tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post2485308683800121286..comments2024-03-18T16:22:10.302-04:00Comments on Urban kchoze: World's worst investment: why urban highways destroy wealthsimval84http://www.blogger.com/profile/10615053214354191224noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-56354991885464244842016-01-14T12:25:39.977-05:002016-01-14T12:25:39.977-05:00There is a chicken-and-egg problem here. Mass tran...There is a chicken-and-egg problem here. Mass transit is inconvenient to many users in North America because the network is not well-developed. This translates to low demand and usage of mass transit. The low demand translates to conclusion of mass transit being expensive in cost benefit studies. Demand for mass transit would increase significantly if the commute does not take three hours each way due to poor coverage.<br /><br />Cost burden is another problem of urban highway when it is owned/funded by municipalities. These highways often serve suburb commuters. The suburbs are often located outside the municipality owning the highway. Yet, the suburbs do not share the cost of building, expanding, and maintaining the highway. The Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway in Toronto are prime examples.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01253139673411899264noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-60357157775165980992016-01-14T11:29:53.250-05:002016-01-14T11:29:53.250-05:00Roads have a qualitative advantage over mass trans...Roads have a qualitative advantage over mass transit that vanishes only in high density cities: mass transit cannot get most passengers from points A to points B, but only from points A' to points B', often at huge inconvenience to the user. The value of time spent stick on congested roads, waiting for trains, walking between transit stops and desired points, and so on, plus the longer waits during off-peak times, etcetera -- commute tone matters a great deal. There are other costs too. For example, in New York there's parking cost for people who want to drive (and the cost of having too have these parking garages). In many cities in the North Americas mass transit outside smallish downtown areas makes little sense to the people who would have to use it.<br /><br />But i agree that roads have significant qualitative costs that are often not evident until after they are built. The cross-Bronx expressway is a prime example of a road that caused a great deal of destruction of value.<br /><br />What i like a lot is ridesharing: it reduces the needed for parking and decreases the inconvenience to mass transit users of having to get from points A' to points B.Nicohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15205392567037908413noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-61960618907412642852016-01-14T10:19:01.258-05:002016-01-14T10:19:01.258-05:00You're comparing apples to oranges here, exact...You're comparing apples to oranges here, exactly the type of comparison I warned against of comparing at-grade rural highways built in greenfields with underground urban infrastructure.<br /><br />First, the price figure presented here is only the inflation-adjusted price for the subway, infrastructure was much less expensive back then. The most recent subway extension cost 150 millions $ per km. No trench highway has been built in decades around here, so I don't have an estimate for the construction cost of one, but I think the ratio would be the same and it would probably be 1 billion per kilometer or so (certainly the Big Dig bears this out).<br /><br />I've checked the Green Parkway and it is being built on flatlands, with nothing near them. Land is cheap, work is easy to do and it will mostly be at-grade, being on viaducts for interchanges (about one per mile). Of course it's affordable. Building a heavy rail line in the same context would not be more expensive (these are usually called "commuter rail" when in rural areas), maybe even cheaper, and commuter rail can essentially be surface metros... In Japan, many commuter rail lines in Tokyo just go underground and serve as metros in Tokyo while passing through it.<br /><br />Here's another example: the French TGV (high-speed rail) costs 16 million euros per kilometer, around 24 million Canadian dollars (at current exchange rate). Why don't we just build TGVs all over cities if it's so affordable? Because their low price per kilometer is due to their location in rural areas, build them in cities and their price explodes. Same thing for highways, in fact, it's worse for highways because they need more space.<br /><br />As to Houston's LRT lines, again, these are in the middle of urban areas, where work is difficult and land is expensive.<br /><br />That's why I compared the two projects in Montréal, because both were done at roughly the same time and have the same installation (underground), making the comparison an apple-to-apple one.simval84https://www.blogger.com/profile/10615053214354191224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-71549394376189719092016-01-14T09:44:50.646-05:002016-01-14T09:44:50.646-05:00The truth of your premise depends a lot on how gen...The truth of your premise depends a lot on how generalizable your figures are. Harris County, Texas is wrapping up construction on a 61 km stretch of the Grand Parkway that cost $1.1 billion—about a third the inflation adjusted cost/km of the Montreal Metro, according to your figures above. Houston's Green and Purple light rail lines, on the other hand (underground rail is not practical in the Houston due to the water table) cost $80 million/km, or 25% more than the Montreal Metro.David Gawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04461251153905741802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-85915577032315650312015-09-10T00:15:14.541-04:002015-09-10T00:15:14.541-04:00Increasing value in the suburbs is a poor trade be...Increasing value in the suburbs is a poor trade because the low density reduces the tax revenue per unit of infrastructure.<br />In the city the higher density gives a lot of taxpayers supporting fairly short stretches of infrastructure, so that even fairly low levels of taxation pay for maintenance and repair with a surplus. In the suburbs the ow number of taxpayers per unit of infrastructure doesn't provide enough revenue to pay for maintenance, usually costing a dollar for every 50 cents of revenue, even with relatively high taxes.<br />Checkout Strong Towns for an engineer's look at sustainable infrastructure design.<br />http://www.strongtowns.org/newcomers/#welcome-to-strong-townsClaudehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02236138361474221375noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-22733872488745537262015-01-11T17:55:52.333-05:002015-01-11T17:55:52.333-05:00Have any analyses been done that compare the relat...Have any analyses been done that compare the relative changes in value when an urban freeway is built depending on use type? I know that the auto-oriented commercial uses like drive-through fast food restaurants, gas stations, etc. are pretty low-value, but at the same time they occupy some of the best sites for car access at highway interchanges. Also, the residential neighborhood that's been decimated by a highway and traffic could become more valuable as a commercial corridor. <br /><br />On a more broad level, while these highways tend to destroy land value near them, and especially in cities, they also increase value in suburbs (the notion of displacement that was mentioned) once outside the noise-shed of the highway itself. It might look like a significant decrease in value over a small relative area of the city translates to a very large area of somewhat increased value out on the periphery. That seems to fit with the planning notions that were in place when these highways were being proposed in the first place. <br /><br />Might there even be some increased value in commercial central business districts due to good highway access? I suspect the answer is that it might be a sort of hidden form of displacement, where higher value more dense development is replaced with lower density but larger buildings that have more space dedicated to parking. It may be more expensive to build, and appear to be of a higher value, but it's still a loss on a per acre or per occupant kind of basis. Jeffrey Jakucykhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04092631645389171565noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-81074057586474299822015-01-10T18:43:57.841-05:002015-01-10T18:43:57.841-05:00Montréal's subway is quite narrow so they get ...Montréal's subway is quite narrow so they get away with a single tunnel (most subways require 2 tunnels), and Montréal's ground is easy to tunnel through. The latest extension to Laval came in at roughly 150 million dollars per km and that was the early 2000s. Construction costs of public works seem to have increased far beyond inflation all over the world, maybe PPP would explain it better as labor has gotten more expensive but maybe techniques haven't kept up with labor reduction (or maybe union rules still impose the same number of workers for the same job).<br /><br />I do think urban freeways have seen the same cost increase. Even at-grade freeways in the suburbs in Montréal now cost 50-60 million dollars per km (case in point A-19 in the northern suburbs). In Detroit, a widening plan for a 6,7 mile stretch of the I-94 is expected to cost at least 2,7 billion dollars. That is 400 million dollars per mile for one lane per direction more. In Seattle, the Alaskan Viaduct tunnel, 2-mile long is expected to cost 4,25 billion dollars, that's 2,125 billion per mile, a bit over 1,4 billion dollar per km. Making subways look positively cheap in comparison.<br /><br />I don't know of any modern cut-and-cover freeways being built in cities in recent times, but I'd be curious too to know how much they would cost. The closest thing we get is freeway widenings, which are plenty expensive as well. We also get interchange reconstructions which are often disastrously expensive, the Turcot interchange will cost 3,7 billion dollars according to recent estimates, in Milwaukee, the Zoo interchange alone will cost 1,7 billion dollars to rebuild.<br /><br />As an engineer, I know that the idea that we are ever "finished paying" for infrastructure is BS. When we have reimbursed the original loan for the infrastructure, we have to borrow a new loan in order to rebuild the infrastructure.simval84https://www.blogger.com/profile/10615053214354191224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-70826012676165777592015-01-10T17:48:14.690-05:002015-01-10T17:48:14.690-05:00I didn't realize the metro was so cheap... it ...I didn't realize the metro was so cheap... it explains why many of these rapid transit systems were built around that time and expanded little since. $60 million per km for a subway would be amazing today, the Spadina subway extension cost about $300 million per km, so 5x more even after adjusting for inflation.<br /><br />Has the cost of building urban freeways also increased comparably?<br /><br />Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement tunnel seems to have also cost 3-4x more per km even after adjusting for inflation. Big Dig in Boston is considerably worse. <br /><br />Are these higher costs due to tunnelling vs cut and cover (or just cut in Decarie's case)?NickDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07006815196885883516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-8641653667712908212015-01-08T14:22:49.219-05:002015-01-08T14:22:49.219-05:00I'm trying to plan an event for 2015 and want ...I'm trying to plan an event for 2015 and want to get in contact with you. Could you email me at andrewprice@andrewalexanderprice.com ? Thanks!Andrew Pricehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07803628953483616843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-51463481031863436222015-01-08T14:13:29.595-05:002015-01-08T14:13:29.595-05:00Personally, I believe that induced demand is more ...Personally, I believe that induced demand is more about speed than capacity.I wrote a post about the subject, why packed street grids that have much higher capacity than highways do not have to be feared.<br />http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/07/is-induced-demand-really-about-road.html<br /><br />The point is that the main benefit of roads and streets for car users is speed, not capacity. So speed induces demand, not capacity. But when demand for that speed benefit is greater than supply of space on the roads, you have congestion which reduces speed. Increasing capacity on highways does induce demand, but not in and of itself, but rather by allowing speed, limited by congestion, to return to free flow levels.<br /><br />A subway or other rapid transit that can be speed-competitive with cars, especially if it's also cheaper (including parking costs), can thus largely prevent the formation of congestion on streets. Induced demand will tend to gravitate towards transit rather than towards streets. Of course, this is valid only in the corridor of those rapid transit lines, however, these also happen to be, generally speaking, the corridors where congestion is most likely to emerge.simval84https://www.blogger.com/profile/10615053214354191224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-79293419714269161692015-01-08T12:38:29.408-05:002015-01-08T12:38:29.408-05:00"this allows freight an easier time to naviga..."this allows freight an easier time to navigate surface streets" <- Static demand fallacy, beloved of transit boosters too.<br /><br />Dedicated space (below or above ground) for more efficient modes (transit/bike/ped) boosts aggregate freedom of movement (relative to car-dedicated/dominated space) but is independent of congestion levels throughout the day and year.Neilhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10254092267332573495noreply@blogger.com