I'm at the #CUTA2025 conference in Montreal this week. Great presentation by @jedwinmok.com and @chittimarco.bsky.social about escalating transit costs in Canada. What do the countries with highest costs have in common? English is their primary language.

Making the Eglinton Crosstown elevated through Scarborough would have made it immensely better

I finally completed my second long form post dedicated to the problem of High Speed Rail and the city, or "who goes with whom in the puzzle of traffic separation around large urban areas?" I hope you enjoy. open.substack.com/pub/marcochi...

The difference in the time it takes a streetcar in Amsterdam vs. Toronto to clear an intersection after servicing a nearside stop.

Here's a video of the impossible. The UP Express has high platforms and level boarding for passengers. That is supposed make it impossible for mainline North American freight trains to pass. And yet, as this shows, CN freight trains roll past the high platform at Weston multiple times per week.

Metra of the future: - electric train where every car has power (faster acceleration) - lots of doors - level boarding - contrast color doors for low vision passengers - large bike symbols for bike cars - digital sign showing train destination - runs every 10 minutes

We have a new website for the Northeast Corridor High-Speed Rail project, with illustrative graphics. nec.transitcosts.com

many experiences make vancouver feel like a much bigger city than it actually is - like taking skytrain at rush hour. automation is a key reason a NA region w the population of minneapolis or denver can support a train every 1-2 minutes, something you'd expect in new york, toronto, or mexico city

99% of Canadians studies "We are taking inspiration from international peers!" Look inside The international peers 🇺🇸🇬🇧

Why This “Anti-Car Labyrinth” Is Actually Brilliant youtu.be/WAhlfWt25sA

I would pay to have a regional railway network around Montréal like Sydney has. I would probably go visit some new corners of QC every other weekend. Do we have a plausible theory why Australia went all in on electric suburban trains from the 1920s, but Canada didn't?

This partly explains the "Medellin miracle" - www.youtube.com/watch?v=m83M... @universidad-eafit.bsky.social @eiturbanmobility.eu

Print this and frame it on the wall with the title, "Why North American Transit Construction Costs are So High"

I *love* this new protected intersection. I think it’s the most exciting new bike infrastructure in Montreal since the REV Saint-Denis. I sure hope there aren’t any major mayoral candidates planning to pause or remove cycling infrastructure. That would be awfully inconvenient right now.

despite how Lee Myung-bak's legacy turned out, he was a truly CEO mayor who led three big projects of major consequence for Seoul: 1) the Cheonggyecheon creek restoration 2) the bus network reforms 3) support for Platform Screen Doors at Seoul Metro stations

Even in its terribly debilitated state GO Expansion still is the infrastructure project with the highest BCR on the continent. Easily a top national priority. In any sane developed country this is a 5-year modernization program. Our incompetent institutions live in fear of doing literally anything

Reposted. Pic unrelated

LinkedIn is the worst

scarborough-rouge park just elected neethan shan - adding to a progressive wave of councillors in scarborough. bus lanes were a key election issue. the two runner-ups campaigned to rip out bus lanes. they lost. lesson: don't mess with scarborough's bus lanes. suburban transit riders vote, too.

Copenhagen's deep metro stations have a very lean fire evacuation strategy. Most egress capacity is provided by the 8 escalators (4 paths x 2 levels) normally used for vertical circulation with a single additional enclosed fixed stair at one end of the platform.

It’s sad that, when it comes to transit construction costs, Quebec follows the Anglosphere pattern instead of being able to build cheaply like France. We could have a tram in Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières, Saguenay. Multiple trams in Gatineau and Québec City!

A couple of years ago, the ARTM told us that any kind of above ground transsit grade-separated alignment is necessarily unsightly. Copenhagen didn't get the memo, I guess.

The most underappreciated issue in urbanism is the Anglosphere’s transit construction cost problem. It’s not just that we’re spending too much money on any particular project. It’s that we could be getting *much more transit* for the *same amount of money we’re currently spending*.

So glad to be featured in @ohtheurbanity.bsky.social excellent video! High costs in Canada have been accepted as an inevitability - as projects are descoped & cancelled. ION & REM show that another way is possible… …given the humility to abandon our Anglo roots & learn from global best practice.

NYC: we need a ventilation building for air intake and smoke extraction, so it's at least 40 feet above street level. Actually, we need two for each station. NFPA 130: extraction/intake should be a couple of feet above street level, so one can't park above it. Copenhagen:

santiago and cdmx both have successful metro systems originating from the 1970s. CDMX largely stopped building metro after 2000 amid austerity, opting for more BRT. metro-building costs have only worsened since. meanwhile, santiago continued building its metro, and costs are at record lows!

Housing has always been at the center of my civic work, through @MoreNeighbours and my writing. So of course, my first memo for @build_toronto is housing related: OLD TORONTO MUST GROW TO RELIEVE THE SUBURBS. - - - 🌆 🏗️👇- - -

many write off REM's low cost, large scale, and quick delivery as a result of reuse of an existent commuter line, but this misses other important factors - how procurement incentivized effective and useful service, to optimized station design, public policy, and more. this piece dives into that:

This new bike corridor is 500 metres from an existing parallel route. What’s the point? 1. Relieves congestion. The other route is very popular. 2. More direct for many trips. A friend’s round-trip to a sports league is now 10 mins faster, avoiding 2 km of detour (4×500 m) each day he goes.

“The time [REM] went from ‘doesn’t exist’ to [revenue service] is mind blowing...” A masterpiece from @hudsonyuen.bsky.social featuring @chittimarco.bsky.social & @englishrail.bsky.social. So proud to have played a small part. MUST WATCH for planners who believe the status quo is inevitable

A piece in the Star today along with Jonathan English and Narayan Donaldson on fixing the very slow, but very high potential Spadina streetcar. www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

$22 billion for one light rail line? We can't keep accepting transit cost escalation as inevitable.

Aiming to reverse the damage inflicted on the city by post-war traffic engineers, the Nowe Centrum Warszawy project is urban renewal for the 21st century: rebalancing public space, reducing car dominance, and making Warsaw’s centre more welcoming to pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users.🧵

One Hundred Eighty Five Billion 185,000,000,000 Let this number sink in.

That is about the cost of construction for the entire existing and under construction Chengdu Metro network. Chengdu Metro opened in 2010 and by 2025 is a 633km long system. The metro system is expected to reach 1,065km before 2035

The tendency to shift ever increasing amounts of risk to contractors reduces bidding competitiveness. Combined with budget estimates packed with lots of contingency - req'd for fear of budget overruns - cartel of large contractors use high budgets to set higher price floor and then cycle repeats.

America is exporting its insane transit waste around the world the way England exported its insane land use regulation across the British Empire :-/

FTA guidance since 2021 has forced many transit projects to prioritize budget certainty (thru p90 estimating) in initial cost estimates over proactive cost control. Result: inflated initial budgets that are filled as design progresses by inflated scope, construction staging & 3rd party demands.

So, it seems that it's possible to take out road space to do accessibility retrofit to subway stations. When there is will...

In 15 years, the City of San Francisco has added only about *one home* for every *six jobs*, forcing people to live further away — sometimes much further — and commute in.

Imagine if Canada could electrify 88 km of single-track line for the equivalent of €55 million. And that for a line carrying some 390k yearly users. We could electrify the Saint-Jerôme line (68 km and some 3 million yearly users pre-COVID) for less than what we spent on studies for the REM de l'Est

since US transit planning is allergic to international best practices, here's a photo of a septa train (philadelphia), an electric system, sharing track with freight trains. it's not "impossible". track ownership in LA? lines like the san bernardino are fully owned by metrolink. no strong argument

There are bad transit projects. And then there is spending $252 million for a 2.7 km tramway to replace a perfectly functioning railway to carry an impressive 2,900 people per day. Then getting an award for it. This is the most Anglosphere thing ever.

The Problem With Left-Wing NIMBYism

Because this project will be fully grade separated, it should be built as automated light metro (e.g., Toulouse Metro, Milan M5, Honolulu Skytrain). This can enable: —More reliable & often faster service —More frequent service —Shorter platforms (& thus cheaper-to-build stations)

Just a whole lot of 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️ to these ideas. An interim step or alternative would be to task a regional transit authority with handling planning, engineering and contract management for smaller agencies. Even bigger agencies struggle to get enough work to justify in-house staff. Let’s fix both problems.

I have turned my thread about the history of planning the route of the High-Speed rail through Florence into a Substack blog post, expanding the discussion and making it easier to refer. I hope you enjoy it. open.substack.com/pub/marcochi...

22) “the Canada Line is Under-built” The Canada Line is not even half full to design capacity. Given recent outcomes the spirit of economy guiding Canada Line engineering is quite underrated

14) Patrick Condonism A collection of urban villages where people do not commute outside of due to deliberately slow streetcar transit is a dumb idea that defeats the very function of a city as a large aggregated labour market but also seems to take no account of how people would just drive

I was on CBC Metro Morning today (July 24 if you’re clicking the link) talking about the Bathurst bus lanes, the need for them, the opportunities they bring for further improvements like transit signal priority, and some potential mitigations for businesses. www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...