more transit musings
Anything to not talk about migration.... Thanks to the Transportationist for noticing this blurb in The Economist about how the semi-privatization of the London Underground has not resulted in any miraculous cost savings. Note the numbers in that article.. the cost overruns for the modernization of the Tube are 750 million pounds sterling... that's just the overrun, equivalent to about $1.5 billion. Thet are spending around $34 billion just to refurbish the system. The lesson for us: public transit is expensive everywhere, there is no silver bullet to cut costs. It puts in perspective the amounts we debate here compared to what others are willing to invest in public transit.
As with everything else in the world, there is a Pittsburgh connection. The London Underground is run by Pittsburgh native Tim O'Toole who was brought in from the private sector,... something pretty rare among the leaders of all the major transit systems in the world.
As for our own version of the Tube, an analogy it's hard to make with a straight face: From the the KDKA archives here are some news blurbs on the construction and opening of the T. Makes me wonder, if one were to build the London Underground from scratch today, what would it cost?
As with everything else in the world, there is a Pittsburgh connection. The London Underground is run by Pittsburgh native Tim O'Toole who was brought in from the private sector,... something pretty rare among the leaders of all the major transit systems in the world.
As for our own version of the Tube, an analogy it's hard to make with a straight face: From the the KDKA archives here are some news blurbs on the construction and opening of the T. Makes me wonder, if one were to build the London Underground from scratch today, what would it cost?
posted by C. Briem at Tuesday, May 01, 2007
2 Comments:
wow... a major study underway for a Spine Line to Oakland in 1985... I'm sure PAT has made a lot of progress on that study in the past 22 years!
Spine line work was in fact an active project planning wise at the time. See this spine line study that would come out in 1993:
http://www.briem.com/files/spineline1993.pdf
It would be soon after that, mostly because congress changed hands that Federal transportation priorities changed and pretty much ended progress toward a spine line between Downtown and Oakland. I don't think there has been much effort since that time put into the idea.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home