Crossrail is an incredible achievement by the British. $22 billion to build 26 miles of new track on a 73-mile train line, through some of the most expensive real estate in the world, including 13 miles of tunnels underneath downtown London. And delivered only two years late.
By contrast, New York’s second avenue subway will easily exceed Crossrail’s $22 billion cost, if it’s ever finished. For that price New Yorkers will get just 8.5 miles of downtown tunnels (versus Crossrail’s 13). And they won’t get the additional dozen or so miles of new above ground commuter railroad that Crossrail has managed to build for that price. Moreover, Crossrail started somewhat later (2009 versus 2007), but will be done by 2020, while New York will take until 2027-29 just to finish the first two phases totaling 3.5 miles. The remaining 5 miles may never be completed at this rate.
EDIT: As 'pcwalton correctly pointed out, about 2/3 of Crossrail's suburban rail was pre-existing, so my per-mile cost for Crossrail was too low. It's difficult to calculate the per-mile cost of new Crossrail track, because part of the $22 billion budget involves upgrades to the 45-miles or so of existing track and stations. But even assuming all that cost nothing, it's about $850 million per mile to build the new segments through downtown London. The Maryland Purple Line, by contrast, is $350 million per mile to build light rail on existing city streets through suburban Maryland. And the DC Silver Line is about $300 million per mile to build heavy rail on existing, reserved freeway medians through suburban and exurban Virginia.
This isn't a valid comparison. Underground rail is vastly more expensive than above-ground rail. And a lot of the above-ground Crossrail rails already exist. I could just as easily say that the Central Subway in San Francisco is only $147 million per mile, because the $1.5B 1.7-mile underground extension connects to the existing roughly 10-mile K Ingleside/T Third line.
This blog post [1] has a better comparison. By this measure, Crossrail is less expensive per kilometer than the new subways in New York City, which are abnormally pricey, but significantly less expensive than the SF Central Subway for example.
Thanks for the correction. I've revised based on your comment.
Note that your link counts the non-tunnel sections as zero cost, which isn’t correct either. There is a significant amount of new above-ground track. Also, the project involved major upgrades to the pre-existing track and stations, which can be enormously expensive: http://www.crossrail.co.uk/route/eastern-section
On the eastern section, 43 miles of track was upgraded, 27 stations were "redeveloped" and 20 bridges were "renewed." These efforts were undoubtedly cheaper than building all-new track, but could cost billions on their own. So the real per-mile cost is somewhere in-between the $300 million and $850 million figures.
> These efforts were undoubtedly cheaper than building all-new track
Well, that depends.
Part of the justification for building HS2 (a high-speed railway from London to Birmingham, Manchester, etc) is that building a new line is much cheaper than upgrading the existing line (again).
Making changes to a railway that's being used is expensive: time is used preparing and restoring the area to be worked on, labour at night or weekends is more expensive, and it's much more important that the work is right the first time, so trains can resume on schedule.
HS2 is a special case because it is augmenting the West Coast Main Line which runs at-capacity almost 24/7. You can't shut it down for 30 minutes at 3am, let alone for years while it is replaced wholesale.
To do it piece by piece would take either unfathomable amounts of money or several decades of piecework.
An incredible achievement by London, for London, perhaps.
Meanwhile in North England...
Nope, not much to report.
We still have converted buses running on tracks, lack of electrification, extremely short trains/platforms, and train companies often on the verge of going bust (perhaps because everyone drives).
Also, they sucessfully managed to dodge upgrading the transpenine route for the 3rd? 4th? time since it's last upgrade in the 80s. That's a win.... for something.
All gone by summer 2020 is their latest statement.
Training is their current excuse for the delay: "“They are in Yorkshire for one simple reason – that is that our train crew here can drive them now, can operate them now. If we introduced them elsewhere where they don’t operate them now, we would introduce a training need that could not be coped with."
Drivers need to be competent on the specific type of train. This seems especially obvious for a driver who has spent the last decade driving Pacers and might now be given a Class 195 DMU. The handling characteristics are pretty difficult, it's not even like it was a small upgrade - as observed so many times a Pacer is basically a railbus.
If anything the anomaly is that we aren't expected to retrain on the roads. I am old enough to be "grandfathered" into the UK's old regime where a single pass, as a teenager, in a small hatchback, qualifies me for like 50 years to drive a 5 tonne truck even with a trailer. I've never driven anything with a trailer, no evidence I'd be safe doing it but hey, the rules used to be lax so...
The use of "excuse" was referencing the fact that these trains didn't just up from no where, that training on new trains isn't an unexpected thing for a train company to need to do.
It's like saying a product in a supermarket is delayed "because it needs to be put on the shelf"
Um, nope. Of all the many complaints I've heard against the EU, particularly in the last 3 years, many are wrong. Yet I've never heard anyone up here blaming the EU for the North and Scotland's public transport.
We almost entirely blame Westminster, all parties, and their London exceptionalism. Some will still single out Mrs T.
I think it's reached triple the transport spending per head in London compared to elsewhere. Then there's the subsidy of buses Thatcher permitted to continue in London, but nowhere else. So the regions pay double or more what London does on bus routes. West Coast main line electrification was put off for I guess 50 years! The cross Pennine route is a sick joke, still running those awful bus on rails trains. Those were supposed to be a 4-5 year, super-cheap fill in. Ooh 30 or 40 years ago.
Crossrail? Sure, give it a blank cheque and immediately talk about crossrail 2.
Andy Burnham has had a fairly remarkable transition from Westminster Minister after becoming mayor of Manchester. There's been a few enlightening media pieces about him and public transport. Course now he vocally realises where the problem is, he's no longer an MP...
> The cross Pennine route is a sick joke, still running those awful bus on rails trains.
Pacers are an amazing innovation that are best appreciated in the appropriate context: videos from Geoff Marshall making fun of them. They're completely useless outside of that and should be binned immediately.
Judging by the way the North votes it seems it's mostly the Tories that get the blame. Which creates a vicious circle as why would the Tories do anything for a region that doesn't vote for them anyway.
Not sure that works. London is overwhelmingly Labour, and the Tories do plenty for that region that doesn't vote for them. The Tories traditionally hold the shires who get almost as little done for them by Tory governments as the North. Seems more about where the City is and isn't. ;)
This opens the can of worms of how ridiculously unrepresentative and centralised our system has become. Particularly under FPTP with an electorate that increasingly votes for a multi-party system.
It goes much deeper than that. If we all voted for them they would still do nothing for us as I didn’t go to Eton, my uncle isn’t a viscount, I don’t own land and have no membership at any gentleman’s club.
You can judge how interested they are by their manifestos. They’re targeted towards their existing voters and rarely make any promises for infrastructure in the North.
I’ll join the other comment and add another “er, no”. The disdain for Westminster has existed far, far longer than than the EU has existed. You could probably go back hundreds of years at a minimum.
> Building a 73 mile train line through some of the most expensive real estate in the world
Apart from the 13 miles of tunnel in the middle, pretty much the entire above-ground train line existed already, so it's not a fair comparison -- the need for real estate purchases for Crossrail was comparatively very small.
Compare to the constantly expanding massive subways of Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, building the subway in sinking Jakarta, etc. After looking to these Crossrail is not that big and complex.
The major cost drivers the new stations, not the tunnels. The Second Avenue subway has 16 new stations; Crossrail is only building 10 new stations.
That said, it's not really a surprise that construction costs are cheaper in the UK. Mean wages are 40% higher in the US overall. That the major New York construction firms are deeply integrated with organized crime doesn't help, of course.
By contrast, New York’s second avenue subway will easily exceed Crossrail’s $22 billion cost, if it’s ever finished. For that price New Yorkers will get just 8.5 miles of downtown tunnels (versus Crossrail’s 13). And they won’t get the additional dozen or so miles of new above ground commuter railroad that Crossrail has managed to build for that price. Moreover, Crossrail started somewhat later (2009 versus 2007), but will be done by 2020, while New York will take until 2027-29 just to finish the first two phases totaling 3.5 miles. The remaining 5 miles may never be completed at this rate.
EDIT: As 'pcwalton correctly pointed out, about 2/3 of Crossrail's suburban rail was pre-existing, so my per-mile cost for Crossrail was too low. It's difficult to calculate the per-mile cost of new Crossrail track, because part of the $22 billion budget involves upgrades to the 45-miles or so of existing track and stations. But even assuming all that cost nothing, it's about $850 million per mile to build the new segments through downtown London. The Maryland Purple Line, by contrast, is $350 million per mile to build light rail on existing city streets through suburban Maryland. And the DC Silver Line is about $300 million per mile to build heavy rail on existing, reserved freeway medians through suburban and exurban Virginia.