REM bill comes in at $8B
The bill for the REM has landed on the table: $7.95 billion, 26% more than projected. The bump is being blamed on all kinds of things but inflation and pandemic top the list.
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steph 17:16 on 2023-09-13 Permalink
is that only relative to the portion of the first branch to the dix30? excluding the unfinished Griffintown station? It’s impossible it’s the final bill as the airport line has been delayed (where I predict exorbitant over-costs will happen to wrangle money directly from the different levels of government to finalize it)
DeWolf 18:04 on 2023-09-13 Permalink
@steph It’s for the whole system. The airport line has already been built and it’s the airport authority paying for the airport station that is currently under construction.
Nicholas 19:40 on 2023-09-13 Permalink
It’s the whole system, but from what I understand it doesn’t include what it got for free: the right of way and tunnel inherited from CN, the new bridge from the Feds, the airport tunnel station shell purposely built under the US terminal in 2003.
Nicholas 20:02 on 2023-09-13 Permalink
My apologies, they did not use the station shell already built at the airport, they built a new one. So I guess they could still use that for mainline trains from Dorval station in 2070.
DisgruntledGoat 06:13 on 2023-09-14 Permalink
Blue line extension of 5 stations is projected to cost $6.4 billion, before the inevitable cost overruns and delays.
SRB for Pie-IX came in at a little under half a billion.
I’m not a fan of privatization of public goods like transit, but…seems the mandate that the REM generate positive cash flows for a public pension plan means they churned out a semi- decent transit project . And a speedy project timeline from how slow things usually move in Quebec, tbh.
Nicholas 10:29 on 2023-09-14 Permalink
Not to defend the costs on the Blue Line or Pie-IX BRT, but it’s not fully equivalent to compare a fully underground new tunnel with underground stations and six-car trains with platforms for nine-car trains, or a BRT where a good part of the cost was utility work underground, to a line mostly only in existing right of way and mostly above ground with four-car trains. They could have potentially saved a lot of money by using trains that allowed them to keep the existing tracks rather than rebuilding them, and this would have also potentially allowed HFR/HSR to Quebec City to use the tunnel rather than have to go around the mountain or build a second tunnel.
DeWolf 10:44 on 2023-09-14 Permalink
The main lesson from the REM should be that we have a lot of rail corridors in Montreal, and it would probably be cheaper for the government to buy them and convert them into rapid transit instead of building entirely new lines from scratch.
Anton 10:52 on 2023-09-14 Permalink
Yeah. Except they could’ve probably also done it as a normal 30 year PPP, and listening to a little more input; esp for sharing the tunnel and gare Centrale.