Do not adjust your screen – we’re starting a twice weekly Friday Reads as we have a backlog of great stories and links.
• Moquettes as razzle dazzle camo (CityLab)
• Cities are recycling car space (99%Invisible)
• US Density Revolution? (HumanTransit)
• Pneu York’s 2nd waste collection tubes (SmartCitiesDive)
• LA $5bn LAX people mover breaks ground (ProgressiveRRg)
• Hong Kong to expropriate golf club land for housing (CityLab)
• Moscow-St Petersburg night train gets IKEA makeover (CalvertJournal)
• Houses built with poop bricks (Forbes)
Whilst you wait for the next installment, check out our most popular articles:
• How Uber operates in London and why it is being banned
• On Our Line Podcast #8: Talking Uber, Lyft and Mobility disruption
• You Hacked – Cyber-security and the railways
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Regarding the LAX People Mover story, the $4.9 billion contract to design, build, finance and operation of trains over the next 30 years makes it very difficult to suss out the actual construction and implementation cost from the operational and maintenance costs. The $4.9 billion cost seems outrageous for a 2.25-mile line to not even LRT standards, even with an all elevated guideway and open air stations. I suspect the ‘all-in’ stated $4.9 billion cost is the latest in political fact obfuscation…
The LAX People Mover also seems to be not terribly useful, despite the $4.9 billion cost. The report talks about “six station platforms”, which I interpret as three stations. The artist’s impression shows one station midway between the terminals mid-field: I am guessing that there is one at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at the end, and one at the LRT station, which should have been extended along pretty much the path of this People Mover in the first place. Should I fail to avoid LAX in the future, I do not see this changing my experience much
@LBM – for a 2.25m tramway with presumably no street running, you could probably build and equip the thing for <£100m, maybe for as little as £50m, and it's difficult to imagine its opex as being as much as £10m pa. Say £400m for a 30 year DBO contract, before discounting. That's less than 1/10th of what is being paid here. What on earth is being bought here?
@Graham H, DH not in RTW
Possibly New York City levels of sky high construction costs, perhaps due to the awarding of piecemeal contracts to maximise the political largess to be spread around.
The LAX people mover stats from this document from the airport owners. Cost: $1.95bn. Length: 2.25 miles. Frequency: Every 2 minutes (though I doubt 24-7). Fare: free. Capacity 10,000 passengers/hour (though obviously they won’t all be full).
The 6 platforms (which in enUS means islands, not faces) are 1 at each of 6 stations: Car Rental, two for ‘Intermodal Transportation Facility’ (the Metro station, car parks, presumably buses and taxis) and 3 for the terminals (each covering 3 terminals).
With 5 year construction, and 30 year contract, that leaves about $120m/year to operate. 60m passengers/year and thus $2/person cost is definitely doable given the usage of the airport and how badly they want you to take the people-mover as the final/first leg of your ground-side journey. Newark AirTrain has $5.50 fares for a 3-mile, 8-station line that is going to cost $2bn to replace (so land costs, etc are paid for, unlike LA), so the numbers in LA are not as outlandish as they could be!
For comparison the Luton DART people mover is costing £119m for civil works and £55m to Doppelmayr for the trains and I think five years’ operation.
That’s for a shorter line (2.5 km) and two instead of six stations.
Honolulu is trying for 20mi at $10bn.
@si/LBM – nearly a billion a mile? Extraordinary! High speed lines, RERs, and underwater tunnels cost only a fraction of that. As to operating costs – assuming that for that amount of capex, you at least have fully automatic operation, you are hardly going to have more 100 engineering staff for what would be no more than a dozen or so train sets and only 2.25 miles of track. Even if you paid them all $100 000 pa, that would be only 10m a year. Energy costs and other consumables are not going to be more than a fraction of that on top. The fares charged elsewhere don’t really provide an explanation – for all we know, they are determined by market rates not costs. (Fares may not be regulated whereas landing fees are, and some airports therefore rely on maximising these unregulated contributions to a common purse).