ever look at Houston except to laugh at it. Hopefully that changes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Houston19514 Posted October 15, 2013 Share Posted October 15, 2013 (edited) I can find many links saying it's 22 km http://curitibainenglish.com.br/government/urban-mobility/curitibas-park-ways/ http://theoverheadwire.blogspot.com/2009/03/curitiba-subway.html http://www.bnamericas.com/news/privatization/TPI_eyes_Curitiba_subway_project https://sites.google.com/site/globalisingcities/article-1/is-a-metro-the-solution-for-curitiba http://164.67.121.27/files/UP/Posters%202010/1%20ruiz.pdf A gold star for effort. But, seriously? Only 2 of those links mentioned the proposed cost. One of those was a forum such as this (hardly authoritative) and the other was a cost estimate from 2009. Note that my link provided both mileage and budget information and was from 2012. Yes, the total subway project will be 22 km. But its' being done in 2 phases. The $1.16 Billion (US) budget only covers the 14 km in phase 1. Here's another link that addresses both the length (14 km) and cost ($2.33 Billion Brazil) in the same article. Edited October 15, 2013 by Houston19514 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kdog08 Posted October 16, 2013 Share Posted October 16, 2013 That 7.5 miles of rail isn't going to get anyone from katy to tmc or downtown. And it's foolish to believe that ridership on additional lines, especially to the suburbs, is going to be anywhere near that of the red line. I'd like to see your backup on the dedicated cost on a similar length of the P&R system. I find it hard to believe that a P&R station and the required buses for a similar length route cost more than the red line and it's equipment. As it is setup now, P&R feeds into DT Houston and makes up a nice chunk of ridership. It would be a great idea to expand P&R across METRO's area into our denser employment centers. Can I take a moment to point how ridiculous this whole discussion is? This is comparing two things that serve different functions and then arguing which one is better.Oh wait, I just remembereds that most of the transportation conversations on this forum are ridiculous. Carry on. The crux of the issue is the lack of balance of funding and vision for alternatives to solo commuting that has taken hold for greater than a half century when Houston began to take off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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