HS2 Route Debate Comes to a Head in Britain
Way too tired from a busy weekend to come up with anything coherent tonight, but I will link to an article in The Independent about a looming battle in Parliament over the route of Britain’s HS2 project linking London to Birmingham:
The new Transport Secretary, Justine Greening, will today come under huge pressure to change the proposed route of the £34bn High Speed Rail link between London and Birmingham.
Conservative MPs who are furious that the Government’s preferred route for HS2 would cut through the Chiltern Hills will join forces with Labour when Ms Greening holds private talks with MPs.
They will offer her a last-minute escape route to head off a major Tory rebellion which could provoke the resignation from the Cabinet of Cheryl Gillan, the Welsh Secretary, whose Chesham and Amersham constituency would be hit.
Some Tories favour Labour’s alternative route, which would run via Heathrow Airport and then follow the line of the M40 motorway, reducing the damage to the countryside in the heart of England.
Ms Greening, promoted to Transport Secretary last month in the reshuffle caused by Liam Fox’s resignation, is backing the project and is said to have an open mind about the precise route. But insiders say David Cameron and George Osborne support the Government’s proposal and are ready to face down the Tory revolt. This would involve high-speed trains using a tunnel from Euston Station to Old Oak Common in north-west London. A spur route to Heathrow would be added later.
From what I can tell the battle over HS2′s route has been even more bitter and contentious than the battles on the Peninsula or in Kings County over California high speed rail’s route. Like their California counterparts, English NIMBYs have been attacking the concept of high speed rail, reasoning that if they can undermine the project itself by poking holes in the numbers, the financing, or the reasoning for building it, the project will die and they’ll be spared. It’s the classic “fear, uncertainty, and doubt” campaign that California NIMBYs and HSR opponents have also been pushing.
The question is whether Cameron and Osborne can maintain party discipline and prevent Tory backbenchers from joining Labour. Since becoming Prime Minister as a result of the May 2010 election Cameron has run a tight ship without major rebellions or policy defeats from within his own party, although his proposed NHS reforms did get stalled when their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, had an internal rebellion on the matter.
Interestingly, the Tory and Labour positions on the HS2 route are the reverse of what they were before the 2010 election:
The two main parties have swapped places on the route. Before last year’s election, the Tories backed the plan now endorsed by Labour. In government, Labour proposed the Chilterns route now supported by the Coalition Government.
It will be interesting to see which route prevails. I am not nearly familiar enough with the project to comment on the impacts to ridership, cost, and other factors that might differentiate between the two routes. But for those of you who are familiar enough, have at it in the comments.
An oldie but goodie: lecture on HS2 by their chief engineer. Quite an insightful and educational lecture on high speed rail in general, recommended especially for skeptics. Link here via our very own Drunk Engineer.
Unlike California, where there is no intercity rail service between LA and SF at all right now, I am seriously skeptical whether HS2 is even needed. A perfectly adequate intercity rail service between London, Birmingham and Manchester already exists via the West Coast Main Line which has a top speed of 200km/h, it takes 1hr22 to Birmingham and 2hr08 to Manchester. Although it is close to capacity a second slower route (the Chiltern Line) exists between London Marylebone and Birmingham which is slower, but underused and which could be upgraded. The HS2 project is insanely expensive for only a marginal reduction in trip times over the existing service.
Elchu Reply:
November 20th, 2011 at 10:59 pm
I don’t agree. As you say, the only ways to ease capacity are either to add new lines, or, as you suggest, to upgrade existing ones. However, the recent WCML upgrades only offered limited improvements, and were extremely expensive. Environmental impacts aside, I would argue that a new line offers a much better return on investment than an upgrade, and if you are building a new line, it might as well be high speed. The full project is not just about Birmingham-London, although even a half hour time saving is not to be sniffed at, but time savings to Yorkshire and Scotland will be much more significant.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 1:04 am
The problem is that, as expensive as the WCML moving block signaling project was, this is even more expensive. Per kilometer, it’s up there with maglev, Swiss base tunnels, and Amtrak’s NEC plan. A lot of us are groaning at (in real terms) $90 million per kilometer in California, but London-Birmingham is nearly $150 million per kilometer.
Andre Peretti Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 7:14 am
I remember a Virgin executive saying it wouldn’t cost a fortune to upgrade signalling so that Pendolinos can run at their nominal speed of 140mph. This would allow more trips. Coupled with the lengthening of Pendolinos from 9 to 11 cars now under way, it would significantly reduce the saturation on London-Birmingham.
Distances in England are shorter than in France and the case for 220mph trains seems weaker, especially at the hair-raising costs announced. And Scots will be denied the no-London-stop access to the continent that they want.
TomW Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 9:25 am
* Even with all that, the WCML main line would still fill up. The issue is throughput (trains per hour from London), not utliisation (daily trips per trainset).
* Upgrading to 140mph would not require moving block. When moving block was first proposed in the 1990s, it had never been done outside of a subway system. Hence why it never happened.
Max Wyss Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 11:03 am
Moving block signalling is not increasing speed; moving block signalling is increasing capacity.
Andy M. Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 5:45 am
One of the reasons the timetable on the WCML goes haywire so often is that there is little spare capacity on the line, making it difficult to recover once things start going wrong.
HS2 is required for capacity reasons, and I guess the logic is, if you’re going to build new anyway you might as well go the whole hog and build iot for speed. This is much the same as in California. An intercity service could be run on existing freight tracks, but UPRR would be up in arms if you tried to run, say, an hourly intercity train, and rightly so. And if you’re going to put in new tracks anyway, the increemental cost required to make them high speed isn’t really that steep.
Remember that like the California project, HS2 is only a first phase of things yet to come. You could argue that shaving minutes off the London- Birmingham sprint isn’t worth the cash. But one day HS2 will be extended (in phases) further north, ultimately reaching Edinburgh and Glasgow. Rail may already be the medium of choice between London and Birmingham, but if you look at London- Scotland you’ll see that the airlines dominate the market and the railway needs to cut travel times to re-take that market.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:52 pm
Sure, but the problem is that it takes an enormous amount of money to reach Scotland at UK construction costs. If the point is to get London-Scotland up as soon as possible and relieve passengers of their Ryanair misery, then they should avoid building gratuitous tunnels in London and instead concentrate on the cheapest travel time reductions on the WCML.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 1:24 pm
It’s far from clear that the tunnels into London are “gratuitous”.
It’s far from clear to me that there are any “cheap travel time reductions” available on the WCML, especially given dense and growing traffic levels and the amount of mixed traffic. And especially especially given the catastrophic budget blowouts and radical under-delivery of the last go around of WCML modernisation.
It’s plausible to me that a new relief bypass route from inner London to the Midlands, its capacity enhanced by a uniformity of traffic type, lack of junctions and dedicated terminals, might be the most feasible solution. (At non-Anglophone project costs.)
Alon Levy Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 2:58 pm
I’m fine with building a dedicated line from London to the Midlands – but the high-speed line doesn’t have to start a few hundreds of meters from Euston. It’s fine to start a few kilometers or even a small number of tens of kilometers out. The original LGV Sud-Est started well outside Paris proper, even after the full line opened, and ran about 30 km along the legacy Gare de Lyon network (link). It was extended farther in in 1996, after the Interconnexion Est opened, but even now diverges 9 km out.
Possible differences include much higher traffic on the legacy commuter network into Euston than into Gare de Lyon (though, in 1981 the RER D had not been built yet, which means that all commuter traffic into the station converged on the main terminal). There’s also much more legacy intercity traffic, but this is 100% because Britain has a fast legacy network with high ridership to Birmingham and Manchester, and this ridership will be diverted almost entirely to HSR once HS2 opens.
But then again, I may be misinterpreting the construction cost angle. It’s possible that the tunnel is not a disproportionate share of the cost, and that Britain’s construction costs are high all over, including on the surface sections. That said, it’s not the case in the US, in which most CAHSR blowouts as well as the most outrageous Amtrak Vision items are all in the urban areas (counting San Jose as urban because it’s getting urban-grade infrastructure) but the Central Valley segment is affordable. It’s also not the case in Japan, whose construction costs are a matter of high land costs; it has the highest subway construction costs outside the Anglosphere, but Shinkansen construction in Aomori cost $50 million/km despite very heavy tunneling.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 3:38 pm
Their costs are high all over. Read up about the Network Rail WCML upgrade sometime and weep. Or skim through the HS2 rough costings on the DfT site.
Fitting more traffic into any of the existing terminii or any of the lines approaching them would be herculean, or at least non-trivial, or at least non-obvious. It isn’t blatantly Amateur Hour in London, unlike SF for example, even if it isn’t Tokyo.
Also: UIC equipment with a larger UIC loading gauge will never run other than on new lines.
Lastly: My personal experience and research is limited (not that that stops others!) so I simply don’t have well-founded opinions and arguments about the project or its details or its alternatives.
Andrew Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 3:55 pm
I agree that if HS2 gets extended to Scotland, the speed advantage will become much more important. However, if there is no effort to seriously hold down costs, it has no chance of getting built. However in the context of London-Birmingham only, I see a number of problems with the proposal:
- There are two complete existing lines between London and Birmingham, the West Coast Main Line to Euston and the Chiltern line to Marylebone/Paddington. Looking at train schedules suggests that the second line has spare capacity and could be expanded. Although this line is slower train tickets are cheaper than on the WCML; many travellers care more about cost than speed and would continue to use the slower trains if HS2 were built.
- Much of the capacity on the WCML is used by commuter trains to places like Milton Keynes. While HS2 will allow more commuter trains on this line I have to seriously question whether having large numbers of people commute long distances to London makes sense. It seems to me that London’s notoriously high housing costs and long commutes to London are caused by the UK government’s refusal to (a) allow more high rise apartment building construction in London and (b) its refusal to alter greenbelt boundaries to allow more low rise housing to be built, e.g. between Milton Keynes and London. Similarly, given the very high cost of building new rail capacity into London like HS2 and Crossrail, I seriously have to question whether it makes sense to encourage more employment growth in Central London. Encouraging more employment growth in secondary centres like Croydon, Reading, etc. which are still well served by rail ought to reduce the pressure on overburdened tube and train lines.
Andy M. Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 5:02 am
Alan, some of the most congested points on the UK rail system are the immediate approaches to London. Any new line must therefore address that from the beginning. This is different from Paris where there was capacity in the major terminii. Montparnasse was heavily underused before the TGV was taken there and Gares Nord and Est also basically managed to absorb TGV traffic without major additions
Dan K Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 6:37 am
Much though i would like it the line is probably not going all the way to scotland for a very long time. It will end being high-speed to manchester/ leeds and continue at conventional (125mph) speeds furher north.
There’s no real business case to go all the way as the capacity issues are all on the southern sections. The traffic further north is just not big enough to justify the expense.
However with London-Glasgow/Edinburgh travel times down from 4.5 to 3.5 hours the train will carry on grabbing more market share from flights.
Elchu Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 8:05 am
I must admit I’ve not particularly been paying attention with the public face of HS2. Presumably a lot of that cost is caused by the tunnel through London, isn’t it?
Alon Levy Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 6:00 pm
Probably. But even that wouldn’t explain it. Even at London’s excessive tunneling costs ($1 billion per kilometer, and that’s for Crossrail, a much more complex line since it passes under the entire Zone 1 Underground), it leaves high per-km construction costs for the rest.
On top of this, is that tunnel through London really necessary? If the tunnel is that expensive, they can start out of Paddington initially and then switch to the proposed HS2 alignment between Old Oak Common and North Acton. Alternatively, if there’s absolutely no room on the Great Western Main Line, they can start out of Euston, use the existing WCML (replacing existing intercity trains and using 400-meter trains for capacity), and then transition to HS2 by tunneling from Kensal Green to North Acton; it’s still a tunnel, but it’s a shorter and more suburban tunnel.
Elchu Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 8:44 pm
The costs on Crossrail really aren’t excessive considering what they’re trying to do – it’s not just below the Underground; it’s literally weaving between it, sewer lines, the Thames, etc. It runs breathtakingly close to some of them, too.
There are a number of possible reasons for the tunnel, but Euston’s platforms are only about 240m long (Google Earth says) at the moment, so improvements will be needed there anyway, and there are almost certainly low bridges, tight curves, and little capacity on approach. Paddington may be an option, although it’s not as well located. Personally though, I don’t understand why they’re using Euston rather than St Pancras or Kings Cross.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 9:29 pm
Similarly complex tunnelling in comparably gruyere-textured sub-metropolitan palimpsests in non-English-speaking countries comes nowhere close to UK (or US) prices. It isn’t geology or geography which appears to be dominant.
Elchu Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 10:28 pm
[Citation needed]
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 10:33 pm
I like this citation:
Alon Levy Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 10:34 pm
I don’t know anywhere in the world except Crossrail and some US projects where tunnels cost more than $1 billion per km. And I know very few where tunnels cost more than $500 million per km, and even then they don’t cost a lot more than that.
http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-rail-construction-costs/
Elchu Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 6:46 am
Richard – indeed. I admitted that I’m not so familiar with HS2. We were talking about Crossrail, and I know more about that than you do!
Alon – thanks, that’s all I was asking for; I’ll digest it later on.
Dan K Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 6:16 am
Alon the fact is London is expensive. And constructing anything of size here will cost a lot. I sued to live by the Crossrail works at Farringdon and BUYING and then demolitiong large pieces of prime central london property costs a bomb.
Then constructing more property on top also costs a bomb, particulalry when you’re building something to last 100 years.
Also as to regards to whether london tunnels are neccessary for HS2: if you think tunneling through central london is expensive try NOT tunneling through it. The cost to buy and demolish property woudl be astronomical.
Using the existing WCML lines into london is a non-starter. The whole point of HS2 is really to increase capacity, if you use the same lines into london then capacity hasn’t increased as london is the choke point.
Andre Peretti Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 3:52 am
Imagine myriads of consultants and consultants’ consultants. Firms dealing with each other through a multitude of lawyers. Banks (there were 354 of them for the Channel tunnel) lending to each other in such opaque combinations that teams of financial advisers are needed to oversee it all. Multiple insurance policies, which often overlap, with each insurance firm reinsured with Lloyd’s of London.
When all have taken their bite, just a fraction of the initial funding remains to finance actual work.
You may also add inflated labor costs because only workers from a specific union are allowed to do a specific job at a specific location.
Gag Halfrunt Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 4:34 am
Closed shops are llegal in the UK. In any case, very few people in the private sector belong to trades unions.
There are large numbers of foreign workers (typically from Poland and other central and eastern European countries) in the construction sector, something that would surely tend to keep wages down.
Gag Halfrunt Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 4:36 am
That should of course read “illegal in the UK”.
Andy M. Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 5:54 am
Euston is the only London terminus that you can flatten without invoking the wrath of the conservationists. As part of HS2, Euston will be flattened and a modern station built in its place with sufficient capacity for the new line plus existing services. St Pancras doesn’t have that sort of spare capacity any more, now that the Eurostar uses it (although if we’d been having this converstaion some years ago, it would have been a no brainer). Kings Cross would also be difficult to extend due to the cramped nature of the site.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 2:59 pm
Fair enough. This I can buy. But, is it really necessary to flatten? That is, is it not possible to just lengthen the platforms? I’ll admit to knowing nothing about Paddington, but at Euston it seemed like there would be space, at least in principle; in practice, maybe the space is required for critical junctions.
Andy M. Reply:
November 23rd, 2011 at 5:13 am
The current Euston station was built in the 1960s by flattening the old Euston whose origins went back to Stepehenson’s day and through all the ad-hoc adding on of bits had become impractical and messy. The new station was planned a little too early, however, as it still revolved around many aspects of old-style rail operation that were discontinued in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. the structure, as modern as it may look from the outside, accomodates for many things that no longer exist (such as including motorail ramps) and the architects gave little thought to flexibility or being able to change things. There is hence a lot of wasted space. Also, when the new Euston was built, the tracks were set back by some distance to be able to create the present concourse area and bus station etc. The new Euston will correct that by extending the tracks back towards the Euston road.
Andy M. Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 5:50 am
There used to be an additional pair of tracks on the GWML out of Paddington and as far as Subway junction (for Old Oak). These tracks were used in the days that the GW&GC Chiltern Joint Line, that now runs into Marylebone, ran into Paddington. The land is still there used mostly as storage or just derelict. Re-instating those tracks should not be too difficult. Once Crossrail opens, there will be a reduction in the number of local services terminating at Paddington and so some of the service platforms should be availeble for other uses, eg, as a temporary terminus for HS2 until the money for the tunnel can be raised.
Andy M. Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 9:04 am
sorry, my typo, I meant surface platforms, not service platforms.
I’m a Brit living in the Bay Area – I work opposite the Transbay Terminal. Until last year, I lived in the Chilterns and travelled on the existing West Coast Main Line everyday. This is close to the proposed new line.
The real driver for the HS2 is not speed, but capacity. The WCML gets busier every year. Train travel in the UK is marching ever upwards. Even with the recent upgrades to the WCML, there is a squeeze on capacity now – for sure there will be in the future.
The difference between the UK and California is the level of political support. The UK generally maintains support for HS2 in the main political parties. The argument now rests with the NIMBYs from some of the wealthiest parts of the south of England. Small in number, but strong in influence.
Funny – I don’t remember government ministers threatening to resign when the M40 motorway [freeway] was built along the same corridor through the same hills and countryside…
Drunk Engineer Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 9:57 am
Not true at all. Highway construction in the UK countryside has become quite controversial — to the point of being politically toxic.
O/T
xkcd today has an interesting chart comparing amounts of money. There is a small section of megaprojects near the top right (including the Channel Tunnel, Interstate System, Bay Bridge Replacement, CAHSR – still listed as $45 billion, etc) though there’s more to get out of the chart than just that.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 6:01 pm
I sent Randall an email correcting his CAHSR and NEC Vision numbers, with links. I also asked him to look up the Gotthard Base Tunnel.
OT: Bay Area transportation projects to be judged on benefits vs. costs
Peter Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Why the hell has it taken this long for the U.S. to use this sort of methodology to help decisionmakers?
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Except they’re not really doing such analysis. Not remotely.
MTC staff sandbag the costs and benefits to ensure that favoured projects go forward … and that most-favoured projects (PBQD Central Subway, PBQD BART to Santa Clara) are explicitly exempt from analysis, defunding, deferring, or cancellation. (“Committed projects are not subject to a project performance assessment.”)
http://apps.mtc.ca.gov/meeting_packet_documents/agenda_1629/04_2_CommittedPolicy_PC_031111_final.pdf
The agency’s executive staff are limitlessly corrupt.
Peter Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 4:04 pm
I’m open to your claim that they are not doing such analysis. However, do you have any such proof?
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 4:22 pm
Sure you are. Wide open.
“MTC Resolution 4006″.
Let me Google that for you/
http://blog.transformca.org/post/4996217636/politics-over-performance-option-1-wins-at-mtc
http://www.transdef.org/Blog/Whats_hot_files/806be2547d02c80511d39a08377e3301-35.html
http://transbayblog.com/2011/04/13/when-commitment-isnt-a-virtue/
http://transbayblog.com/2011/04/28/a-missed-opportunity-and-the-shortcomings-of-regional-planning/
http://transbayblog.com/2009/03/26/shifting-funds-shifty-priorities/
etc etc etc.
Tom McNamara Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Oh they are doing the analysis…but the whole tenor of this article stunk of boosterism (see what a great value the SJ extension is kids… it’s only tenth on the list).
Secondly, even if the MTC was a cathedral of angels… it can’t do much about the parochial interests of Congressmen eager to dump cash back in their districts. Your link actually demonstrates that MTC wants more local control, not less, which is a step in the right direction (at least on paper).
Your depiction of MTC-BART reminds me of another famous Northern California allegory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbtMQ_bEfVA
ladyk Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Good to have those ratios IF they are realistically (not politically) calculated. Two problems: (taken from experience) costs are regularly under- and benefits regularly overestimated. Unsexy but efficient solutions are downgraded to protect the Disney castle projects. Additionally, even the gamed numbers are not respected – ego projects at the bottom of the list are of course favored while the top projects get deferred.
Peter Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 3:09 pm
I’m guessing CBOSS is included under “Ten hourly Caltrain runs”? That shit just needs to die.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 3:51 pm
No, everything Caltrain is included. (And frankly, given PCJPB/PTG/HNTB/etc “commuter railroad” mindset, costs, and “planning”, this could almost be seen as good thing. Death is too kind a fate for any of them.)
All cash to goes to BART and freeways, always. That’s what inexplicably as-yet-unindicted MTC head Steve “$5 billion Bay Bridge cost overrun” Heminger is paid to ensure.
Peter Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Bye bye, BART to Livermore…
Reality Check Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 4:38 pm
Window Open Now for Livermore BART Funding
Alameda County commission proposes ballot measure to increase sales tax for transportation
Peter Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 5:14 pm
“The estimated cost of the extension is $1.2 billion.”
Since when? As of 4/20/11, the cost stood at $3.83 billion.
Reality Check Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 5:57 pm
The Livermore Independent story seems to be talking about “Phase 1″ (to Isabel & 580) being $1.2b. That’s plausibly less than half the cost of the full $3.83b extension as described in BART’s Livermore Extension Fact Sheet.
Additionally, Haggerty appears to be trying to (further) downplay the real cost(s) when he says things like:
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 7:09 pm
That contribution and $3 will buy you a cup of coffee.
Meanwhile, the far more populous 80% of San Francisco that has been paying for BART as long …
Daniel Krause Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 6:37 pm
There is a movement to abandon extending the BART to downtown Livermore in favor of a less expensive extension down the middle of I-580, so I think that is where the reduced cost is coming in (and it may also be a phase 1 of something larger).
It doesn’t make sense to spend almost $4 billion under any scenario because even if it does access downtown, Livermore has only about 80,000 people. Even if TOD were included, can’t see how it justifies the cost. And going down 580 may be about 1/2 the cost, but then it is another poor alignment in the middle of a freeway that will accomodate only park n ride with maybe an apartment or two thrown in – no urbanism.
Peter Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 11:49 am
Agreed. If BART is in fact hell-bent on expanding to Livermore and beyond (Tracy?), they should just do it with a DMU like they’re doing for eBART. I personally think freeway alignments are stupid outgrowths of sprawl-tastic development, but when the alternative is a nose-bleed expensive extension like we have here…
Reality Check Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 4:51 pm
SF Transbay Terminal project has murky future
joe Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 6:35 pm
File under “If we don’t use it, it will not be that useful.”
Beta Magellan Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 7:54 pm
Do they go into detail about how they evaluated the projects, or is it a pure black box? I’m familiar with a similar analysis for the Chicago area, and it didn’t look much like this.
Drunk Engineer Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 10:38 pm
The model is a complete joke. It is no coincidence that the rankings align perfectly with pre-determined political outcomes.
Officially, the model ranks projects based on reduction of VMT and carbon emissions. And yet the projects with the highest “cost/benefit” are freeway expansions. And the project with the lowest cost/benefit is (I kid you not) building a regionwide bike network. In fact, the model computes a negative cost/benefit for the bike network.
Rail expansion ranks badly in the model too. That is because the MTC sandbagged rail category with every bad project imaginable, including ferry expansion and a 2nd transbay BART tube.
Donk Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 10:52 pm
LA had a ranking system for all of its Measure R projects. I think it was mainly based on ridership/$. The Purple Line subway and the Regional Connector were by far the highest scoring, and the Crenshaw Line, with all of its useless viaducts and its low ridership projections, was at the bottom.
But what is getting built first? You guessed it – the Crenshaw Line. This is getting build first from a political/social justice standpoint. I don’t buy the social justice point at all – the argument is that there is not enough transit in poor, minority areas. But almost all of the current lines (Blue, Expo, East LA Gold, part of Pasadena Gold, most of Red/Purple Lines) are in poor, minority areas. And then when they want to build something through a minority area at grade, it is racism. Hence the overpriced Crenshaw Line that is not eligible for Federal Funds because it is purely a political/social justice gift. Thank you Yvone Braithwaite-Burke and Mark Ridley-Thomas.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 11:07 pm
How did the Foothills Extension score?
Donk Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 11:28 pm
Pretty crappily. The only thing saving it is that it “only” costs $730M. Crenshaw has already ballooned based $1.2B. Basically, there were no surprises in the report. All of the projects that you think have no value are the ones that have no value. All of the ones that have value are the ones that don’t have as much political support. Unfortunately I can’t track down the report.
I would love to see them connect the Green Line to the Norwalk Metrolink/Amtrak/HSR station, but this will never happen, even though I would guess that it would have among the largest bang for the buck in terms of increased ridership for Metro, Metrolink, and Amtrak. But of course they won’t consider increased ridership on Metrolnik and Amtrak as part of the equation since it would be a study only performed by Metro.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 21st, 2011 at 11:54 pm
So, the high-ranking projects were the Wilshire Subway, the Regional Connector, the Expo Line, maybe the 405 line, and sending Zev Yaroslavsky to San Francisco in order to improve transit planning quality in both cities. The low-ranking projects were the Santa Ana branch, the Orange Line extensions, Foothills, and Crenshaw. Am I missing anything?
Nathanael Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 4:17 am
“and sending Zev Yaroslavsky to San Francisco in order to improve transit planning quality in both cities”
OK, that cracked me up. Sounds accurate though!
Donk Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 11:55 am
I think the Orange Line extensions scored relatively high since they are cheap and get descent ridership. Expo did pretty well. Of course all of this is assuming that you believe the ridership estimates.
Some people are going to say that Metro lied in coming up with the ridership estimates and that they pulled a political stunt in trying to support the subway lines.
MarkB Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:14 am
Metro has for years wanted to connect the Green Line to the Norwalk Metrolink station. It’s the City of Norwalk that won’t let them.
thatbruce Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 10:56 am
source? I thought that the City of Norwalk had been/is against extending I-105 to I-5, but not against extending the Green Line.
Donk Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:06 pm
I believe the main problem is lack of local support. This project benefits the region as a whole, mostly those who would pass thru Norwalk via line transfers or government workers who work in the county coutrhouses etc that are based in Norwalk; but there really is no groundswell of local support for it. Also the cost is very high, since they would need to tunnel under a portion of Norwalk due to local hostility from the freeway construction. I support some sort of elevated or underground line here, since you don’t want a key portion of the line that connects to Metrolink/Amtrak/HSR to run slowly through the streets. Street-running light rail is very painful, except maybe for the endpoints of a line.
Bottom line is that there is no “champion” for this project. Villaraigosa, Tom Labonge, and others pushed the Purple Line. Villaraigosa pushed for the Regional Connector. Braithwaite-Burke and Ridley-Thomas pushed for Crenshaw. There was a huge amount of grass-roots support for the Expo line. Antonovich and Adam Schiff have been pushing for the Foothill extension. Unfortunately, the Norwalk connection wasn’t even on the Measure R list or the main list of projects on the Metro Long-Term Plan, since nobody ever pushed for it. Southeast LA County got the 5 freeway widening project instead on Measure R.
The Norwalk Gap Project is one of the most important projects in LA, probably after the Purple Line and Regional Connector.
thatbruce Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 3:41 pm
With the Green Line being otherwise completely grade-separated, Metro would be foolish to throw away one of their design goals of having an automated line by having in-street running at one end.
Playing aerial tourist over the area via various mapping services and trying to avoid major roads (which introduces huge construction constraints), if you’re willing to replace the current current Norwalk Green Line station with one beneath its carpark, an extended line could hook south from the end of I-105 then follow Leffingwell Rd/Foster Rd/Pioneer Blvd under I-5 then Civic Center Drive to the Norwalk Transit Center. All fanciful of course.
bixnix Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 11:22 am
As it looks like a Green Line extension would have to be either subway, aerial, or a complete redoing of Imperial Highway for surface running, it’ll probably have a fairly mediocre bang for the buck. I don’t recall seeing any studies yet as to how the extension would actually be done, and for how much.
Donk Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Agreed, I haven’t seen ridership estimates. But I think it would have a huge bang for the buck, in that it would turn the Green Line into a “line to nowhere” into a “line to somewhere” and also boost Metrolink/Amtrak ridership.
There are many people in southwest LA county who do not ride Amtrak because they have to drive all the way to downtown to use it. It would be an option for the hundreds of thousands of people who live in that area if they can just get dropped off at a Green Line station and zoom down the 105 to the Norwalk station.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:48 pm
It partly depends on modernizing Metrolink. Right now there’s really no point in connecting from the Green Line to Metrolink, which is too slow and infrequent and requires paying for the transfer.
Donk Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:57 pm
Right, but I would hope that if they start planning the Green Line extension now, by the time it is actually done (in 20 years?) they would have some upgrades done on the Amtrak line and more frequent and efficient Metrolink service. At this point, that connection is not going to be made for 40 years, since it is not even on the radar.
thatbruce Reply:
November 22nd, 2011 at 5:03 pm
I thought we were talking about improving a connection between a light rail system and a main line system, not any requirement to improve the main line system as a whole.
Right now, the connection between Green Line Norwalk and Metrolink Norwalk is by uncoordinated local bus. Having to wait at both ends for the next service is what puts most people off using public transit, so there’s one avenue for improvement right there.