Infrastructures | The policy contributes to the rising costs of public transit

(Ottawa) According to various experts, one of the main factors behind the strong growth in the costs of public transit infrastructure projects, particularly light railways, is… politics.

Of course, we can add other causes such as tunnel depth, station area or labor costs.

” [La politique] is at the heart of it all, ”summarizes Stephen Wickens, a Toronto researcher.

According to Alon Levy, a Berlin-based researcher, the median cost for a metro line was less than 300 million per kilometer globally in 2019.

This is not what we are seeing in Canada.

The cost of building the Ontario line to Toronto is estimated at 735 million per kilometer. That of the blue line in Montreal? About 775 million per kilometer. The cost of the Vancouver SkyTrain Broadway line seems almost reasonable at nearly $ 500 million per kilometer.

Politicians from all levels of government and from all parties are playing a role in this price hike.

For example: building a tunnel is often the cheapest method. However, it is also the most annoying for the neighborhood. Local city councilors will prefer other infrastructure to avoid irritating their constituents, at the risk of inflating the bill.

About a decade ago, Vancouver chose a less expensive method by building its 19 kilometer Canada line. We had started by digging a trench at street level before covering it. While this method saves a lot of money, it is also synonymous with controversy, disruption and even legal action.

“People had such bad memories of it that the city authorities committed to building a completely underground line for the Broadway project, even though the price is around 500 million per kilometer, which is 4.5 times the amount invested for the Canada line, ”Wickens wrote.

Promises from politicians also force governments to pay more. In 2019, a study by the Institute of Municipal Finance and Governance concluded that political considerations often take precedence over facts when it comes time to make a decision.

“What engineer of a lower rank would dare to say that there is no need for such a project or would dare to ask to reduce the surface area of ​​a station or would dare to recommend to an elected official to break a promise because it would add 500 million on the bill? », Mentions Mr. Levy to The Canadian Press.

And it’s not just in Canada.

Dr. Levy and other urban planning researchers at New York University have estimated that the price of infrastructure is higher in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States than in Italy, Spain or in France.

Marco Chitti, an associate researcher based in Montreal, finds that Canadian cities and provinces often lack technical expertise to oversee a project. He cites the example of Italy where often civil servants-experts draw up detailed projects before submitting them to elected officials.

According to him, in order to reduce the costs of public transport projects, he makes the authorities recognize the existence of a problem.

“The majority of Canadian politicians don’t believe there is a big problem in the country, a big problem with costs,” he argues. I hope that within a few years, we will talk more in Canada about the explosion of costs which are really getting out of control. ”