The high cost of high costs.

Toronto Edition

Public transportation planning is rooted in dreaming big. Most of the people I've worked with got into this profession because at some point, we looked at transit maps and thought "what if...". Reality has an uncanny way of obstructing aspiration though, and public transportation planning is so often an exercise in negotiating against your own grand visions. That subway line your city needs? Too expensive. Removing street parking to add a bus lane? Too politically toxic. A new station in your neighbourhood? Too tricky.

In the English-speaking world, the high cost of building transit is the biggest impediment to achieving any transit dreams. Almost all the world's most expensive transit projects, on a per-kilometre basis, including all those that have cost more than USD 1 billion per-kilometre, are in English-speaking countries. Costs are also increasing more in the Anglosphere than elsewhere. The per-kilometre cost of transit construction in these countries has skyrocketed since the early 2000 even as it has remained relatively stable in other rich countries like Italy, Spain, or South Korea, as you can see below.

Per KM Cost of Rapid Transit Construction in Select Countries

Credit: Jedwin Mok, Marco Chitti, Amer Shalaby

The end result is that English-speaking countries have been building less new public transport than peer countries for decades, even as the need for it grows.

There's no single reason why transit construction is so expensive in the English-speaking world. Eric Goldwyn and others at the Transit Costs Project do excellent research into "cost disease" and have published great reports and datasets outlining numerous causes, including an unwillingness to copy global best practices, legalistic culture, and a loss of public-sector expertise. I'm particularly fond of a report released this year by some of their affiliates at the University of Toronto, which provides specific examples of the institutional and technical factors that make transit construction expensive in Canada.

Rather than dive deep into the "why" though, I thought it would be fun to imagine what we could achieve if we cut transit construction costs. A few years ago Alon Levy, also of the Transit Costs Project, did exactly this for the New York area. He outlined how New York City, which suffers from the highest costs in the world, could build multiple new subway lines if it could build at Nordic prices. His vision is enticing to anyone familiar with the region.

Credit: Alon Levy

I haven't been to New York for a few years, but I have been involved in Toronto's chaotic and expensive transit expansion effort, so I wanted to replicate the same visioning exercise here. For the sake of brevity, I'm only focusing on rapid transit, which in Toronto refers to subway and light rail lines, rather than regional rail. In reality, any good transit expansion in Toronto will, and should, include a lot of rail lines.

Toronto is building a lot, but not cheaply

Toronto and its suburbs are currently building 80 kilometres of new rapid transit, across 5 new subway or light rail projects, for a total cost of USD 41 billion. That's more than almost any other western city except Paris, but it's costing roughly USD 520 million per kilometre.

In-Delivery Rapid Transit Project in the Toronto Area

Project	Length (KM)	Cost (USD Billions)	Cost / KM
Ontario Line Subway	15.6	20	1.28 Billion
Scarborough Subway Extension	7.6	7.3	960 Million
Eglinton Light Rail	27.5	9.1	330 Million
Hurontario Light Rail	18	3.4	188 Million
Finch West Light Rail	11	1.8	163 Million
TOTAL	79.7	41.6	522 Million

Toronto's average cost compares unfavourably with most of the rest of the world. Only a handful of countries build more expensive public transport, and most of these, like New Zealand or Hong Kong, have only been building one or two very expensive projects tunnelled beneath dense cities. Even in Canada, the average cost of rapid transit is much lower, at USD 317 million per kilometre. That's largely a credit to Montreal and Vancouver building more cost effectively. Other countries, including many not known for being low-cost places, are even better.

Average Per-KM Cost of Rapid Transit in Select Countries

Credit: Transit Costs Project

Toronto could get a lot more transit if achieved other countries' costs

In the data above, there are a few standouts that Toronto should aim to copy. Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, South Korea, and Japan are all advanced economies that build a lot of rapid transit at lower costs than Canada.

Below I've calculated how many more kilometres of rapid transit could be built if Toronto could build at average Canadian, Swiss, or Spanish costs. I've chosen Switzerland because it's home, and Spain because it's well known for building a lot of affordable metro and high-speed rail projects, so its cost data is drawn from dozens of projects rather than just one or two.

	Cost/KM (USD)	Total Buildable KMs of Rapid Transit	Additional KMs of Rapid Transit at Current Budget
Current Toronto Price	522 Million	79.7	0
Canada Avg. Price	317 Million	126.5	46.8
Switzerland Avg. Price	175 Million	229.1	149.4
Spain Avg. Price	116 Million	345.7	266

Adding tens or hundreds of additional kilometres of rapid transit in the Toronto region would be a game changer. Even though the region is building quite a lot, the lines currently under construction are 'catch up' projects that were needed decades ago. Toronto will still require more rapid transit to serve the population and make a meaningful dent in automobile use.

Let's look at what these different scenarios would look like. First a quick recap. This is Toronto's existing rapid transit network, which is made up of just three subway lines.

Here's what Toronto is building for USD 40 billion, or for the current average price of USD 520 million per kilometre.

Here's an additional 47 kilometres of rapid transit that could be built for the same USD 40 billion, if Toronto could build at the Canadian average price of USD 312 million per kilometre.

Here's what an additional 150 kilometres of rapid transit would look like if Toronto could build at the Swiss average price of USD 175 million per kilometre.

Here's what an additional 266 kilometres of rapid transit would look like if Toronto could build at the Spanish average price of 116 million per kilometre.

All of this is possible

Naturally, I think my ideas are pretty good, but these are by no means the best plans for Toronto. I do hope they illustrate the high cost of expensive public infrastructure, and remind us that we accept the status quo to our own detriment. It's worth remembering too that it's not just public transport that's expensive to build in places like Toronto. Homes, schools, libraries, hospitals, and roads are all facing similar cost pressures. But building public infrastructure affordably like Switzerland or Spain is not impossible. The laws of physics are not different, nor is the productivity of a construction worker or the technology available to build. It is entirely feasible to copy best practices from around the world and doing so could allow Toronto to become a world-class transit city on par with the best of the best. A big dream, but one that's worth holding on to.