Our research shows that independent, special purpose delivery vehicles (SPDV) are an attractive option to manage construction before handing the ownership and operation back to the public agency. In Denver, a delegated authority approach for the region’s FasTracks system expansion led to faster turnarounds on key decisions and fewer project delays. The successful, low-cost expansion of Madrid’s metro system between 19 provides a clear example of how small, multi-disciplinary internal management teams can deliver projects effectively when they are empowered to address issues as they arise. Setting a clear structure for organizational decision-making responsibility, as well as coordination with other agencies and transportation modes, is critically important to the success of a transit project. Public transit agencies are institutions that were designed as operating entities often to pick up the operation of struggling bus lines from private companies decades ago.
Today in the United States, transit projects are delivered almost exclusively through existing entities. These findings form the basis of our resulting recommendations and best practices to deliver transit projects quicker and more cost-effectively.
Codejock report control row highlighting drivers#
Rather, we identified a dozen drivers of transit construction costs and timelines that fall into three overlapping and interrelated categories: governance, processes, and standards. Through our literature review and case studies, one clear finding emerged: there is not one, easily identifiable reason for high costs or delivery delays. We also compared a transit project to a highway project in Virginia to compare how regulatory processes, project delivery practices, institutional support, and governance differ across modes. We also conducted detailed case studies of project delivery in four domestic regions (Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, and Minneapolis) and four international regions (Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris, and Toronto) to help identify real-world examples of cost and timeline drivers for transit projects as well as best practices. With an understanding that transit projects in the United States do suffer from high costs and take longer to complete than they do abroad, it is important to investigate the “why.” To do so, we conducted a thorough examination of existing literature and research and interviewed 117 professionals with both intimate knowledge of specific projects or regions and transit project delivery expertise generally. The time it takes to construct a transit project is also highly correlated with its cost, reinforcing the aphorism “time is money.” projects that are almost all underground take nearly a year and a half longer to build than abroad. projects with minimal tunneling still take about six months longer to construct than similar non-U.S. transit projects resemble Minneapolis’ Blue Line, whose mostly at-grade alignment along existing right-of-way was specifically intended to limit impacts on the local community and minimize the need to acquire private property.Įven with more straightforward alignments, U.S. Seattle’s 1 Line corridor traverses well-developed urban areas and operates in a tunnel between the University of Washington and downtown. Rail projects in the United States tend to be routed along “paths of least resistance” such as freight rail or highway corridors, rather than dense areas where transit would make the most sense for riders or communities.
projects, often run through crowded historic city centers, and usually share street space with cars and other vehicles. They tend to have more stations that are built closer together than U.S. For example, Toulouse, France’s 9.3 mile Metro Line B was built entirely underground at a cost of about $176 million per mile while Houston Metro’s 3.2 mile Green Line is all at-grade and cost $223 million per mile.ĭespite their lower construction costs, international projects are often more complex than similar lines in the United States. In fact, many international projects constructed below grade have similar costs to those that are at-grade in the United States. rail transit projects represented in our database were constructed primarily below ground, compared to 37 percent of non-U.S.
Tunneled projects are not only less expensive abroad, but also more common. The tunneling premium in the United States rises to roughly 250 percent when New York City’s disproportionately expensive projects are included. Eno’s Construction Cost Database of 180 domestic and international public transit projects completed since 2000 shows that the United States pays a premium of nearly 50 percent on a per-mile basis to build transit for both primarily at-grade and primarily tunneled projects.
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