Grimsby GO: Does standardized design make sense?

 Last week, the province of Ontario announced that they are moving forward with a new GO Station in Grimsby. As it stands, Lakeshore West trains to Niagara Falls pass through, but do not stop in the town.

If you ignore the fact that Doug Ford cancelled this station when he got into office, and it should have been open in 2020, this is great news. In the press conference, once you get through the bizarre mutual complimenting session between Minister Sakaria and Associate Minister Oosterhoff, Metrolinx CEO Michael Lindsay notes that this station will use a new standardized design and the station will open in 6-10 months.

Respectfully, I do not believe that Metrolinx is capable of this timeline, but I'd like to be proven wrong. The rationale for the standard design is that there is a need to reduce costs and delays in construction. I think this has merit, but I'm not convinced that a standard design can do that, especially when outcomes are less positive than they could be.

In this post, I will explain the issue, and will use the example of Grimsby GO to assess the new design. To reduce confusion, the future Grimsby GO being built will be referred to as the 'Casablanca Blvd site', whereas the existing VIA station will be referred to as 'Grimsby Station'.

Transit Costs and Timelines

It is well established that transit costs and timelines in the Anglosphere are beyond. The cost-per-kilometre of rail, irrespective of specific mode, is much higher if the country's primary language is English - Line 6 was $249 million per kilometre of surface light rail, whereas Helsinki's subsurface Lansimetro cost $149 million per kilometre. These cost differences are before projects go over budget, and it is important to note that inflation has impacted project costs everywhere. Additionally, construction projects take a really long time: we are all aware that Line 5 took fourteen years to build, and we have not clue when the Scarborough Subway extension and the Yonge North Subway extension will open.

If we want to keep building transit in Canada, which we obviously do, we need to reduce costs and deliver projects in a reasonable timeline. Where do we start? The picture below is from a paper titled Understanding the Drivers of Transit Construction Costs in Canada: a Comparative Study by Mok, Chitti, and Shalaby. It compares where the costs of a Metrolinx project with recent projects in Italy. As you can see, the hard costs, which broadly encompasses the physical infrastructure, account for three-quarters of costs in Italy, whereas soft costs balloon Metrolinx's budget. The soft costs have a significant chunk being consultancy, which means that knowledge is sourced from outside of Metrolinx, and another significant amount in contingencies to assume that cost overruns will happen.

The paper gives a few reasons for why costs in the Anglosphere are so high:

1. Overbuilding and overdesign, due to risk aversion
2. Lack of knowledge retention
3. Risk management
4. External constraints, including political micromanagement

Considering a standard GO design, I feel that costs could be reduced in one key way: a standard design, even if overbuilt, we will not have to be redesigned each time. This should, in theory, reduce some contingency costs.

However, it does not reduce costs for many things:

• We live in a risk-averse society, so the design may still have to account for local specifications to reduce risk, sometimes to an extreme degree (i.e. thicker subway tunnel casing)
• We still use consultants significantly, so knowledge retention within Metrolinx is minimal.
• Unforeseen conditions cannot be predicted.
• Our planning system is entirely micromanaged politically - is a GO station in Grimsby being built by the PCs now not a political choice when the Liberals approved it years ago?

So while I do think the design would reduce some costs, it doesn't fundamentally change societal or political pressures on transit costs. There is no silver bullet for transit costs, but I think the big benefit would be bringing knowledge in-house and reducing reliability on consultants.

A GO Station for Grimsby

Grimsby's GO Station will be built in the west of the town, at Casablanca Blvd. This station is located approximately a 40-minute walk away from downtown Grimsby. Despite the station being a standard design, the site plan is nuts. The station was originally to be north of the rail corridor, but CN objected to trains crossing north and south along the corridor. This is a valid point, but as I have critiqued before, I feel that these station-by-station projects are not a good approach instead of a corridor-wide improvement. Nevertheless, this is the approach being taken. This requires a large entrance road, and a bus bay facility with eight bus bays. Bear in mind that the only transit Grimsby has is GO bus 12, which operates in two directions. NRT has plans for a local bus route towards downtown at some point, and one more bay should be added for future-proofing. That would reduce the bus terminal by half the size. Considering initially the station will see just three trains a day, this is quite a large station. Although it is future-proofed, we are a long way away from improved service without a corridor-wide plan for improvements. Additionally, this site has significant archaeological potential that must be investigated before construction occurs.

This is the point where I mention that there is an existing train station near downtown Grimsby. This station is served by VIA Rail/Amtrak's service between Toronto and New York City, with one train each direction per day. The platform is so short that only a single car stops here. You may ask, well why didn't they just build the new station here? The answer likely is parking.

During the press conference, a mention was made that this station will improve tourism access to Niagara from Toronto. What is a tourist doing getting off here? Where are they going, and how are they getting there? Grimsby obviously isn't a massive tourism draw in Niagara, but I feel a downtown station would serve this need better than a station that is walking distance from Rona and not much else.

I created a rough site plan to outline my plan. A twelve-car platform can easily be accommodated along the south side of the corridor between Elizabeth and Ontario Streets, which is also on the same side as downtown, reducing walking distances. The bus loop can be adjacent, and can include bays on Carnegie Lane for routes that will travel through at the terminal. Some accessible parking can be accommodated here too. The parking lot would require property acquisitions at the northeast corner of Ontario and John, but that's fine. The much-larger Casablanca Blvd site was purchased many years ago by the province, but its cost is not reflected in the budget for the new project. I would 'write off' the acquisition cost here as they did with the Casablanca Blvd site for the sake of a fair comparison. Additionally, this site has no archaeological potential to deal with prior to construction.

This is not a formal business case, but I think it's fair to say that this site plan makes more sense than the proposed standardized site at Casablanca Blvd. It takes advantage of a narrow strip adjacent to a railway corridor with existing railway-supportive uses that has limited use otherwise, and it accommodates both parking demand, and walking access to and from Grimsby's downtown. The standard design achieves a lot less for a higher price tag, despite still claiming to keep costs and construction timelines down.

This site also considers expansion to the corridor. Casablanca Blvd's grade separation would be expensive, and would be a significant endeavor, especially while maintaining rail service. A second platform at that site would also require a tunnel to access both sides of the corridor. At the existing station site, grade separation would occur by simply closing Ontario Street between Carnegie Ln and Clarke St. For vehicular traffic, both Maple to the east and Christie to the west travel from downtown to the QEW, so the delay for drivers would be minimal. A second platform on the north side would be reached by a tunnel, which would serve a double use as maintaining pedestrian connectivity. In short, the existing station site requires a tunnel for grade separation, whereas Casablanca Blvd requires a significant infrastructure project in addition.

So, while a standard design aims to reduce costs, in the case of Grimsby GO, the most cost-effective option here is to build on a site with good pedestrian access, taking advantage of lands that have limited utility otherwise, and have no archaeological potential. 

Conclusion

The Anglosphere really needs to figure out how to reduce transit costs. We need transit, but if costs keep increasing, delivering necessary projects becomes more and more difficult. While there are cases where a standard design helps, and standard elements should be incorporated into all designs, assuming this is a silver bullet is misguided. While societal and political change won't happen overnight, assessing site viability first and taking advantage of beneficial conditions should take precedence over standardization.