"People don’t take the train to enjoy the nice stations, they take it because they’ve got places to go."
Except that, for 90% of American rail projects, that's not true. Rail enthusiasts don't lobby for light rail and intercity high speed rail because there's an actual economic rationale for it.
They want it because trains are freaking cool. If it's just about getting lots of people from point A to point B, you'd just buy a fleet of nice busses and use the already-existing asphalt highway structure that already has built-in constituencies for building and maintaining it.
New York City is a partial exception, and maybe Boston. But everywhere else, the light rail system is a luxury good, a civic extravagance like a sports palace.
If you look at it that way, it makes perfect sense that the project which made no economic sense to start with, but was freaking cool, gets burdened by an economically wasteful but incredibly cool palace of a subway station.
You're not buying transit. You're buying the aesthetics of trains.
Very interesting - I live down the street from a future GLX extension, so definitely of interest.
Question: what do you anticipate the impact on disability accessibility of going with the basic as opposed to the deluxe option will be? I'm open to believing that it's negligible - ramps don't break down like elevators do and lord knows that the NYC subway system is absolutely atrocious on accessibility - but I'd like to hear someone make the case or speak to that issue. I'd rather fewer, more accessible stations that take longer than building more inaccessible infrastructure, but I do sincerely hope that's not the tradeoff.
Some of this dynamic sank a big transit measure in the Portland area this year. Metro, the regional government, sought a $5 billion bond which got attacked as a "wage increase." Bad timing, to be sure. But also what was the money going to? The headliner was a new line for light rail (Metropolitan Area Express or MAX). But that line would cost only about $1B. The package got larded up with a Christmas tree of projects and proposals that seem to improve every crosswalk in the area. And some were kind of ridiculous, like BRT to Forest Grove, population 25,000. If you're going to spend a lot of money, tie it to results.
Missing from all this critique (which is not without merit) is the observation that drives engineers nuts. And, by golly, it was the subject of my very first letter to the editor. That was addressed to the Toronto Star and in particular the young journalist who excoriated the Transit Authority for their latest subway extension. In particular she noted the crowded stretches of the existing lines and the fact that the new line opened to only 20 percent capacity. I felt compelled to point out that engineers who design transit systems that open to full capacity are very poor engineers indeed. And guess what the load was at ten years later?
So here is a question for Matthew and Alon if they care to consider it. If at some future date you want to increase the transit capacity, faster or with more trains or just with more people who need special considerations because of ADA then should you just build what you need now for station capacity and then dig it all up later when that becomes necessary to match station capacity to traffic load? Or should you anticipate traffic increases and build the station you will need? Guess which one is way more expensive and disrupts traffic to a much greater degree.
I don't really expect an answer because this is one of those really inconvenient questions.
The size & height of the station platform are the only real factors related to accommodating growing demand. The number of stairways & turnstiles (where applicable) matters to some degree. For the most part, these are not the driving factors behind the cost.
This article should be called "Fancy stations make quality rail transit harder." I work almost exclusively on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects, which are orders of magnitude less expensive than rail projects, before any discussion of stations. BRT, for those who don't know, is the provision of fully dedicated infrastructure, usually on street, exclusively for buses. A well-designed BRT can reach the speeds and capacities of most rail lines. However, unlike the GLX and the 2nd Ave Subway, because it is on street, a nice station can be a welcome addition to the streetscape. Because the overall cost of the project is so much lower than that of a rail project, you can spend a bit on stations. That said, the cost of a fancy BRT station is also many many orders of magnitude less than the cost of one of the fancy rail stations described in this article. There are actually a few cases of overbuilt BRT stations too. But typically, the fight is to get cities to spend a little extra on a nice BRT station, rather than skimping on a cheap shelter, which contributes to both the streetscape, the customer experience, and the likelihood that people will support expansion of a system. Thus, the title of this article is not helpful to this point.
In Australia and the US the trains run at a loss and seem kind of dowdy, presumably in an effort to control cost. In Japan both the stations and the trains themselves seem to be super clean and nice. It seems there is a positive feedback loop between the nice trains attracting high income people to transit, and the high quality retail at the train stations. I am guessing this is because the train companies are allowed to be real estate developers, and the success of the train station adds value to the real estate. I think this model has been adopted in several other Asian countries. Slow Boring should write an article about the Asian transit model and whether it could work in the West.
Tangent, but what the Green Line really needs is an extension that goes from Allston to Cambridge (and back!). And ideally from Allston to Harvard Square.
This is a great post! The most egregious example of this that I have heard of is East Side Access. Grand Central Terminal already has 43 platforms - the most of any station in the world. ESA could have been built to link the LIRR up with the lower level of those existing platforms. Instead, they are boring a deep cavern 100 feet underground for billions of dollars that will result in less utility when it's finished because it will take the LIRR commuters so long to reach the surface. The reason for this nonsense? Turf wars between Metro-North and the LIRR, even though they are part of the same state agency!
Surprised to see this conclusion, coming from a DC metro system perspective. Seems like there is some waste in stations, and the Union station overhaul is looking to be absurdly expensive but even when WMATA is building very simple things like a bike parking structure at East Falls Church it seems to cost them 4x what it costs to build much more complicated underground bike parking in Europe.
Matt, what drives this shift towards more elaborate mass transit structures? Is it primarily corruption, i.e. local officials awarding large budget projects to connected construction firms? Or is it primarily politics, i.e. the local community needs more than just a hut by the tracks to justify build because the utilitarian / ROI argument is rarely made to the public or typically falls flat?
Those responsible for transit constructions plans have no incentive to do so cheaply. In fact, they benefit directly from a project running as far over budget as possible, unless they go so over the top as to get cancelled. Those responsible for the Second Ave Subway disaster still have their jobs, or have moved onto wrecking even bigger projects.
My understanding is that mezzanine are some times more or less required by fire code. But fire codes may not be immune from the “it’s other people’s money, so out of an abundance of caution…” problem.
Does any city have heat lamps for their semi-outdoor bus/rail stations? Can that be cost-effective? Fixing the cold misery of waiting for the Green line could've drastically improved my early 20s and overall opinion of Boston.
Minneapolis does. Though a more authentic Twin Cities experience is waiting in subzero temperatures on a street corner bus stop with no shelter at all.
Consultants and contractors don’t have much sway over what the core elements of the projects are. The decisions about big cost drivers are made at the political level.
"People don’t take the train to enjoy the nice stations, they take it because they’ve got places to go."
Except that, for 90% of American rail projects, that's not true. Rail enthusiasts don't lobby for light rail and intercity high speed rail because there's an actual economic rationale for it.
They want it because trains are freaking cool. If it's just about getting lots of people from point A to point B, you'd just buy a fleet of nice busses and use the already-existing asphalt highway structure that already has built-in constituencies for building and maintaining it.
New York City is a partial exception, and maybe Boston. But everywhere else, the light rail system is a luxury good, a civic extravagance like a sports palace.
If you look at it that way, it makes perfect sense that the project which made no economic sense to start with, but was freaking cool, gets burdened by an economically wasteful but incredibly cool palace of a subway station.
You're not buying transit. You're buying the aesthetics of trains.
This Slow Boring piece is 8 days old, I just noticed it now, so I'm just an old man yelling into the void. oh well
Very interesting - I live down the street from a future GLX extension, so definitely of interest.
Question: what do you anticipate the impact on disability accessibility of going with the basic as opposed to the deluxe option will be? I'm open to believing that it's negligible - ramps don't break down like elevators do and lord knows that the NYC subway system is absolutely atrocious on accessibility - but I'd like to hear someone make the case or speak to that issue. I'd rather fewer, more accessible stations that take longer than building more inaccessible infrastructure, but I do sincerely hope that's not the tradeoff.
Some of this dynamic sank a big transit measure in the Portland area this year. Metro, the regional government, sought a $5 billion bond which got attacked as a "wage increase." Bad timing, to be sure. But also what was the money going to? The headliner was a new line for light rail (Metropolitan Area Express or MAX). But that line would cost only about $1B. The package got larded up with a Christmas tree of projects and proposals that seem to improve every crosswalk in the area. And some were kind of ridiculous, like BRT to Forest Grove, population 25,000. If you're going to spend a lot of money, tie it to results.
Missing from all this critique (which is not without merit) is the observation that drives engineers nuts. And, by golly, it was the subject of my very first letter to the editor. That was addressed to the Toronto Star and in particular the young journalist who excoriated the Transit Authority for their latest subway extension. In particular she noted the crowded stretches of the existing lines and the fact that the new line opened to only 20 percent capacity. I felt compelled to point out that engineers who design transit systems that open to full capacity are very poor engineers indeed. And guess what the load was at ten years later?
So here is a question for Matthew and Alon if they care to consider it. If at some future date you want to increase the transit capacity, faster or with more trains or just with more people who need special considerations because of ADA then should you just build what you need now for station capacity and then dig it all up later when that becomes necessary to match station capacity to traffic load? Or should you anticipate traffic increases and build the station you will need? Guess which one is way more expensive and disrupts traffic to a much greater degree.
I don't really expect an answer because this is one of those really inconvenient questions.
The size & height of the station platform are the only real factors related to accommodating growing demand. The number of stairways & turnstiles (where applicable) matters to some degree. For the most part, these are not the driving factors behind the cost.
This article should be called "Fancy stations make quality rail transit harder." I work almost exclusively on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects, which are orders of magnitude less expensive than rail projects, before any discussion of stations. BRT, for those who don't know, is the provision of fully dedicated infrastructure, usually on street, exclusively for buses. A well-designed BRT can reach the speeds and capacities of most rail lines. However, unlike the GLX and the 2nd Ave Subway, because it is on street, a nice station can be a welcome addition to the streetscape. Because the overall cost of the project is so much lower than that of a rail project, you can spend a bit on stations. That said, the cost of a fancy BRT station is also many many orders of magnitude less than the cost of one of the fancy rail stations described in this article. There are actually a few cases of overbuilt BRT stations too. But typically, the fight is to get cities to spend a little extra on a nice BRT station, rather than skimping on a cheap shelter, which contributes to both the streetscape, the customer experience, and the likelihood that people will support expansion of a system. Thus, the title of this article is not helpful to this point.
In Australia and the US the trains run at a loss and seem kind of dowdy, presumably in an effort to control cost. In Japan both the stations and the trains themselves seem to be super clean and nice. It seems there is a positive feedback loop between the nice trains attracting high income people to transit, and the high quality retail at the train stations. I am guessing this is because the train companies are allowed to be real estate developers, and the success of the train station adds value to the real estate. I think this model has been adopted in several other Asian countries. Slow Boring should write an article about the Asian transit model and whether it could work in the West.
Tangent, but what the Green Line really needs is an extension that goes from Allston to Cambridge (and back!). And ideally from Allston to Harvard Square.
How much of the problem with the cost of mass transit is just the time? The longer a project takes the more you burn through money.
This is a great post! The most egregious example of this that I have heard of is East Side Access. Grand Central Terminal already has 43 platforms - the most of any station in the world. ESA could have been built to link the LIRR up with the lower level of those existing platforms. Instead, they are boring a deep cavern 100 feet underground for billions of dollars that will result in less utility when it's finished because it will take the LIRR commuters so long to reach the surface. The reason for this nonsense? Turf wars between Metro-North and the LIRR, even though they are part of the same state agency!
Why doesn't substack have collapsible comments? Large comment sections are impossible to read otherwise.
They’re collapsible for me, just click on the vertical blue lines within the comment threads (using Safari on iPadOS for reference)
Surprised to see this conclusion, coming from a DC metro system perspective. Seems like there is some waste in stations, and the Union station overhaul is looking to be absurdly expensive but even when WMATA is building very simple things like a bike parking structure at East Falls Church it seems to cost them 4x what it costs to build much more complicated underground bike parking in Europe.
Matt, what drives this shift towards more elaborate mass transit structures? Is it primarily corruption, i.e. local officials awarding large budget projects to connected construction firms? Or is it primarily politics, i.e. the local community needs more than just a hut by the tracks to justify build because the utilitarian / ROI argument is rarely made to the public or typically falls flat?
Those responsible for transit constructions plans have no incentive to do so cheaply. In fact, they benefit directly from a project running as far over budget as possible, unless they go so over the top as to get cancelled. Those responsible for the Second Ave Subway disaster still have their jobs, or have moved onto wrecking even bigger projects.
My understanding is that mezzanine are some times more or less required by fire code. But fire codes may not be immune from the “it’s other people’s money, so out of an abundance of caution…” problem.
Does any city have heat lamps for their semi-outdoor bus/rail stations? Can that be cost-effective? Fixing the cold misery of waiting for the Green line could've drastically improved my early 20s and overall opinion of Boston.
Many Chicago stations do
Minneapolis does. Though a more authentic Twin Cities experience is waiting in subzero temperatures on a street corner bus stop with no shelter at all.
Consultants and contractors don’t have much sway over what the core elements of the projects are. The decisions about big cost drivers are made at the political level.