MontrÃ©al – Catbus

2017 in Review

ant6n — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 07:10:43 +0000

View of Montreal and Mont-Royal from the North. Note the Mont-Royal tunnel entrance below the center.

In 2017 for this blog, the big story continued to be the REM. Early in the year the BAPE (environmental consultation process) published their report, in which they concluded that at this time they can not recommend that this project should continue. I had been following that consultation closely, and wrote a long memoir and gave a presentation at the BAPE, which focussed on issues with the project and possible ways to address them (see 1-page synthesis map).

I also noted VIA Rail’s strange contribution to the consultations, where it appeared they were in favor of a project that will compromise their plans for an intercity rail network.

During the year, CDPQInfra continued undeterred and unwilling to address the problems identified in the consultations, backed by municipal and provincial governments whose highest priorities were that the project continue as fast as possible, at any cost. The provincial government even passed a law to override processes and construct an alternate reality in order to rush the project through.

One particular concern, besides the planning issues and CDPQInfra’s continuing misrepresentations of numbers and facts, is the privatization of important existing rail infrastructure. Late in the year I made an accounting of the value they will receive via the privatization of the Deux-Montagnes line and Mont-Royal tunnel, estimating that this will represent a subsidy worth about a billion dollars.

2017 and Me

On a personal level, I stopped working at Transit App in 2017. I had worked there for three and half years. Among other things, I developed an algorithm to automatically generate pretty transit maps. After moving on from my developer role there, I took some time off to go to Recurse Center in New York City, a sort of “writer’s retreat for programmers”.

During that time I kept getting dragged back to transit and transportation issues. For example I spent a lot of time to prepare for the previously mentioned Vendome Consultation.

That led me to think that I should focus my professional career more around transportation, and in the second half of 2017 I started an MBA in Sustainable Mobility at the Technische UniversitÃ¤t Berlin.

In 2018, I’ll spend about half my time in Berlin, and half the time in Montreal.

Privatization of the Deux-Montagnes Line:How to Value a Transit Line?

ant6n — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 22:52:05 +0000

How do you make subsidized transit profitable overnight, without moving a single stone?
– By privatizing it, but not in the way youâ€re thinking.

During the BAPE consultations for the REM last year, I ran into Aref Salem, a city councillor who was a board member of the AMT (now RTM). He was quite in favour of the rail project: his riding is bisected by the Deux-Montagne commuter rail line, which will be replaced by the REM. He was also part of then-mayor Coderreâ€s administration.

When I expressed concerns about below-value privatization of the infrastructure of the Deux-Montagnes line, including the important Mont-Royal rail tunnel, he assured me: â€œthere will be a detailed accountingâ€.

Well, Quebecers are still waiting for that detailed accounting, which is starting to be urgent, since the project is still rapidly moving forward: in 2 months, the CDPQ hopes to announce the consortium who will build the REM.

How much will the CDPQ pay for the Deux-Montagne line?

CDPQInfra has repeatedly dodged the question of how much they will pay for the line. So far, there has been no clear answer, although they claimed they won’t receive subsidies via the line, and that they will pay â€œmarket valueâ€ – the market value of an asset being the price that can be obtained on an open and competitive market.

Itâ€s hard not to be cynical about this kind of statement, as there isnâ€t exactly an open â€œmarketâ€ for underground rail tunnels. There also isnâ€t any competition, for example in the form of a bidding process. Instead, the government has decided to transfer the Deux-Montagnes line to the CDPQ, just like that.

So how much will they pay for the line?

From the few numbers that are available, we know that:

the CDPQ planned to pay 585M$ for the â€œacquisition of the corridorâ€ (which includes the line), relocation of utilities and soil decontamination.
the responsibility for moving utilities and soil decontamination was apparently later shifted to the government of Quebec, which lists it as 180M$ in this budget note (see page 16)
Which leaves only 400M$ for all land acquisition. But the existing Deux-Montagnes line is only 30km out of the 67km required for the REM, so they canâ€t have counted more than a couple hundred million to buy it.

Although CDPQInfra hasnâ€t given explicit numbers on how much they expect to pay, they like to remind us that the AMT bought the line from CN in 2014 for only $97 million. As if to insinuate that the line is really only worth that much.

Weâ€re talking 100M$ for an electrified, rapid transit line that is 30km long, including a 5km tunnel. Am I the only one who thinks that seems just a little bit too low for a line that would surely cost billions to build today?

Yet we keep hearing that number, as if that was all the money weâ€ve ever put into the line.

Evaluating the actual value of infrastructure is not exactly a straightforward task. In this article, Iâ€ll be looking at:

How much money did we actually Invest in the line?
How much is the line worth on the RTMâ€s Books?
How much the land of the line is worth?
Business valuation using dividend discount model
How the ownership model moves infrastructure out of public control
The replacement value
Summary

How Much Money did we actually invest in the line?

It turns out that weâ€ve invested much more into the rail line over the last decades. Even the original construction of the line and the Mount-Royal tunnel a hundred years ago was actually paid by the public. The tunnel and line were built by the private Canadian Northern Railway, but the Federal government paid for it when the company was nationalized (aka bailed out) in 1918 in exchange for funds to repay construction debts.

Of course it probably doesnâ€t make sense to count investment from that far back, and the line didnâ€t see much investment in the 60s, 70s and 80s anyway.

However, there was major renovation starting in 1992. It cost about 300M$ to rebuild the overhead electrification infrastructure and buy new trains. After that, the AMT invested more money, most notably over the last couple of years.

To figure out how much in total, we can look at the three-year capital plans of the AMT. This document is published every year and contains not only a breakdown of funds the AMT hopes to spend on every project in the future, but also the total amounts spent in the past.

By looking at consecutive years and calculating the difference in the total amounts spent, it is possible to figure out how much money was actually spent every year:

Example: some capital plan entries for the Eastern Junction Grade separation project.
In any year, the AMT never really spent as much as they hoped beforehand.
Also, the total estimated budget keeps increasing.

Going through the capital plans since 1996 (I found 20 in total), and tracking every project related to the Deux-Montagnes line, I found that we spent the following:

Big Projects	733.3 M$
DM infrastructure rebuild (1993-1995)	168.0 M$
Trains – MR-90 acquisition (1994-1995)	130.0 M$
Acquisition from CN (2014)	97.0 M$
Jonction de l’Est (2011-2015, 100%)	50.6 M$
Reno Tunnel (2012-2017, 100%)	43.2 M$
Reno Tunnel (2018-2019, 100%)	50.2 M$
Centre Entretien P-St-Charles (2008-2017, 60%)	175.2 M$
Centre Entretien P-St-Charles (2018, 60%)	19.1 M$
Small Projects	152.5 M$
Trains – MR-90 improvement projects	19.7 M$
Parking lots	11.6 M$
Stations	3.0 M$
Infrastructure (tracks, signals, overhead,h etc)	20.2 M$
Studies	5.3 M$
Other Deux-Montagnes Projects	1.0 M$
Various Shared Projects	91.8 M$
TOTAL	885.8 M$

We find that even though we only bought the line 3 years ago for 97M$, the public invested about 886M$ in the line over the last 25 years. Even if we remove the trains (rolling stock) from the calculation (the RTM will likely keep them), that still leaves 736M$ invested [3]. If CDPQInfra takes control of the line, acting like a private entity, shouldnâ€t they reimburse us for these investments?

But it may not be so easy: The money invested may not ended up on the books of the RTM. Maybe we could check how much these investments are considered to be worth on the books.

How much is the line worth on the Books of the RTM?

When a company invests money into assets, these assets will show up on the balance sheet with their book value. The book value is basically the original cost of the asset, minus amortization. Amortization reduces the book value every year to account for the fact that assets may have a limited useful life (and may eventually become worthless and will need to be replaced).

The AMT has a very basic asset statement in their annual reports, which was broken down by line, but unfortunately only until 2008. Since then the AMT has become more secretive, and I wasn’t succesful trying to get this information via an access-of-information request. Either way, the data we have allows us to get an idea of the book value at least until 2008:

Book Value: Trains
	1997	2002	2005	2008	2017
Â Â Â cost	129.2 M$	129.2 M$	129.7 M$	?	?
Â Â Â amortization	?	27.5 M$	54.3 M$	?	?
Â Â Â net	?	105.0 M$	75.4 M$	?	?
Book Value: Land & Infrastructure
Â Â Â cost	87.6 M$	93.9 M$	95.5 M$	97.1 M$	?
Â Â Â amortization	?	50.8 M$	40.4 M$	29.9 M$	?
Â Â Â net	?	43.1 M$	55.1 M$	67.3 M$	?
Comparison: Land & Infrastructure Investment
Investment	171.0 M$	179.7 M$	1,837.3 M$	209.1 M$	666.9 M$

We see that the â€œCostâ€ of the Book value is lower than the money invested, and the amortization keeps reducing it further. Of the big renovation project in the early 90s, only the trains (about 130M$) ended up on the books in its entirety, whereas only half of the 168M$ infrastructure investment did – and was reduced to only a quarter within ten years by amortization!

By 2008, even though about $200M were invested in the line (excluding trains), the net book value was only about $67M. Since then, there has been much more investment into the infrastructure, and the line (land) was purchased for $97M.

If the book value has continued trailing the invested money as much as it did until 2008, my best guess is that the book value may be somewhere between $200M and $300M, maybe some more.

We see that, even though the AMT invested a lot of money, this is likely not reflected in the book value of the assets. Maybe it’s related to the AMT investing in infrastructure that was owned by CN, a private entity. Since the AMT/RTM isnt’t a private company, and they don’t pay taxes, this doesn’t really matter.

But it does matter when we want to privatize their assets: It is quite possible that the CDPQ hopes to pay exactly this low book value for the Deux-Montagnes line, as the estimates seem somewhat similar. It also matches Aref Salem’s assurance that â€œthere will be a detailed accountingâ€.

A further problem is that the book value is not representative of the market value anyway. The book value is really just a tool used in accounting and taxation. And in the case of the Deux-Montagnes line and the AMT, it seems to be much less than the money we invested.

In general, most businesses are actually worth much more than their book value. This is because in a business, the assets come together to create a more valuable whole, which keeps increasing in value over time as well, whereas the book-value is always going down!

For comparison, utility companies are worth about 3x more than their book value on average, meaning the the Deux-Montagnes line, if considered like a utility company, could be worth $600M – $900M (assuming the book value isn’t an under-estimate).

The raw book value, while higher than the $97 million acquisition, still seems rather low. To see that, letâ€s compare it to the value of the land alone.

The Land Value

We can actually make a good estimate of the value of the land the line is on. For any building, we can go to the assessment roll, plug in its address (or lot number) and find the municipal valuation. Itâ€s not quite a market valuation, as it is only used for tax purposes, but it gives a pretty good idea. If youâ€ve ever bought or sold a house, you know that municipal valuation is often much lower than the selling price of the property.

It turns out that almost every piece of land is in the assessment role, including public land.

Lots belonging to the Deux-Montagnes line can be found by collecting them with infolot.
This image shows the lot just outside of the Northern Mont-Royal Tunnel portal.

I have collected a list of lots belonging to the Deux-Montagnes line in Montreal, Laval, and Deux-Montagnes, and tallied their municipal valuations in a spreadsheet. Hereâ€s the summary:

Land Valuation – excludes tunnel, infrastructure, rolling stock
Property value	238,760,007 $
Building value	2,932,400 $
Land value (property minus building)	235,827,607 $
Terrain area (square-metres)	1,149,038
Value per square-metre	205 $
Number of roll entries	55

The actual value of the Deux-Montagnes line is much higher, since:

Some lots are valued at only 1$ (maybe because the AMT/RTM doesnâ€t have to pay taxes anyway).
The list only includes the lots that I could find, there may be some missing.
Itâ€s not a market valuation of the land, as previously mentioned.
The building values (the values of whatâ€s build on top of the land) are very low — which means the valuations effectively only include the value of the land, it doesnâ€t include the infrastructure (rail + electricity supply + parking lots).
It doesnâ€t include the trains, the Mont-Royal tunnel, or the downtown connection.

Even so, the municipal valuation of just the land itself is similar to what I estimated for the book value.

Clearly the market value of the line must be much higher than that, given all the infrastructure that is on it. But how do we make a more rigorous and accurate estimate, based on accounting principles, thatâ€s not just a guess?

Business valuation – the Value of the Contract

One key element is that the REM is a business. Its goal is to make money by operating the transit line. And unlike what the news have been saying, the profits wonâ€t come from ticket sales, but from the per-passenger subsidy paid by the ATM, which is guaranteed in the contract between the CDPQ and the ARTM.

This is how it works: the ARTM will collect the fares, and pay CDPQ Infra a fixed price of 70 to 71 cents per passenger-kilometre, which is actually more than what it costs to run the line today (30cents)!

People like to think that privatization is a good way to increase cost efficiency, and REM proponents like to suggest that it will be profitable because of automation, but this is simply false. The REM will be profitable because of the Contract, and the subsidies granted by it.

So how do you make subsidized transit profitable overnight, without moving a single stone?
— By privatizing it and over-subsidizing it, and suddenly the subsidies are called â€œprofitsâ€!

If you think about it further, without even building the REM, if the Caisse just keeps running the Deux-Montagnes line as it is run today, the line will suddenly become profitable!

And if you have a bit more imagination, the CDPQ could take ownership of the line, contract the operations back to the RTM and STILL make millions in profit every year without doing anything!

But back to our valuation: the fact that the Deux-Montagnes line will be a profitable business, thanks to the large amounts of subsidies, allows us to use a simple business valuation method usually used for valuing companies on the stock market (i.e. for stock valuation), the dividend discount model.

This method is used for dividend-paying companies, which pay out their profits to shareholders instead of investing into growth, and thus have relatively little growth. The REM fits this category. The idea behind the dividend discount model is that a company is worth the sum of all future dividend payments, adjusted back to their present value.

In simplistic terms, it says if a company pays 5$ in dividends each year, and you believe that a company with that risk profile should yield 5% every year, that the company should be worth 100$ (meaning you will make back your initial investment in 20 years). If thereâ€s an expectation that the dividends will increase, than company should be worth some more.

The valuation will depend on:

The expected profits
The expected growth in profits
The target return rate (i.e. annual return on investment)

The target return rate depends on how risky your investment is: you want more return on more risky investments. As a comparison, bonds, which are one of the safest forms of investment, typically only return 2 to 3%, whereas the overall stock market returns about 5 to 6%. Riskier investments require much higher returns to make financial sense.

In the case of the Deux-Montagnes line, the risk is pretty low. The ridership is already established (based on population) and has been consistent for many years. In fact thereâ€s pent-up demand that the line cannot serve. Furthermore, thereâ€s language in the agreements/laws with the CDPQ that public transit agencies are not allowed to establish competing transit services, which basically grants the REM a cushy monopoly!

In fact the only risk for the line is operational (can we continue operating the line at the current cost without major issues?). It is quite reasonable for a company like that to have a return of 5%-6%. This is also similar to Canadian funds of dividend-paying companies, which have total returns in the 5-6% range (but tend to have higher risks because they are businesses that need to compete with others).

For the growth, letâ€s just assume thereâ€s no ridership growth whatsoever, and simply assume that income, cost and thus profits will rise with inflation, about 2%.

To figure out the profit, we need to deduct the operating cost (30c/passenger-km) and the capital costs from the subsidy per passenger-km (70c/passenger-km), and multiply that by the total number of passenger-km per year (140 million km).

To complete the equation, we need to find the capital costs. During the last 25 years, the public invested about 25M$ per year in the line, mostly for the renovations in the early 90s and further investments in recent years. These were done to significantly increase ridership. If we are only interested in keeping the infrastructure in a good state of repair (and replace the trains every 40 years), we only need 15M$ per year, as a sort of steady-state capital cost.

To go back forth between the cost per passenger-km and the total cost, we simply have to multiply or divide by the total number of annual passenger-km on the line, 140 million km.

	$/passenger-km	total $
operating cost	0.30 $	42,000,000 $
steady-state capital costs	0.11 $	15,000,000 $
revenue (subsidies)	0.70 $	98,000,000 $
profits	0.29 $	41,000,000 $

Applying the dividend discount model, we get the following valuations:

target annual rate of return	5%	6%
profit / year	41,000,000 $	41,000,000 $
profit growth per year	2%	2%
Valuation	1,366,666,667 $	1,025,000,000 $

Business valuation – With some Investment to Increase Ridership

One thing to consider is that thereâ€s a lot of pent up demand on the line that cannot be met because the capacity of the line is too low today. Investments in recent years were aimed at providing more service to catch all that potential ridership, but thereâ€s been no increase in service yet. So even a small additional investment, like 200M$, could get a ridership increase of 25% [1]. This changes the valuation as follows:

target annual return rate	5%	6%
profit / year	41,000,000 $	41,000,000 $
growth per year	2%	2%
one-time investment	200,000,000 $	200,000,000 $
one-time ridership growth	25%	25%
valuation	1,508,333,333 $	1,081,250,000 $

This business valuation indicates the Deux-Montagnes line and Mont-Royal tunnel may be worth $1.2B. A transfer to the of the assets to the REM for some hundred(s) of million would then be a subsidy of a cool billion dollars.

So why should we care? – The Ownership Model of the REM

The REM markets itself as a â€œpublic-public partnershipâ€. Since the RTM (former AMT) is a public agency, and the CDPQ is a crown corporation, who cares who owns what. Who cares about subsidies, isnâ€t it just a case of moving money from the left pocket to the right pocket?

Exceptâ€¦ thatâ€s not actually quite true: when the RTM owns the infrastructure, itâ€s both under control and ownership of the government. Once itâ€s transferred to the Caisse, it wonâ€t be owned by the public anymore.

Today, if we want to transfer infrastructure between different government agencies, then only the government needs to agree. For example, the AMT built the Laval Metro extension. After it was finished in 2007, the assets were transferred to STM. The government owned the AMT, the government owned the STM [4], deal is done, thank you, goodbye.

So how is it different if we transfer assets to CDPQInfra? Because CDPQInfra is not owned by the Caisse de DÃ©pÃ´t; it is part of the assets that are managed by the Caisse de DÃ©pÃ´t. And these assets belong to the Caisseâ€s depositors: Government employeesâ€ pension funds (62%), Retraite QuÃ©bec/QuÃ©bec Pension Plan (23%) and others.

Itâ€s the same principle as your personal investments: you have an investment portfolio (RRSP, for example) that is being managed by a financial institution (letâ€s say Desjardins). Your portfolio may contain shares of Bombardier. Desjardins manages your money, but ultimately you are the owner of these Bombardier shares.

The diagram below shows the ownership structure of the Deux-Montagnes line before and after the REM. As you can see, under the REM, if you start at the Deux-Montagnes line and go up the ownership chain (green arrows), you end up with the Depositors of the Caisse, 62% of which are the pension funds of government employees, and only 23% belong to QuÃ©becâ€s pension plan, the proverbial â€œbas de laineâ€ everyone talks about.

But ownership is only half the story, and if this was the only problem, I would have given up a long time ago and just accepted that weâ€re making a very strange deal.

The real problem, the bigger problem, for anyone who cares about the future of transit in MontrÃ©al and mobility in the whole province, is control of our infrastructure.

If you go up the control/management chain (blue lines) in the chart above, you see that it ends at the Caisse de DÃ©pÃ´t. Moreover, the Government of QuÃ©bec explicitly states that it gives up all control to the Caisse.

Losing control of the infrastructure means losing the ability to determine how it will be used: The Deux-Montagnes line includes the Mont-Royal tunnel, which many transit lines need to use to reach downtown. But after privatization, the line will not only have a lower capacity, but half the lines that need to use it will be cut off from direct access downtown, maybe forever.

Also, while in the rest of the world, public-private partnerships have private corporations build new infrastructure that are eventually given back to the public, our innovative public-public partnership privatizes already-built public infrastructure, without reverting back to the public, and with no chance of ever getting it back.

Transferring it back under public control would effectively expropriate the pension funds who own the assets, while breaking contracts and laws in the process. Essentially, getting our transit line back may require an act of communism.

Of course we could maybe buy it back from the Caisseâ€¦ I wonder how much they charge for a 30-km line with 5 km of tunnel, which happens to be the only access to downtown Montreal? When the government must negotiate at arms length, and has very little leverage. Do you think theyâ€d let it go for $100M?

But maybe Iâ€m concerned for nothing. After all, Iâ€ve raised the issue with politicians and other proponents of the REM, and the attitude Iâ€m getting is a dismissive â€œweâ€ll just build another tunnelâ€. Piece of cake.

This brings up a new kind of valuation — how much would the Deux-Montagnes line cost if we built it from scratch?

Replacement Value

To get an idea how much the line would cost as a hole, we can make a simple comparative analysis. We can break down the line into the surface section (25km) and the tunnel section (5km), and make an estimate by comparing to various per-km costs.

We could compare the Mount-Royal tunnel to various other comparable, recently built rail tunnels (ones with no stations inside the tunnels), but this will not account for the downtown connection. A lot of the value of the Mount-Royal tunnel is the fact that it directly connects to Gare Centrale.

If we built a new tunnel, it would be very difficult to make a new connection to Gare Centrale — there are buildings in the way! Plus, the REM will use up a lot of space of the station.

This means weâ€d either have very complicated and very expensive construction to make the connection; we could purchase expensive buildings and tear them down; or build a new underground central station. Either way it’s going to be very expensive. This is where a lot of the cost of a new Mount-Royal tunnel would come from.

Deux-Montagnes Line Replacement Cost
item	cost	length	item cost
25km of surface rail	70 M$/km	25km	1,875 M$
5km Mont Royal Tunnel	140 M$/km	5.4km	756 M$
Downtown tunnel Station / Access	350 M$	–	350 M$
TOTAL			2,981 M$

We see the Mont-Royal tunnel adds up to a cool billion, and the surface part to almost two. The Mont-Royal tunnel is the most likely part that will need replacing, and again weâ€re coming up with a billion dollar figure.

Summary

Weâ€ve looked at various ways to grasp the value of the Deux-Montagnes line and Mont-Royal tunnel, and made a comparison to how much CDPQInfra will pay to privatize it.

type of valuation	valuation amount (M$)
What CDPQ may pay	100-200?
Book Value Note: estimate based on continuing 2008 book value	200-300?
Municipal assessment of Land Note: excludes tunnel, infrastructure, downtown access, parking, trains – and it’s a below-market, municipal valuation	236
Total Investment excluding trains	736
Total Investment including trains	886
Business Valuation (dividend discount model)	1000-1400
Business Valuation assuming small improvement	1100-1500
Replacement Value of whole line	3000
Replacement Value of Mont-Royal Tunnel only	1100

In my opinion, we should get reimbursed about a billion dollars, maybe a bit more, in exchange for transferring the assets of the transit line, losing control of the infrastructure forever, and giving CDPQinfra an operating contract that would make them profit from day one. Anything else would be a large subsidy, and completely inappropriate to give, without bidding process, to a company acting like a private, commercial entity.

The Deux-Montagnes line is an essential puzzle piece in the creative accounting at work that will create a profitable transit line owned by a private entity — and I worry the public will be “taken for a ride”.

Footnotes

[1] The estimate that 200M$ investment will allow a 25% ridership increase comes from the 2005 annual report of the AMT.

â€œAn estimated $173.9 million is recommended to increase the lineâ€s capacity in order to accommodate the ridership estimated at over 40,000 passengers a day. The work includes the grade separation of the East junction, double railway tracks between Bois-Franc and Roxboro, the addition of two stations and the purchase of 22 new cars.â€

Note the current ridership is 30,000 passengers per day.

The Eastern junction project was completed (for about 60M$), the 22 rail-cars where purchased but allocated to different rail lines, the double tracking is still outstanding. Itâ€s reasonable to assume that the double-tracking and purchase of new rail cars will now cost 200M$.

[2] To arrive at the estimate of 70 M$/km for surface rail construction and 120 M$/km for tunnel construction (for a tunnel without stations), I used the following comparative projects:

Comparative tunnel costs
project	length	location	opening year	cost	inflation- adjusted in CAD	cost per km (CAD)
Mount-Royal tunnel	5.0km	Montreal	1918	10 M$	145M	29 M$
2nd Hudson-Tunnel	3.7km	New York	2026?	11.1B USD	14.3B	3,865 M$
Barcelona AVE tunnel	5.8km	Barcelona	2013	179.3M â‚¬	277M	48 M$
East Side Access, only Manhattan tunnel contracts	3.8km	New York	2023	415M USD	535M	141 M$
Crossrail, only tunnel contracts	21km	London	2019	1.5B Â£	2.6B	124 M$
Fildertunnel	9.5km	Stuttgart	2021	754M â‚¬	1142M	120 M$
Tunnel ObertÃ¼rkheim	5.7km	Stuttgart	2021	350M â‚¬	530M	93 M$

Comparative Surface costs
project	length	location	opening year	cost	inflation- adjusted in CAD	cost per km (CAD)
Eagle PPP electric surface commuter rail (A-line)	54.7km	Denver	2016	2.2B USD	2.83B CAD	52 M$
REM St-Anne Branch	16.8km	Montreal	2021?	1400M CAD	1400M CAD	83 M$
REM Rive-Sud (includes tunnel)	15km	Montreal	2021?	1730M CAD	1730M CAD	115 M$

In order to calculate the costs of the individual branches of the REM, I distributed the the estimated construction costs from this document as follows:

REM Branches Breakdown
branch	length km	infra-structure cost	system & rolling stock cost	parking / terminus cost	acquisition cost (approx.)	total cost
St-Anne-de-Bellevue Branch	17 km	680 M$	446 M$	125 M$	147 M$	1 398 M$
Deux-Montagnes line incl. tunnel (upgrades)	31 km	820 M$	810 M$	–	266 M$	1 897 M$
South-Shore Branch	15 km	1 090 M$	399 M$	110 M$	131 M$	1 729 M$
Airport Branch	5 km	320 M$	125 M$	–	41 M$	486 M$
Â TOTAL	67 km	2 910 M$	1 780 M$	235 M$	585 M$	5 510 M$

[3] 885.8M$ (total) – 130M$ (MR-90 acquisition) – 19.7M$ (MR-90 improvements) = 736M$

[4]The STM is actually owned by the city of Montreal, not the government of Quebec – but being a public body regulated by the government and existing because of a Quebec law. Arguably, the city of Montreal is owned by the government of Quebec.

Whatâ€™s a Gadgetbahn?

ant6n — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 01:30:30 +0000

For some time, Iâ€ve been meaning to write about German transportation systems like whatâ€s an S-Bahn or whatâ€s a Stadtbahn.

With the recent news out of Quebec, I figured Iâ€d instead talk about a transportation concept that doesnâ€t actually transport anybody at all: the Gadgetbahn.

The word is a portemanteau of the English â€œGadgetâ€ and the German word â€œbahnâ€, which means rail or train. A gadgetbahn is a speculative transportation concept that proposes to solve planning and financial issues via some sort of magical techno-fix, likely some technology that doesnâ€t even exist yet.

Classic examples of gadgetbahns are: monorails, â€œpersonal rapid transitâ€, maglevs, or the newest addition to the family, the â€œhyperloopâ€.

Proponents of these technologies may be referred to as gadgetbahn enthusiasts, or more derogatorily, â€œpod-peopleâ€. They often promise the sky in terms of reduced cost and increased speed and comfort, often with little consideration for capacity, risk, safety or realism.

Back to Â Quebec: the prime minister decided he wants a fast transit link between Montreal and Quebec City, but not a train, because â€œwe can do much more modern things nowâ€.

Instead, he wants something â€œfuturisticâ€, something from the minds of Quebecers. (note from editor: Sorry to pop his bubble, but Quebec is not exactly known for having a long history on the bleeding edge of transit technology.)

The problem of the gadgetbahn isnâ€t necessarily that itâ€s a techno-fix. Itâ€s that it is a technology for the sake of technology, a shiny gizmo to brag about, with little regard to solving the actual transportation problem.

The transportation minister clarified his position himself: he wants anything you can conceive of, any project; innovate, come up with new ideas!

And somehow, some consortium sprung up ready with proposals, renderings, promises and deadlines to build a high speed monorail (â€œMGVâ€), and all they want is a quarter of a billion dollars to develop it.

Cost, Speed, Comfort
– The problem is geometry, physics and the Right of Way

The beauty of proposing a gadgetbahn is that since it doesnâ€t exist, proponents can make up all sorts of quasi-magical properties for their technology, which supposedly make it superior. Since there arenâ€t real-world examples, proponents can use the most optimistic theoretical scenarios they can come up with, and compare them with the actual performance of projects that have been built and which are bound to the constraints of the real world.

For example, the high speed monorail promoters claim their system is cheaper than conventional rail, because they could just use existing highway medians, with an elevated rail system where vehicles are suspended from above.

The “MGV” (monorail a grande vitesse), high-speed pods on elevated tracks, suspended from above

When you look at its basic structure, compared to conventional rail, this monorail essentially differs in the method of propulsion: instead of two wheels on two rails below the train, we have two wheels on one rail above the train.

The main conceptual difference between conventional rail and â€˜MGVâ€:
the location of the wheels

Like for any gadgetbahn, the claim is that this new technology provides more speed, more comfort at lower cost.

But in the real world, these three aspects are always intricately connected and subject to tradeoffs – due to simple geometry and physics.

Want faster transportation? Then you need very straight tracks. Donâ€t have straight tracks but still want high speed? Then your trip will become a barf-ride, so less comfort. Â Want to build cheaply in an already existing highway median? Well the highway curves are made for cars going at 100km/h, so your choices are:

slow down (less speed),
run inside the existing geometry at higher speed (less comfort),
straighten the curves (more expensive).

These problems will always come together. At the end of the day, youâ€re still pushing a metal can full of people at high speeds you canâ€t get out of issues of geometry and physics by changing where you put the wheels.

Going further, once it appears the basic problems have been overcome, the next issues become capacity, safety, energy and access (stations).

For example, Elon Musk is proposing to build tunnels with his â€œBoring Companyâ€, which will supposedly be cheap, because the tunnels will be relatively narrow. This reduces capacity, because only smaller vehicles will fit in the tunnel. To compensate, he may propose that vehicles will run super close together – which will represent a huge safety issue unless they run slowly. A small tunnel with a lot of vehicles that are barely smaller than the tunnel diameter, running at high speed may become a death trap in case of emergency, if there isnâ€t enough space and facilities for egress. If somehow he manages to solve all these issues, thereâ€s still the problem of getting everybody into this tube of his.

All these considerations come down to the one fundamental constraint on which everything else depends: the right of way — how much space do you have available, how straight is your path, how and where is the downtown access, and how much space is available at stations.

The Maglev

An example of this issue is the maglev technology (essentially magnetically elevated monorails). The concept has been around for ages. The Germans and Japanese have been developing the technologies for a long time. In the early 2000s, the Germans were able to sell their Transrapid technology to China for the Shanghai Maglev airport connector, a 30-km line. It was a pilot project, with the hope to eventually cover the whole country with maglev network.

The Maglev was seen as the next generation of trains, mostly by being faster. But there was also the hope that it could even be cheaper, by putting the whole track on stilts, without having large elevated bridge-like structures. But in the end, conventional high speed rail and maglev require similar geometries, a similar kind of infrastructure, and it turns out that the speeds are not that different (Shanghai Maglev up to 430km/h, conventional rail up to 350km/h, both with a maximum experimental speed of around 600km/h).

At more than 300km/h, a lot of energy is spent to overcome the air drag of the trains themselves. Issues also become noise, and the required straightness of the infrastructure. And the issue that with stops, decreasing travel time by increasing maximum speeds becomes marginal. Overall, speeds above 300km/h tend to become uneconomical, no matter the propulsion system.

From a distance, elevated conventional high speed rail (left) and maglev (right) appear strangely similar – the requirements on the tracks are due to physics and geometry, so the propulsion method alone wonâ€t give one system a clear advantage over the other in terms of infrastructure cost

All of these issues come together to make the technological choice a bit of a wash.

In the end it makes more economic sense to build from conventional technology which has been developed for a longer time, has multiple vendors, has existing infrastructure that can be built on top of. This way, you can upgrade lines for high speed service, while being able to run the new high speed trains on existing tracks inside cities or to other cities. This provides a huge economic advantage.

So indeed, although the Shanghai Maglev works, in an economic sense itâ€s a failure. It convinced the Chinese to focus on high speed rail: ten years after the opening of the Maglev, the country still had the same 30km of maglev, but built 20,000km of high speed rail.

(Oh and btw, Iâ€ve taken the maglev, itâ€s not a very smooth ride; it rumbles like a rollercoaster)

The Real Issue: Economics

The real issue of using a gadgetbahn to solve a transportation problem is not really technical. Itâ€s that it re-frames the problem to build an infrastructure as the problem to develop a new technology — now youâ€ve got two problems to solve!

The technical problem should really be solved through private investment, not public funding. Thus I view the â€˜offerâ€ to develop the â€œhigh speed mono-railâ€ for â€œonlyâ€ 250M$ with a great amount of distrust. If the idea is viable and the people behind it are competent, it should have attracted private investment, as there should be a potential to make profit selling the technology. After all, the proposal has been around for 23 years.

When proposing a completely new technology in order to solve a specific transportation problem, the major problem is Risk:

Technological risks: Will it even work? Will it deliver on claims? Will it have sufficient capacity?
Cost-related risks: How much will it cost to develop? How much will one kilometre cost once the technology developed?
Regulatory/safety risks: Will it be safe? What will safety requirements be? How fast will we be allowed to run?
Risks because timelines are not understood: How long will it take to develop? How long will it take to plan & construct?
Operating Risks: How much will it cost to operate? How much will it cost to maintain the infrastructure? Will automated/unattended operation actually be possible?
Risks because we need to build complete systems at once, rather than incrementally updating existing infrastructure.
Also, new technology means relying on a single vendor, which is again extremely risky, both in terms of cost and availability of the technology in the future: Will the vendor exist in the future? How much will they charge us once we depend on them, given the lack of competition?

For any technology thatâ€s already existed and been researched for decades, and that may have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of kilometers of infrastructure built today, all these question are much easier to answer. There will be much less risk, and thus less cost.

Be distrustful of Gadgetbahn Concepts

Any time somebody in power proposes to solve an infrastructure problem by first developing some new technology, or by using some proposed technology that hasnâ€t been delployed yet, we should be distrustful.

Often, the proposal may simply be an excuse to not invest in infrastructure today, because tomorrow some techno-fix will come along and solve all our problems â€˜for freeâ€. This tactic may work especially well if the proposal includes an appeal to some futuristic dream or a nationalistic project.

The gadgetbahn may really just be a big diversion. For example in Quebec, the most realistic scenario to get a fast link between Montreal and Quebec is the â€œhigh-frequency trainâ€ proposed by VIA rail, which would link the cities with conventional rail. After repeatedly proposing high speed rail for the last 40 years and getting no support from the governments, VIA decided to propose a system thatâ€s not true high speed rail – but it would use dedicated passenger rail tracks, allowing somewhat faster speed than today, and no interference with freight.

This would hit an economic sweet spot for VIA, allowing them to almost finance and build the system themselves, with only relatively little public support.

But the main problem is the access to Montreal – VIA hoped to use the Mont-Royal rail tunnel to access Gare Centrale. But with the REM light rail project pushed hard by the prime minister, the tunnel would be converted to light rail, an incompatible technology, which will cut VIA off. In some sense, the prime ministerâ€s announcement that he wants some gadgetbahn to Quebec City means VIAs rail project would become obsolete, and the conflict would become moot.

So is it really just a diversionary tactic to hide the regional rail planning problems in Montreal?

Interesting related reading (and with thanks for some inspirations) by Alon Levy:
“Loopy Ideas Are Fine, If Youâ€re an Entrepreneur”

Mont Royal:Convertissons la Conduite Urbaine en Ski Urbain!

ant6n — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 06:13:27 +0000

Go to English Version

La mort rÃ©cente dâ€un cycliste sur Camillien-Houde, le chemin passant Ã travers le Mont Royal, a amenÃ© plusieurs Ã demander de faire cesser la conduite Ã travers la montagne. Une fermeture partielle du Chemin pourrait permettre de maintenir les lignes dâ€autobus sur la montagne, de mÃªme que la pratique de sports et autres activitÃ©s.

(Trivia: le Chemin a Ã©tÃ© construit par le maire Drapeau dans les annÃ©es 60, et a Ã©tÃ© nommÃ© comme insulte au prÃ©cÃ©dent maire Camillien Houde, qui Ã©tait contre la construction dâ€une route sur la montagne. )

Une faÃ§on intÃ©ressante dâ€utiliser la route serait de la transformer en piste de ski alpin durant lâ€hiver.

Une piste de ski sur la montagne permettrait aux personnes nâ€ayant pas accÃ¨s Ã la voiture de sâ€adonner au sport dâ€hiver et serait particuliÃ¨rement intÃ©ressant pour les familles urbaines. OÃ¹ dâ€autre pourrait-on prendre le transport en commun pour aller skier?

Et si on possÃ¨de une voiture, on pourra toujour se stationner prÃ¨s du Lac aux Castors, sur la montagne. Pourquoi ne pas y aller pour une activitÃ© neige aprÃ¨s le travail?

Une piste au milieu de la ville augmenterait sÃ»rement lâ€attrait touristique de MontrÃ©al, particuliÃ¨rement en hiver: ski durant la journÃ©e avec vue sur la ville, aprÃ¨s-ski dans un resto ou cafÃ© sur le Plateau ou au centre-ville. Ce serait une accroche, comme le Ski-Dubai ou la rampe construite sur une centrale Ã©lectrique Ã Copenhague, au Danemark.

Amagger Bakke Ã Copenhagen et Ski Dubai

La montagne est-elle assez grande pour le ski?

Certains cyniques se plaisent Ã appeler le Mont Royal une â€œcollineâ€, et pourraient penser quâ€il est un peu petit pour le ski. Il sâ€avÃ¨re que notre colline est beaucoup plus grosse que les pistes mieux connues de Dubai et Copenhague. Le Mont Royal est aussi plus gros que la pente la plus proche: le Mont St-Bruno! Il y a bien sÃ»r des montagnes plus hautes dans la rÃ©gion, mais il faut conduire beaucoup plus loin pour Ã§a.

La hauteur de la montagne est assez acceptable comparÃ© aux autres stations de ski, et la longueur est trÃ¨s bonne. Ceci est dÃ» Ã la pente douce (8,5%), qui la place entre une piste dÃ©butante et une piste verte.

La pente douce est parfaite pour les familles avec de jeunes enfants, qui nâ€ont pas beaucoup dâ€expÃ©rience de ski.

Faisons un projet pilote aujourdâ€hui!

Pour montrer la viabilitÃ© du projet et avoir un peu de plaisir, on pourrait avoir un projet pilote simple cet hiver. Comme premiÃ¨re Ã©tape, on pourrait diviser Camillien-Houde et utiliser une moitiÃ© pour le ski, et lâ€autre moitiÃ© pour des navettes de remontÃ©e (et pour les autobus locaux).

Pour lâ€expÃ©rience de ski, câ€est un peu Ã©troit, mais comme la pente est trÃ¨s douce, il ne devrait pas y avoir dâ€inquiÃ©tudes majeurs pour la sÃ©curitÃ©.

Avec seulement quelques autobus, des clÃ´tures, et une seule dameuse, on pourrait commencer les activitÃ©s dâ€hiver dÃ¨s maintenant!

Si le ski sâ€avÃ¨re populaire, cela pourrait devenir un attrait permanent: on pourrait alors utiliser la largeur complÃ¨te de la voie pour avoir des pistes plus larges. Ã‰ventuellement, on pourrait mÃªme construire un tÃ©lÃ©phÃ©rique permanent jusquâ€en haut de la montagne, qui permettrait dâ€amÃ©liorer lâ€accÃ¨s pour les personnes Ã mobilitÃ© rÃ©duite et les familles toute lâ€annÃ©e.

aller Ã la version franÃ§aise

Mont Royal Mountain:
Letâ€s turn Urban Driving into Urban Downhill Skiing!

The recent death of a cyclist on Camilien-Houde, the road across the Mont Royal, has led to calls to remove driving across the mountain. A partial closure of the road could maintain bus routes across the mountain, while allowing sports and other activities.

(Trivia: The road was built by mayor Drapeau in the 60s, and named as an insult to previous mayor Camillien Houde, who was always against having a road across the mountain.)

One interesting way to repurpose the road would be to turn it into a downhill ski slope in the winter.

A ski slope on the mountain will allow people who donâ€t have cars to enjoy the winter sport, and will be especially great for urban families. Where else could you take local public transit to go skiing?

And if you do have a car, youâ€ll still be able to drive to the ski slope and park near Beaver Lake on top of the mountain! Why not go for some after-work snow activities on your way home?

Having a ski hill in the middle of the city will definitely add to the tourist appeal of Montreal, especially in the winter: ski during the day with a view of the city, then aprÃ¨s-ski in a Plateau or downtown restaurant or cafÃ©. It could be a hook, like Ski-Dubai or the ski ramp built on a power plant in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Amagger Bakke in Copenhagen and Ski Dubai

Is the mountain big enough for skiing?

Some cynical people like to call Mont Royal a mere hill, and may think itâ€s a little small for skiing. Well, it turns out that our hill is much bigger than the ski toys in Dubai and Copenhagen. The Mont Royal is actually even bigger than the closest ski hill near Montreal, Mont St-Bruno! There are of course bigger ski hills in the region, but youâ€d have to drive much further for those.

The height of the mountain is pretty acceptable compared to other ski facilities, and the overall length is very good. This is due to its relatively shallow slope (8.5%), which puts it somewhere between a bunny hill and a green slope.

The slope means itâ€s great for families with young children, who donâ€t have a lot of skiing experience.

Letâ€s do a pilot project today!

To show the viability of the project and to have some fun, we could have a simple pilot this winter. We could divide Camillien-Houde and use half for skiing, and the other half for a ski shuttle up the hill (and also to run the local buses).

As far as skiing goes, itâ€s a bit narrow, but since the piste is not very steep, there shouldnâ€t be major safety concerns.

With only a couple of buses, some fences, and a single snow groomer, we could start the winter activities today! (Note that the city already does snow grooming on the mountain, for the cross-country pistes)

If downhill skiing proves successful, this could become a permanent feature. We could use the full width of the street, and have a much wider piste. Eventually, we could even build a permanent gondola or aerial tram to the top of the mountain, improving access for less mobile folks and families all year round.

The Cost of Montreal’s Free Transit Weekend

ant6n — Fri, 11 Aug 2017 21:53:23 +0000

Update: October 4, 2017 (added missing day pass in last table)

Two weekends ago, Montreal had a weekend with free transit. In general, this sounds like a good idea. It’s a way to get people to try out transit, maybe encourage them consider to use it more often. Or maybe use it on a path to make transit much more affordable or even free, as some advocate for.

Rumors are transit was jam-packed all weekend.

However, the whole thing does leave a bit of a bitter after-taste, because this wasn’t planned ahead of time in order to advance transit in general, but rather as a last-minute mitigation measure for the Formula E. This car-race set up in Eastern downtown brought barriers all over that part of the city, and by making transit free it was hoped some of the traffic and mobility problems could be aleviated.

The politicians in charge are trying to sell the Formula E as advancing electric transportation, because the race cars run on batteries. Others view it as a bunch of green-washing. In any case, there’s been a lot of criticism due the large amount of money Montreal spent on the event, largely to build a temporary race track in the middle of the city (2km away from the permanent Formula 1 race track). And the free transit weekend can be viewed as adding to the bill.

I’ve been asked to make an estimate how much the STM lost in transit fares that weekend.

So let’s look at some numbers, without going too deeply into the political story.

What fares do people use in general?

If we want to know how much money was ‘lost’ in fares that weekend, we need to have an idea what the relative make-up of the various fares is, i.e. how many people use monthly, weekly, daily passes, or single trips. We also need to know how many such fares are bought for a weekend in the summer.

The STM doesn’t really publish such detailled information, but we can infer it from some OPUS card tap-in data that was released for 2011 at some hackathon.

STM Fares used for each trip
monthly	60.4%	248,040,271
single trips	19.3%	79,403,645
TRAM	11.9%	49,089,075
weekly	5.7%	23,359,274
gratis	1.3%	5,162,210
24h	0.7%	2,876,060
3 days	0.6%	2,434,481
evening	0.1%	612,571
other	0.0%	22,413
total		411,000,000

We see that a good 60% of all trips use STM monthly passes, another 12% use regional tickets (TRAM), most of which are also monthly passes. Together with weekly passes, nearly 80% of trips are done via passes. About 20% of trips are done with single passes (most are bought as 10 at a time). The rest are basically rounding errors.

What fares do people use on Summer Weekends?

During the weekeend, especially in the summer, the make-up of fares will be different. Luckily the OPUS data includes some weekend days, so we can make a more exact inference. We actually only have data for one weekend in July, so the data may not be very representative — take it with a grain of salt.

We get the following make-up of fares:

Summer Weekend Trips (per day)
monthly	54.2%	352,716
single trips	27.3%	177,505
TRAM	6.2%	40,144
weekly	6.5%	42,215
gratis	1.4%	8,972
24h	2.2%	14,393
3 days	1.5%	9,937
evening	0.8%	5,191
other	0.0%	29
total		651,102

We see that during the weekend in the summer, there’s a much larger percentage of single trips (27% vs 19%), and much fewer regional passes (TRAM, 6% vs 12%). This makes sense: there are more occasional trips on the weekend, and fewer of the commuting suburbanites coming into town. There’s also a higher use of 3-day, 24-hour and evening passes, although their absolute number is still low.

How much revenues were ‘lost’ on the Free weekend?

Two big factors made the ridership increase on the free weekend: The events going on in downtown, like the Formula E, and the fact that the transit was free.

If we want to count only ‘lost’ revenue, we have to discount the fact that the transit was free — you can’t really count the lost revenue of users that only used the transit because it was free.

Regarding the impact of the event itself, it’s hard to make an estimate. We can simply take the number of trips we know about, and note that this is a lower bound.

For ‘lost’ revenue, we only have to consider usual revenue from weekend, day passes, evening passes and single trips. Weekly and monthly passes are paid ‘already’, so the impact should be small.

On our given summer weekend, we find the following number of trips for the various fare types, and the resulting cost:

Summer Weekend Tickets (adjusted for 2015 ridership)
	# regular	# reduced	regular fare	reduced fare	revenue
1 passage	126057	7589	$3.25	$2.25	$426,761
2 passages	51227	1943	$3.00	$2.00	$157,567
6/10 passages	127587	40604	$2.70	$1.65	$411,482
evening	5329	–	$5.00	–	$26,645
1day	10778	–	$10.00	–	$107,780
3days/weekend	4531	–	$13.75	–	$62,301
total	314731	50136	Â	Â	$1,192,535

(Note that I scaled the 2011 data to 2015 ridership levels, to account for trips missing in the data and the increase in ridership in ridership over the years)

There we have it. Apparently, the STM Montreal lost at least 1.2M$ as a mitigation measure for the impact of the Formula E. This matches earlier estimates. But it’s possible that this was always going to be a weekend where a lot of people were going to take transit, even if fares where charged, so the actual loss may be higher than that.

Does Automating the Metro Save Lots of Money?

ant6n — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 13:36:06 +0000

As a continuation of my recent post on the cost of operating the Montreal Metro, I wanted to look at the merits of automation. The recent discussion of the planned REM light metro has brought that subject up repeatedly, with the implication that drivers are super expensive and that you can save a lot of money by running completely unattended trains. The PR keeps touting that it would be one of the largest automated metro systems, often along the claim that transit will be profitable from now on.

But can automation actually turn a heavily subsidized transit system into a suddenly profitable one?

A while back I spoke to the technical director of CDPQInfra (the private company which wants to build the REM), at one of their poster sessions. I was doubtful automation would reduce operating cost very much. How expensive can the drivers possibly be, compared to the rest of the system? The technical director emphasized that back in Lyon, where he gained a lot of his experience, they had three automated lines, and one non-automated one — and that line always gave them problems, and was much more expensive to operate.

I looked it up later, and it turns out that this one manually operated line of the Lyon Metro, the Line C, is a tiny, 2.4km-long cog-railway, with steep inclines of 17%, operated with a tiny fleet of 2-car trains that were built specially for this operation. Of course this line is going to be expensive to operate!

Lyon Metro Line C (source)

I find it rather strange that this example was being brought up at all in the discussion of automation. It means a line that is inherently very expensive is being used as an example to show the expensiveness of manual train operations.

Back to the Montreal Metro. My previous article on the cost of the metro already showed that it is likely cheaper to operate per passenger-km than the REM will be, despite one having drivers and the other not. This is probably thanks to its concentration in urban areas and resulting high ridership. But how much could we save if we automated the metro and get rid of the drivers?

One way to estimate this is to calculate the cost of metro drivers, and compare that to the cost of converting to automatic operation.

The Cost of the Metro Drivers

In 2011,the STM employeed 308 metro drivers – and more than 9000 employees overall. Already thereâ€s a hint that 3% of the employees will probably not have a very large financial impact overall.

Assuming 100,000$ cost per metro driver in 2015 [1], and assuming that the number of metro employees increased by the same amount as the amount of service between 2011 and 2015 [2], this means the drivers cost about 31 million $ per year.

The table below shows the cost of drivers compared to the operating cost and total cost of the metro:

STM Metro Drivers 2015	cost	Cost per passenger-km	% of operating cost	% of total cost
Total pay of Metro drivers	31M$	1.4Â¢	7.6%	3.5%
Metro operating cost	406M$	18.3Â¢	100.0%	46.2%
Metro operating + capital cost	878M$	39.7Â¢	n/a	100.0%

(see spreadsheet with complete calculations)

$31 million may sound like a lot, but it only represents about 7.6% of the metro operating costs, and only about 3.5% of the total operating + annualized capital costs of the metro system.

The number of metro drivers is relatively small — there are many more people tasked with maintaining the trains and tracks. There are also a lot more ticket booth attendants than driers: 447. It would probably be easier to save money by removing those.

Still, letâ€s say saving a couple of percent on the operating cost of the metro would be great. A penny saved is a penny earned!

In order to know how much it will save, we need to know how much it will cost.

The Cost of Automation

The problem with automation is that in order to create a completely unattended system, the industry best practice is to install platform screen doors to ensure that nobody can ever enter the tracks.

Platform screen doors at Sacoma station in Sao Paolo (source)

The STM estimates the cost to install platform screen doors to be about 10M$ per station, or 5M$ per platform. (In Toronto a detailed study came up with the same amount.)

Letâ€s assume this is still a realistic cost estimate, that this is the only cost needed to get to full automation and that the Montreal signal system is already â€˜readyâ€ for automation. This would give us the following cost:

Platform screen doors cost per platform	5M$
Number of metro platforms	146
Total capital cost	730M$
Annual cost of capital	4%
Annual cost of platform screen doors	29.2M$

So assuming that we can get rid of all metro drivers by automating, and assuming that we can automate by simply installing platform screen doors, we find that the annual cost of drivers matches the annual cost of paying off the upgrades (~30M$).

In our completely optimistic calculation, the already small savings are being completely undone by the costs.

But the reality is more complicated than that. Firstly, you canâ€t get rid of all employees in the metro system. In Vancouverâ€s automated Skytrain network, a large number of attendants are roaming the system to ensure safety and deal with emergencies.

Further, salaries paid to employees living in Montreal have a way of circulating back to the budget (via taxes), but also circulate in the local economy. I donâ€t think itâ€s the role of the state to employ people, but I think this consideration does skew the equation towards paying people rather than buying things from international vendors where most of the money will get exported away.

So if weâ€d take these points into account, we will actually lose money every year by converting the metro to automatic operation, based on the cost of platform screen doors alone.

Thereâ€s another problem: Platform screen doors have to be placed exactly to match the location of the doors of the trains. But the new Azur trains of the Montreal Metro have 3 doors per car instead of 4 like the existing trains. So any automation effort can really only be done after the line is converted to all new trains.

Are there Arguments for Automation besides Cost?

This analysis so far has only looked at the cost of drivers. But are there other arguments in favor of automation?

When talking about automation, we generally separate â€œautomatic train operationâ€ (ATO), where a computer drives the trains to the next station, from â€œunattended train operationâ€ (UTO), where a computer also opens and closes the doors.

So under ATO, there are still â€œdriversâ€, who open and close the doors, ensure the safety of passengers, and deal with emergency situations. But the driving itself is done by a computer. It ensures that the trains respect safe distances and speed limits, accelerates and decelerates the trains, and makes it stop at the next station.

The ability to increase the frequency of trains and thus capacity is the main argument in favor of automation, not necessarily driver cost.

The Montreal Metro is actually already operated this way, the drivers mostly ensure safety of the passengers, but the trains drive themselves to the next station.

Being able to increase the frequency of the metro would be incredibly useful, especially on the overcrowded Orange line. But the bottleneck is not the computer or signalling system that drives the trains. The main problem is the safety in the tunnels.

The metro uses only a single tunnel for both directions, so thereâ€s no separate one that can be used for egress in emergency situations. Therefore the system has adopted a rule that a train may only leave a station when the path to the next station is clear.

If we want to increase frequency and thus capacity, we would have to upgrade the safety systems and plans to allow multiple trains in the tunnels between stations.

So in the end, the main benefit of automatic train operation isnâ€t the removal of drivers, but the increase in capacity. But for the Montreal Metro, further automation would not help at this point, because the bottleneck today is due to the safety rules in the tunnels — which we would have to fix first.

[1] Every of the 9374 employees cost the STM about 90,774$ on average, including all benefits (see page 50 of the 2015 budget).

[2] total vehicle-km increased by 1.7% between 2011 and 2015, from 77 million to 78.3 million vehicle-km.

Is the Montreal Metro Profitable?

ant6n — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 17:01:42 +0000

Recent discussions about transit and profitability seem to imply that a transit system could be profitable if you privatize and automate it. This led me to wonder whether the Montreal Metro, a semi-automated system, is actually profitable.

From an accounting perspective, profitability is simple: add up the revenues and the costs of doing business, and if your revenues exceed your costs, youâ€re profitable.

I don’t do this with a view of exploring the merits of subsidies, but with a desire to get a more accurate accounting of the cost of transit, in particular comparing different modes of transit.

A transit system generates revenues through fares and other activities like selling ad space (other revenues). Costs include not only operations (ongoing labour, maintenance, energy/gasoline, etc.), but also capital expenses (building new lines, buying trains/buses, major renovations, technology upgrades like the Ibus tracking and fleet management system, etc.). A transit system also receives subsidies (which it counts as revenue) because fares generally donâ€t cover operations and capital expenses.

The STMâ€s numbers are easily found in their budgets, Which gives us the totals for costs and revenues of the bus and metro system.

The budget pools together paratransit, bus and metro, so if we only want to calculate the profitability of the metro, weâ€ll need to split up the costs and revenues by mode. Also, the investments shown in the operating budget do not include all the capital costs of the STM, so we will need to find those numbers as well.

To be able to compare the revenues and costs across the different systems with different number of passengers engaging in trips of different lengths, we need a common measure that accounts for these differences. One such measure is the passenger-km, which represents the total number of kilometers all passengers are travelling in the system. It provides a good way to compare the revenues and costs across different networks, and provides a common point of reference when discussing profitability and subsidies.

An example of the use of passenger-km (or pass-km) is in the following chart published by CDPQInfra, the promoters of the REM, to compare costs and subsidies of the REM and the existing networks in Montreal.

Back to Metro profitability, we will need to do the following:

Find the passenger-kilometres of the STM and how they are split between the bus and metro
Divide the cost of operations between bus and metro
Divide the revenues between bus and metro
Divide capital costs between bus and metro.
Divide all the costs by the total passenger-kilometres.

In order to make numbers more comparable, we will exclude paratransit. Iâ€ll show my calculations for the year of 2015, but numbers donâ€t change much during the years.

If you’re not interested in the detailed breakdowns, you can skip ahead to the result:

1) Passenger-Kilometers of the STM
2) Cost of Operations of Bus and Metro
3) Revenues of Bus and Metro
4) capital cost
The Results
Conclusion

1) Passenger-Kilometers of the STM

The STM publishes very little information about the passenger-kilometers they achieve. Luckily we have access to the Canadian Public Transit Association (CUTA) factbook, which provides this number. According to the CUTA factbook of 2015, the STM moved passengers a total of 3.45 billion km.

Unfortunately, we are still left with the problem of splitting the kilometres between the bus and the metro. There is almost no information available about this. After much searching, the only reference I found is in a 2013 presentation given by the STM at a conference in the Czech Republic. It indicates that the metro accounts for 64% of the passenger kilometers of the system. This number is a few years old, but it still provides the best estimate for our calculations â€” even if the total ridership has changed, the proportions are likely similar.

Passenger-Kilometers of the STM
metro passenger km	2,211 million km
bus passenger km	1,243 million km
total passenger-km	3,455 million km

2) Cost of Operations of Bus and Metro

The budget of the STM provides the the following revenue and cost summary in their 2015 budget (page 10):

On the revenue side, we see plenty of income from fares, but also a lot of subsidies.
On the expenses side, most of the money is spent operating the bus and metro, but a large chunk also goes towards paratransit. The budget also includes some investments (capital costs).

To split the costs by metro and bus, we can look further in the budget, where the STM provides a breakdown of operating costs by administrative unit (page 61):

Luckily for us, the operating costs of the metro is shown separately from bus and paratransit. However, to get the complete picture, we have to figure out how to allocate the cost not directly associated with the metro or bus system, but represents services shared between them. In the absence of specific information, the best we can do is find a reasonable split. On the one hand, the metro transports more passengers and is generally more technically complicated to operate than buses. On the other hand, the bus network has twice the numbers of employees (page 62 in 2005 budget) and costs twice as much to operate compared to the metro. Considering this, I decided that splitting the shared services 40% for the metro and 60% for the bus was reasonable.

Strangely, the costs shown in the STM chart do not add up to the budgetâ€s total operating cost but we will ignore this for our calculations.

Bus & Metro Operating Costs of the STM (2015)
metro	405M$
bus	679M$
bus & metro	1,085M$

3) Revenues of Bus and Metro

The next step is to allocate the revenues between the metro and bus, as they are reported together in the STM budget. Again, this is not a trivial task.

To illustrate the complexity, imagine a passenger purchases a single ticket and takes a bus for 2 km, then the metro for 6km, then another bus for 2km. How should we split the fare between the bus and metro? Should we split the fare 60/40 based on the number of travelled kilometers? What if the passenger transfers from one metro line to another? Or 50/50 between bus and metro? Or 33/66 because the metro was taken once, but buses were taken twice (or, in industry terms, â€œby boardingâ€)? What if the passenger transferred from one metro line to another?

To answer this question, I tried to find out how the STM and agencies share revenues for passes that span multiple transit agencies. I found that a hybrid is used: for TRAM monthly passes covering multiple agencies, the first 23.75$ are shared in proportion to the number of trips, the remainder according to passenger-km travelled (budget 2015, page 141). I applied a similar sharing model to the calculations, and allocated 20% of the revenues by boarding and the rest by passenger-km.

While analyzing revenue-splitting, I considered factoring-in the type of tickets to get more accurate numbers. Analyzing STM OPUS card tap-in data, I found that there are more single and short term tickets used on the metro compared to the bus, which in turn sees more weekly and monthly passes. This may be relevant, since single tickets bring in more revenue per trip compared to pases. On the other hand, the Metro sees more monthly passes that are shared with other agencies (TRAM passes), which complicate revenue allocations.

Without being able to model these accurately, weâ€ll simply assume that the usage of different tickets across the different networks has a negligible impact on revenue.

Bus & Metro Revenue (2015)
	per boarding	per km	combined
metro	384 M$	422 M$	415 M$
bus	275 M$	237 M$	245 M$
total	660 M$	660 M$	660 M$

4) capital cost

Capital costs are the big one time costs used to build lines, upgrade them or make large renovations.

It is possible to trade operating costs for capital costs — for example, a system could decide to spend a lot of money to replace an expensive-to-operate heavily used bus line with an automated light metro line, which may reduce the number of staff required and thus the operating cost – but requiring a lot of capital expenditure.

On the other hand, a system could decide to never build capital-intensive rail lines at all and transport everybody by bus all the time. Then the capital costs will be much lower (since you basically only need the buses and garages), but the operating costs will be very high.

So in order to get a complete picture of the total cost of running transit, we need to consider the capital costs.

Generally, we expect the capital costs for a metro system to be large due to the expensive infrastructure, and the capital costs for a bus system to be small. For the operating cost itâ€s the other way round — and depending on how many users there are running on the line, the total cost of one or the other may be cheaper per passenger.

Figuring out how to count the capital costs can be quite tricky. Some investment spendings come out of the operating budget. Capital spending may vary from year to year, depending on the construction projects. Capital costs are also often paid via debt, which then spreads the costs over many years and makes it hard to identify when the costs happen.

From an accounting perspective, there are two approaches to counting the capital costs: when the money is made available and when it is spent. Both approaches have shortcomings, as debt makes it hard to track when the money for capital projects is paid out. The STM budget also doesnâ€t provide a detailed view to track this information. Further, itâ€s impossible to split the information to bus and metro spending.

Tracking when the money is spent is much easier: each year there is a capital budget, and there is even a listing of the projects where most of the money is spent. This allows to differentiate bus and metro spending. The problem is that this pretends that the capital cost of the system is only due to projects that are being done in one year, when in reality most of the capital spending may have been done in the past, with the debt being paid off slowly.

Looking at the capital budget over multiple years, we see that the spending has been relatively constant, around 600M$ per year (although there were some spikes in recent years due to the purchase of new metro cars). Also consider that the only metro extension in nearly thirty years, the 2007 Laval extension of the Orange line, cost 745M$ in total â€” not much more than a single year of capital budgets now.

The capital budget can be relatively easily split into bus and metro, since most of the budget is for major projects:

It seems overall, using the year-of-expenditure view of capital cost provides a reasonable approximation of the total capital cost of the system, and allows us to break it down into bus and metro spending.

The Results

Putting all of these numbers together, weâ€ll get the following results:

Bus & Metro Cost & Revenue per Passenger-km (2015)
	Metro	Bus	Overall
revenue (per passenger-km)	18.7c	19.7c	19.1c
operating cost (per passenger-km)	18.3c	54.6c	31.4c
capital cost (per passenger-km)	21.4c	11.9c	18.0c
total cost (per passenger-km)	39.7c	66.5c	49.4c

As expected, the metro is cheaper to operate, but the capital costs are higher, compared to the bus. The capital costs for the STM bus system actually seem a bit high — this may be due to large bus infrastructure projects going on right now, work on garages and updated real-time tracking systems.

Also note that the bus has more revenue per kilometre. This is because metro trips are longer on average compared to bus trips, ever since the metro extension to Laval (page 20).

Conclusion

We find that the metro is barely profitable operationally. Since the subsidies are provided to both the metro and the bus system, we could claim that the metro is profitable after subsidies, and that these profits are used to subsidize the capital costs of the metro, or more likely, the operating costs of the buses.

One important thing to remember is that the STM forms a system of buses working together with the metro. Many passengers use buses to get to the metro, meaning the buses extend the reach of the metro. Without the feeder buses, the metro could not attract enough riders to be profitable.

So we can say overall that the metro is operationally profitable but only if we ignore the help of the feeder buses.

See the detailled spreadsheet for all the data.

Aside: On Presenting Reproducible Numbers

One thing I found during this work is that the story could change if the numbers were picked slightly differently, if I made different choices and assumptions. It would be possible to make the metro look unprofitable or make it look much more profitable, by changing the way costs and revenues are split between buses and metro, or if one were to sneak the cost of paratransit into the equations.

So if somebody provides numbers like this, itâ€s important that they publish their assumptions and calculations alongside it.

This brings us back to the graph made by CDPQInfra, the private promoters of the REM. Firstly you can see that the Montreal metro is as cheap or cheaper to operate than the fully-automated REM would be in the future (19c vs 19-25c).

But also, note that both the Metro system itself and the STM overall are cheaper to operate than whatever â€˜existing networksâ€ CDPQInfra presents, and that the total cost including capital costs is much lower as well. They are showing numbers without providing the details of their calculations, trying to tell a story that may not withstand scrutiny.

This is a bit concerning, because their whole story of profitable transit, which is presented as having the same overall cost as the existing transit lines, is used to justify important policy decisions and spending of large amount of public money.

The CDPQ and Bill 137:Constructing Alternate Realities

ant6n — Wed, 24 May 2017 03:58:20 +0000

Itâ€s been quite a while since I wrote about the REM, Montrealâ€s controversial light rail project. Since my last analysis on the subject, I spent more time following the official channels to try to participate in the discussion — I submitted a 100 page brief and a 20 minute presentation at the independent environmental consultations office to try to improve the project and point out problems.

The final BAPE report, generally warned of the many issues that I have also discussed on this blog, and indicated they could not recommend this project to go forward at this time.

One thing that the BAPE criticized was the lack of information regarding the financing of the project, especially the operating costs. So shortly after, CDPQInfra released a Note on the financing that does include a few numbers on the operating cost, mostly trying to show that the it will not be larger than for the existing public transit system, even though the REM will have to pay off the capital costs and the rather large 8% return demanded by the Caisse.

Most of their document is concerned with trying to prove that the existing transit system is basically crap and that the REM is the only way to fix that, and that the REM will be much better than the current network.

Iâ€ve become weary of the proclamations by CDPQInfra, Iâ€ve previously written about how they like to cook numbers and distort facts in order to make their projects appear great while dismissing criticism. Theyâ€ve made claims that later turned out to be half-true or not true, or true only from their own narrow point of view.

For example the claim that â€œtransit would be profitableâ€ turned out to be that â€œtransit would be profitable for the Caisse, as long as the public pays a large number of subsidiesâ€. Or the claim that â€œthere would be no shut-downs of the Deux-Montagnes line, except may for a weekend or twoâ€ turned out to mean â€œwe will single-track the whole line and only offer some rush-hour service in one directionâ€. They also keep referring to their project as a public-public partnership, when it is actually a full-on privatization project.

The â€œFinancing Noteâ€ for the REM

What struck me in this â€œFinancing Noteâ€ document is that they even misrepresent facts that can easily be verified, numbers that we can just look up.

Case in point, the following table from their document, which I helpfully annotated with some corrected numbers:

Letâ€s go through some of these numbers.

Note that the â€œExisting Networksâ€ is labelled with â€œ(2022)â€, meaning that we should also take into account the improvements that were planned on the network before the REM was announced.

1) â€œDeux-Montagnes frequency (peak): ~30 minutes on averageâ€
If we look at the actual schedule (link) during the peak hour, we see that the departures are actually 20 minutes apart (4 departures between 6:35 and 7:37, and 4 departures between 16:30 and 17:25).

Furthermore, the AMT has recently done some upgrades to allow running their heavy dual-mode engines and multi-level passenger cars on the line, which could allow increasing the service. The AMT capital budget for years has shown an unfunded project to increase double-tracking on the line, an item costing a mere 50M$, which would also allow increasing peak service substantially – and it could easily be implemented by 2022.

2) â€œDeux-Montagnes – Downtown Travel time: 40-45 minutesâ€
A quick look at the schedule finds that the travel time is actually 35-40 minutes. CDPQInfra simply adds 5 minutes of travel time to make their project look better.

3) â€œSouth Shore Frequency (peak): 15 minutesâ€
Looking at the actual schedules, we find that Terminus Chevrier is served by the 90, during the peak, every 3min-5min, with some departures only 2 minutes apart.

Terminus Panama is served by the 45 bus shuttling downtown. During the peak it runs less often, in the 8min-10min range. But also during the peak, 20-30 bus lines that generally terminate at Panama are through-routed to downtown, most stop at Panama. The Transit App trip planner tells me there are departures every 1min-4min.

4) â€œAirport Travel Time: 45-60 minutesâ€
To get to the airport by transit, you have to take the 747 express bus. This bus stops at two large metro stations (Berri-Uqam, Lionel-Groulx) and at various places in-between that connect pretty well to several downtown hotels. Generally, most people come from the metro system, and most connect at Lionel-Groulx.

During my last couple of trips to the airport, I have measured the bus travel time from Lionel-Groulx to be around 20 minutes. Indeed, the scheduled time is around 18-22 minutes, increasing to about 28 minutes in the rush hour direction. Once the construction around the Turcot highway interchange and the Dorval circle is finished by 2022, the bus will run on dedicated lanes — which should bring the travel times to 18-22 minutes at all times.

5) â€œAdditional Capacity: Saturated Networksâ€
This claim is the most egregious. It basically comes down to claiming that if the REM is not implemented, there could be no improvements to the existing networks. Even though there are current projects in the pipeline to increase service (like the previously mentioned 50M$ double-tracking project of the Deux-Montagnes line). There are ways to add capacity for much cheaper than the complete rebuild that the REM proposes.

Overall, the theoretical capacity of the existing heavy rail network is much higher than today. Itâ€s possible to triple the capacity with some investment — as for example proposed in the 2007 AMT study to place stations at Edouard-Montpetit, which assumed 5 minute frequencies in the tunnel.

Beyond that, there do exist North American heavy rail lines that allow 120 second frequencies – for example the North River tunnels in New York City. If similarly advanced signalling and emergency measures were implemented in the Mount-Royal tunnel, it would essentially six-tuple its capacity compared to today.

The REM would run at 150 second frequencies from the beginning — very close to the claimed maximum theoretical frequency of 90 seconds. Assuming this is actually possible, this would mean the absolute maximum theoretical capacity is only about 66% higher than the initial capacity — really much less room to grow.

And this absolute maximum theoretical capacity of the REM (24,000 PPHD) is still less than upgrading the existing heavy rail system to 120 second frequencies (60,000 PPHD).

So the claim that additional capacity opportunities are â€œsubstantialâ€ for the REM, while the existing networks are â€œsaturatedâ€ is simply not true.

CDPQInfra: A company of Spin and PR

Just taking a closer look at the above table, itâ€s easy to see that the CDPQInfra relies on simply printing false numbers in their pronouncements. They have trouble being honest. Whatever they say should be questioned vigorously, especially by journalists repeating those press releases. For a company that claims to be public (which isnâ€t actually true either), it is probably one of the least trustable.

Within this context, their first reaction after the release of the BAPE report is rather ironic: CDPQInfra came back blasting the whole BAPE process right away, in a press release titled â€œBAPE report on the REM project: An analysis that overlooks facts and distorts realityâ€. â€œDistort realityâ€, thatâ€s pretty rich.

A similar thing happened when journalist Francis Villes form La Presse crunched some numbers that indicate that the operation of the line will cost the public a lot of money every year in order to ensure the profitability to the CDPQ. When he asked CDPQInfra for comment, their spokesperson responded with the following:

â€œLe REM offrira un service de qualitÃ© et Ã haute frÃ©quence, qui promet de transformer la mobilitÃ© dans la rÃ©gion et d’amÃ©liorer la performance du transport collectif. Et ce, au mÃªme niveau de coÃ»t par passager-kilomÃ¨tre que les rÃ©seaux actuels. Pour des revenus par passager-kilomÃ¨tre Ã©quivalents Ã ceux des rÃ©seaux actuels, le REM couvrira non seulement ses frais d’exploitation, mais Ã©galement les coÃ»ts d’immobilisation, ce qui dÃ©montre la trÃ¨s grande efficacitÃ© du modÃ¨le d’affaires. PrÃ©tendre le contraire revient Ã induire le public en erreur.â€

Effectively heâ€s again repeating this will be a great project, and it will supposedly cost the public the same in subsidies as the current public transit system — and to be pretending otherwise would be to â€œmislead the publicâ€.

Itâ€s the pot calling the kettle black.

Enter Bill 137

This brings us to bill 137. Itâ€s a rather concerning development, a bill proposed by the government of Quebec to fast-track the REM project.

The bill

Disallows those being expropriated from contesting the expropriation.
It exempts the REM from municipal taxes.
It simply declares that the REM will be deemed in compliance with the BAPE.
It overrides the act respecting the preservation of agricultural land allowing the REM to convert a bunch of agricultural land.
It stipulates that the ARTM (the AMT replacement) will have to transfer 512M$ to the REM project â€œin lieu of land value captureâ€ (receiving no equity in return).
It forces the ARTM to enter into an agreement with the REM for the ongoing financing of the REM — and if the ARTM doesnâ€t do it, the minister can just decide the terms of the agreement.
It gives servitudes to public roads in order to build the REM.

This is basically a law that that overrides existing rules and gives powers, large amounts of subsidies and resources to a private company that will privatize essential transit assets, move it out of public control, and extract large amounts of money from the public to run it.

And just like CDPQInfra keeps trying to construct an alternate reality to advance their project, the government is constructing an alternate reality where the REM doesn’t break the rules of the environmental consultation process and the preservation of agricultural land.

My trust in this company is rather low at this point, but apparently the Liberal government trusts it more than actual public agencies.

I look at this with concern and agree with UdeM urbanism professor GÃ©rard Beaudet, who calls the REM the creation of a â€œBarony in the heart of the Metropolisâ€.

The New VendÃ´me Station – Long Transfers Ahead

ant6n — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 07:59:49 +0000

Last Wednesday, I presented a memoir at the the SociÃ©tÃ© de Transports de MontrÃ©alâ€s (STM) consultations on the “VendÃ´me Access Project”. The STM plans to build a second entrance and pedestrian corridor at VendÃ´me Station, to link together the Metro station, the commuter rail station, the new MUHC hospital, and the residential area to the North of VendÃ´me. The project will also add elevators, which will finally make the station accessible to people with reduced mobility.

Originally, I did not plan to attend these consultations, and hoped that the STM would come up with a reasonably efficient design. However, after seeing the video mockup of the new station, I found the STMâ€s proposal inefficient and decided to participate after all.

The main issue: long-winded transfers that force commuters to take stairs up and down and up again, without any escalators.

The STM always presents the project with an image that shows a modern, airy station building, presumably one that passengers would enjoy using:

While very pretty, this image does not represent the actual user experience of most travellers, who do not exit at VendÃ´me, but instead want to transfer between the AMT and STM trains.

Those transferring from buses will not be using this new entrance. In fact, this new Ã©dicule will essentially be used by residents East of the station and people with mobility issues who need the elevators.

The majority of passengers, those transferring between the Metro and the commuter trains, will perceive the station like this:

The Planned VendÃ´me Station, with Eastbound (purple) and Westbound (red) transfer walks shown.

A 104m transfer, 3 times the geographical distance between the 2 platforms, stairs totalling 94 steps that make users climb 3 times the actual height between the overground and underground platforms. No escalators, and those who need elevators must take 3 separate elevators along the way.

The walking distance is more than the existing concourse at VendÃ´me, which has a transfer length of 88m to 105m (depending on which platform you are coming from) and ~60 steps.

This is surprising given that the physical distance between the platforms is much shorter at the location where the new transfer will be built. One should expect the new concourse to have a shorter transfer!

Existing (left) vs proposed (right) transfer concourses at VendÃ´me Station, metro-level view (source)

Effectively, the new concourse squanders the opportunity for a shorter, more efficient transfer, made possible by the better positioning along the platforms, by instead providing a transfer-walk which is worse than the existing one!

And this matters, because people really hate wasting time in transfers. Transit agencies consider the psychological penalty of transferring to be more than two times the actual time it takes for the transfer. The problems are exacerbated by the many long flights of stairs, which require more time and effort.

In the end, when users have to choose between taking the car or the train, these extra minutes during the most inconvenient time of the commute may tip the scale and result in many people choosing driving over transit.

Why VendÃ´me Matters

VendÃ´me is an important transfer point between the Orange line and 3 commuter rail lines. These lines form the â€œCP divisionâ€ of the commuter rail network. While these 3 lines see about 33,700 passengers per day, the infrastructure is very much underutilized. This is largely due to the limited number of trains (low frequency), more expensive fares compared to the STM, and lack of stations in NDG (between Montreal-Ouest and VendÃ´me).

The CP line passes through one of the densest areas of Montreal that is not served by rapid transit. Several bus lines running parallel to the corridor have more ridership than the commuter rail lines, so the demand is clearly there.

Population density near the transit network centered around VendÃ´me station (source: 2011 census).
The area in NDG is one of the densest areas of Montreal not already served by rapid transit.

At the same time, VendÃ´me sits in the corridor that is the main access point downtown from the West of Montreal, and there have been multiple proposals to connect various areas using this line. If utilized better, this line could easily triple its ridership.

Still, the rail line has one major issue: the quality of the connection downtown. The terminal station is Lucien lâ€Allier (built when access to Gare Windsor was cut off by the construction of the Bell Centre). It is located downtown, but the walking distance to many work places is rather long.

Work places in Eastern downtown can not be reasonably reached by walking — commuters will have to use the metro to reach them.

Lucien lâ€Allier (red, centre-left), compared to the places of work in downtown.
Every red circle represents 500 workplaces (source: 2006 census).

Note that Lucien lâ€Allier also has a connection to the metro. But this transfer is rather long, because of the distance between the metro and AMT station locations and the depth of the metro station.

VendÃ´me station is therefore the most important transfer to connect the AMT CP division to downtown.

How Could We Fix The Proposed Design?

Thanks to a question during the information session by Matthew MacLaughlin, who runs metrodemontreal.com, the STM was asked to provide plans for the new station. Starting with those as a template, itâ€s possible to analyze the â€œconstraintsâ€ that were often mentioned during the question session, when people asked about the inefficient design.

During my presentation at the consultation, I made the following suggestions for improvements:

Proposal 1.1: Connect the STM and AMT concourse

If we look at the proposed connection, we see that inside the green area highlighted in the below image, the paid Metro area (blue) and the AMT tunnel (grey) almost touch. But since these areas are not connected, passengers are forced on a detour up and down stairs, just to get on the other side of a wall.

The area highlighted in green looks like like this at the metro platform level:

STM Metro platform area (left), AMT tunnel area (right),
representing the area previously highlighted in green (modified from this)

Again, you see the paid Metro area on the left (highlighted blue) and the AMT area on the right (highlighted grey), separated only by a wall.

At the information session, the STM claimed that the AMT and STM areas donâ€t have exactly the same floor height — but the plans they provided do not show that. In fact it appears that people transferring from the Metro will have to walk up 31 steps on the right, then down 31 steps on the left, meaning the floor heights should be the same. Any difference should be minimal, and the floor height of the AMT tunnel could easily be adjusted to match the Metro platform.

If we realize that the main problem is the absence of doors in the wall between the AMT and the STM, we could fix it like this:

Proposal 1.1 (underground level)

Here, I simply added doors between the AMT and the STM area. The heavy turning doors are required because the STM needs a closed system for ventilation purposes. Note also that I removed one set of stairs on the left, and one elevator, because they have now become redundant — people coming from the left can use the stairs and the elevator on the right. Note also the added turnstiles, which passengers have to pass through to get to the metro platform.

Proposal 1.2: A single Concourse for STM and AMT

One of the quirks of the proposed design is that the station is divided into two completely separated areas: one with a paid fare area for the STM (with its own ventilation) and one for the AMT, which uses proof-of-payment and different ventilation. This is very strange, given the constrained space.

Basically, the planners of the VendÃ´me Access Project beautifully created a large amount of space by taking it from the adjacent bus loop and building. They then filled the space with all sorts of infrastructure, dividing it and making the space cramped and hard to use. It also means the AMT area does not benefit from the large window facade.

But it would be possible to have a shared concourse, by placing the whole station under STM ventilation and having turnstiles closer to the platform. This is done like this for example at station Bonaventure.

Current plan vs current plan removing all the walls inside the proposed edicule.
Imagine all the space and light opened up by using a shared concourse! (1m grid)

A single, shared concourse can allow an even better connection between STM and AMT:

Proposal 1.2, assuming shared concourse (underground level)

In the diagram above, we see that by opening up the space, we can now have two connections between the metro platform and the AMT tunnel, reducing walking distance along the platform to reach the tunnel.

Proposal 2: Escalators!

At information session, the STM was asked why no escalators were planned. They said there is not enough vertical space. This makes sense when we look at one of the cross-sections they provided:

Profile of current plans, with escalator envelope superimposed, showing conflict.

As you can see, the â€œmachine roomâ€ of the escalator would conflict with the existing metro tunnel.

But this problem exists only at this one spot; the various other stairs donâ€t have that problem!

Stairs with clearance issues shown in red, stairs that should not have escalator clearance issues are shown in green.

And even for this one critical set of stairs, it would be possible to add escalators if we lowered the floor above the metro tunnel and move the stairs Westward, which will provide more clearance under that â€œcrash-wallâ€.

This would allow us to add one upward escalator:

Proposal 2. Location of single upward escalator,
with enough 2m clearance (shown in blue) between the Metro tunnel and the escalator.

Proposal 3: Maximize Tunnel Level, minimize Mezzanine Level

The design so far has reduced the length of the transfer between the Southern metro platform and the AMT concourse from more than 100m to about 40m. To make an impact in the other direction, i.e. the transfer between the Northern (Westbound) metro platform and the AMT trains, we should try to remove the total number of stairs.

Optimizing this transfer essentially requires raising the AMT tunnel up, and lowering the mezzanine above the metro tunnel down, like so:

Profile view of Optimizing the VendÃ´me Station transfers

As the the two levels move towards each other,

the total number of stairs required for transfers from the Northern metro platform to the AMT goes down,
long flights of stairs will be turned into several shorter flights of stairs, which require less effort.

In an ideal world, the Metro tunnel should have been built lower or the AMT tracks raised at some point, so we could have a single mezzanine strategically placed between the Metro and the commuter rail platforms. Building this now would involve such a large impact on the existing infrastructure that it would be too optimistic to propose.

The ideal solution: a single mezzanine between Metro and commuter train.

However, without making major changes to the existing construction, we could still maximize the floor level of the AMT concourse by using a very low height for the tunnel (2.20m), and a very low profile rail bridge.

This would result in three split levels: the Metro platform level, the AMT tunnel, and the mezzanine above. They could each be about 2.20m apart:

Proposal 3, profile view. The height is meant to be to scale,
the horizontal features are approximate. The boxes represent elevators.

The area between the Eastbound Metro platform and the AMT tunnel, could look like this:

Proposal 3. (underground level). The darker area represent areas that are
At the STM level. The white areas represent areas that are at the AMT level.
The blue area represents the vertical clearance required for an escalator.
The dotted bar is the crash wall (all elevators have to be North of it).

The above design can easily deal with any separation between the STM and AMT level, up to about 2.5m — as long as a single, shared concourse is used between AMT and STM. Note the efficient use of the available space, the insertion of elevators in the constrained space between the â€œcrash wallâ€ (dotted line) and the existing metro tunnel, and the arrangement that allows adding an escalator for every set of stairs.

So using a single, shared concourse between AMT and STM, rather than two separated turf areas, together with some optimizations, we can significantly improve the transfer experience for tens of thousands of passengers.

Conclusion: Participate in the Consultations and Demand Improvements!

I believe my presentation has at least piqued the interest of the Commission (the president thanked me for the â€œwell-researched and thoroughly thought-out presentationâ€ and another wondered whether I was an architect).

After my presentation, I also spoke with attendees who seemed interested in the ideas I put forward.

This consultation has convinced me of the importance for people to voice their opinions.

For this project, many people asked questions about the inefficient design and the lack of escalators at the initial information sessions. But at the session where the public may make presentations, nobody besides me talked about these issues — so although the independent commission was aware of the problems, if nobody had come and complained about them, they couldnâ€t mention those in their report. It was my impression that the Commissioners were glad to have someone there who talked about station design.

Projects like these are often â€œdesigned by committeeâ€, and the public isnâ€t directly involved. Itâ€s only during the consultations, even if they are non-binding like this one, that we get a chance to â€œpull up a chairâ€ and participate, and ask for improvements for users.

This time, one person showed up and entered concerns into the record, so there is a slight chance that improvements may happen. This chance increases with every voice that is added to the chorus. Participation is important, there may be nobody doing it for you.

See video of my presentation here, and read my brief here.

ant6n — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 14:23:43 +0000

English version below. The following was written as a response to the most recent ‘opinion’ published by the CDPQInfra in La Presse and Le Devoir.

La controverse autour du REM est devenue une guerre mÃ©diatiqueâ€¦ sur un projet de transport en commun! Ã‡a nâ€a aucun sens. Le projet devrait Ãªtre Ã©valuÃ© selon son mÃ©rite, avec lâ€objectif de construire un rÃ©seau intÃ©grÃ© de transport.

Au lieu de cela, on se chicane sur des faits. CDPQInfra ne cesse de publier des article pour â€œcorrigerâ€ ceux qui soulÃ¨vent des problÃ¨mes. Mais CDPQInfra ne fait que souligner les chiffres en leur faveur et tente de brouiller le dÃ©bat sur les chiffres qui leur sont dÃ©favorables, pour nous convaincre que le REM est Ã©conomiquement viable.

Par exemple, leur plus rÃ©cent article paru dans La Presse et Le Devoir compare le coÃ»t de construction par kilomÃ¨tre du REM avec celui du Canada line et du Confederation line, pour montrer que le chiffre est infÃ©rieur pour le REM, ce qui en ferait un meilleur projet.

Mais cette comparaison nâ€est simplement pas pertinente! Les lignes Canada et Confederation ont Ã©tÃ© construites de zÃ©ro; des tunnels neufs ont Ã©tÃ© creusÃ©s dans le centre-ville, la partie la plus onÃ©reuse des projets. Câ€est complÃ¨tement diffÃ©rent du REM: la moitiÃ© de la ligne et le tunnel existent dÃ©jÃ ! Il est donc tout Ã fait normal que le coÃ»t par kilomÃ¨tre soit moindre. Cela nâ€en fait pas un meilleur projet, malgrÃ© ce que CDPQInfra voudrait prÃ©tendre.

Le coÃ»t par kilomÃ¨tre est un chiffre que la CDPQ brandit Ã tout vent car elle obscurcit tous les problÃ¨mes qui font du projet un mauvais investissement:

1) lâ€utilisation inefficace de lâ€infrastructure existante, particuliÃ¨rement du tunnel du Mont Royal. Cet actif stratÃ©gique devrait Ãªtre partagÃ© entre le REM, les lignes de lâ€AMT et de Via Rail, mais la CDPQ refuse de prendre en considÃ©ration un tel partage, car ils nâ€ont que faire des coÃ»ts occasionnÃ©s aux autres agences, ni du dÃ©veloppement Ã long terme du transport Ã MontrÃ©al. Sans accÃ¨s au tunnel, les lignes de lâ€AMT et de VIA Rail ne pourront jamais rÃ©aliser leur plein potentiel.

La CDPQ continue de prÃ©tendre que ce partage est impossible technologiquement, prÃ©tention rÃ©futÃ©e Ã maintes reprises par des experts indÃ©pendants et par Via Rail.

2) la reconstruction non-nÃ©cessaire de la ligne Deux-Montagnes. Contrairement Ã ce que la CDPQ laisse entendre, la reconstruction nâ€augmentera en rien la capacitÃ© aux heures de pointe. Le REM ne fera quâ€Ã©tendre le service durant la journÃ©e, alors que lâ€infrastructure actuelle permet dâ€atteindre ce rÃ©sultat avec des amÃ©liorations beaucoup moins chÃ¨res.

3) les antennes vers lâ€Ouest de lâ€ÃŽle gÃ©nÃ¨reront trÃ¨s peu dâ€achalandage. La ligne est construite sur le bord de lâ€autoroute, lÃ oÃ¹ trÃ¨s peu de gens habitent, et est mal connectÃ© au rÃ©seau dâ€autobus. La ligne dÃ©pend presque exclusivement sur le parking incitatif, davantage mÃªme que les trains de banlieues existantes, ce qui en limitera lâ€achalandage.

Si le REM nâ€est pas fait pour maximiser la frÃ©quentation, pas construit pour optimiser lâ€infrastructure existante, pourquoi voulons-nous aller de lâ€avant? Parce que nous avons mandatÃ© une entitÃ© privÃ©e pour planifier notre transport en commun, Ã profit. Beaucoup de profit. Ce profit, qui sera extrait du public quÃ©bÃ©cois, car nous devrons repayer la contribution de la Caisse dâ€une faÃ§on ou dâ€une autre.

Et ce motif de profit explique la guerre mÃ©diatique. La CDPQ veut le projet, mÃªme sâ€il ne fait aucun sens, mÃªme sâ€il ne maximise pas lâ€utilitÃ© publique, car elle nâ€est concernÃ©e que par le profit. Nos agences gouvernementales sont restÃ©es particuliÃ¨rement silencieuses sur ce projet, et la plupart se sont rangÃ©s derriÃ¨re la CDPQ malgrÃ© les failles du projet.

Ã‰tant donnÃ© lâ€inaction de nos institutions publiques, câ€est au public quÃ©bÃ©cois de sâ€assurer que la CDPQ soit redevable, et de demander les amÃ©liorations qui sâ€imposent.

The REM controversy has become a media war

The REM controversy has become a media war — over a transit project! It’s completely crazy. It should be about merit, about weighing positive and negative impacts. About building an integrated, regional transit network.

Instead, weâ€re arguing about facts. The Caisse keeps writing articles trying to â€˜correctâ€ people bringing up issues. The Caisse only highlights facts to try to make them look good, and misleading the public about others, all to prove that their project supposedly makes financial sense.

For example, in the most recent article in La Presse et Le Devoir, CDPQInfra compares the construction cost per kilometre of the REM with the Canada line and Confederation line – showing that it is lower, supposedly to prove theirs is a much better project.

But this comparison is simply not apt. The Canada and Confederation lines were built from scratch, including downtown tunnels, which is the costliest part. This is completely unlike the REM: Half the the line already exists today; the downtown tunnel exists today. Most of the new stretches are along highways, where it is cheaper to build, but where it will have less ridership. It is normal that the cost per km is lower, but, contrary to what the CDPQ wants us to believe, that doesnâ€t mean itâ€s a better project.

The cost per kilometre is a number that the Caisse provides try to obfuscate the problems that make this project an inefficient investment:

1) The inefficient utilization of existing infrastructure. In particular the Mount Royal tunnel. This strategic infrastructure asset should be shared by REM, three AMT lines and VIA. But the Caisse simply refuses to consider sharing, because they do not care about the cost to other transit agencies and long-term transit development in Montreal. Without direct access to downtown, the AMT and VIA lines they will never be able to realize their full ridership potential.

Instead theyâ€re arguing about whether a shared system is possible, a fact which many independent experts and VIA rail itself have explained multiple times.

2) The unnecessary rebuilding of the Deux-Montagnes line from scratch. Contrary to the claims of the Caisse, these upgrades will not improve capacity during peak hour. The REM will merely extend service throughout the day. The existing infrastructure could support this with simple, much cheaper upgrades.

3) The West Island antennas have very little ridership. This is because the line is planned along highways, where almost nobody lives, and it has poor connections to buses. The line relies almost exclusively on parking, even more than the existing commuter rail lines, and this will keep ridership low.

If the REM will not be not built to maximize ridership, not built to maximize utilization of existing infrastructure assets, Why are we building it? Itâ€s because we’re asking a private entity to plan our transit, for profit. A lot of profit. This profit will be extracted from the Quebec public, we will have to pay back the financial contribution of the Caisse one way or the other.

And the profit motive explains the media war. Once we take infrastructure planning away from our democratic institutions, and give it to a private entity to produce profit, then that entity will fight for the project no matter whether it makes sense, no matter whether it maximizes public utility. Our public agencies have been incredibly quiet, most are getting in line magically despite the obvious flaws of the project.

Given the lack of oversight from our public institutions, it is up to the public to hold the Caisse and the government accountable and demand improvements of the project.

MontrÃ©al – Catbus

2017 in Review

Other stories in 2017

2017 and Me

Most Popular Posts in 2017

Privatization of the Deux-Montagnes Line:How to Value a Transit Line?

How much will the CDPQ pay for the Deux-Montagne line?

How Much Money did we actually invest in the line?

How much is the line worth on the Books of the RTM?

The Land Value

Business valuation – the Value of the Contract

Business valuation – With some Investment to Increase Ridership

So why should we care? – The Ownership Model of the REM

Replacement Value

Summary

Footnotes

Whatâ€™s a Gadgetbahn?

Cost, Speed, Comfort
– The problem is geometry, physics and the Right of Way

The Maglev

The Real Issue: Economics

Be distrustful of Gadgetbahn Concepts

Mont Royal:Convertissons la Conduite Urbaine en Ski Urbain!

Mont Royal Mountain:
Letâ€s turn Urban Driving into Urban Downhill Skiing!

The Cost of Montreal’s Free Transit Weekend

Does Automating the Metro Save Lots of Money?

Is the Montreal Metro Profitable?

The CDPQ and Bill 137:Constructing Alternate Realities

The â€œFinancing Noteâ€ for the REM

CDPQInfra: A company of Spin and PR

Enter Bill 137

The New VendÃ´me Station – Long Transfers Ahead

La Controverse Autour du REM est Devenue une Guerre MÃ©diatiqueâ€¦

MontrÃ©al – Catbus

2017 in Review

Other stories in 2017

2017 and Me

Most Popular Posts in 2017

Privatization of the Deux-Montagnes Line:How to Value a Transit Line?

How much will the CDPQ pay for the Deux-Montagne line?

How Much Money did we actually invest in the line?

How much is the line worth on the Books of the RTM?

The Land Value

Business valuation – the Value of the Contract

Business valuation – With some Investment to Increase Ridership

So why should we care? – The Ownership Model of the REM

Replacement Value

Summary

Footnotes

Whatâ€™s a Gadgetbahn?

Cost, Speed, Comfort– The problem is geometry, physics and the Right of Way

The Maglev

The Real Issue: Economics

Be distrustful of Gadgetbahn Concepts

Mont Royal:Convertissons la Conduite Urbaine en Ski Urbain!

Mont Royal Mountain:Letâ€s turn Urban Driving into Urban Downhill Skiing!

The Cost of Montreal’s Free Transit Weekend

Does Automating the Metro Save Lots of Money?

Is the Montreal Metro Profitable?

The CDPQ and Bill 137:Constructing Alternate Realities

The â€œFinancing Noteâ€ for the REM

CDPQInfra: A company of Spin and PR

Enter Bill 137

The New VendÃ´me Station – Long Transfers Ahead

La Controverse Autour du REM est Devenue une Guerre MÃ©diatiqueâ€¦

Cost, Speed, Comfort
– The problem is geometry, physics and the Right of Way

Mont Royal Mountain:
Letâ€s turn Urban Driving into Urban Downhill Skiing!

The â€œFinancing Noteâ€ for the REM