Running the numbers on the Victorian Transport Plan: what’s going on with South Morang?
A couple of days ago, The Age leaked details of what it believes will constitute the forthcoming Victorian Transport Plan. Among the proposals was the long overdue rail extension to South Morang, the cost of which was noted with a degree of shock by posters (myself included) over at Riccardo’s blog. Indeed, with The Age claiming the works are budgeted to cost $650 million, shock is the only appropriate word. I did a post a while ago about the prospects for extending the Epping line which details some of the original cost estimates. In 2003, the DoI undertook a secret report which found that the extension would cost a mere $18 million. Darren Peters of the South Morang Rail Alliance kindly filled us in on the cost for duplicating Keon Park – Epping; $26.5 million. I was outraged earlier this year when the government claimed it would cost $348 million to build. Now it seems to have almost doubled again, if The Age is to be believed. In this post, I’m going to compare the per kilometre construction cost estimates for South Morang with each other, and then with Eddington and Mandurah.
Calculating and comparing per km construction costs for South Morang.
The South Morang extension has two parts – building the extension from Epping to South Morang and duplicating Keon Park to Epping. The two most recent government cost estimates don’t differentiate between them in the publicly available data. But the first one (2003) does, and estimates that 60% of costs for the project would be taken up on the 5km long Keon Park – Epping duplication, with the remaining 40% spent on the 3.25km Epping – South Morang extension. If we assume that the distribution of costs between duplication and extension has remained constant over time (with 60% of total costs spent on the former), we can easily divide the later estimates between duplication and extension and then obtain a per km cost for both. These costs are shown in the table below.
This can be taken a step further, and these costs can be compared with per km estimates for other government reports and actual projects; Eddington and Mandurah respectively. Note that I’ve used the South Morang construction cost for comparison – but the duplication cost is largely similar so it doesn’t make much of a difference anyway.
Possible explanations
These most recent cost estimates are clearly considerably higher than anything I’ve seen They’re basically double the Eddington and May 2008 South Morang per km estimates – and at the time I railed against both of these as exorbitant (pun very much intended). I see three potential explanations. Firstly, The Age simply could have got the numbers wrong; they have had some rather serious troubles recently and this could perhaps be another manifestation of them. But all the other costs cited in the article checked out – time will tell on this one I suppose. Secondly, extra works could have been added to the scope of the project. Perhaps the line is now planned to to all the way to Mernda and Aurora North, or the costs include a crazy plan for additional tracks between Clifton Hill and the city, or a redevelopment of the area surrounding Epping station (which would involve moving the rail workshops), or some other extra plan. Again, we just don’t know at this point – and probably won’t know until construction starts as government transport reports seem to be very opaque on where the money goes. Thirdly, someone in the corridors of power could simply have got it very very wrong. If they have I’d really like to be a rail construction contractor about now.
I went to Preston Market on the train recently and went for a ride to the end of the line and back to kill some time.
From what saw this would be the easiest duplication job on the Melbourne system. There’s already room for an extra track to the east of the present one, save for the carpark at Thomastown Station which would be resumed, and some car spaces at the Lalor Shops. $26 mil seems a reasonable figure.
I would actually love to see the line from Clifton Hill/CBD to Epping to be upgraded and extended, and $650mil could get a lot if spent sensibly over the entire corridor. What’s the bit the figure also includes things like new rollingstock & operational costs?
Thanks Somebody. Agree it should be some of the easiest track amplification around. I wonder how much the 1.5km duplication from Fawkner to Gowrie cost when it was built in 1998; and whether it was done with much fanfare. I suspect it was cheap and and not heavily promoted – why can’t we have that now?
Agree the Clifton Hill group could do with some well targeted upgrades. On the capital works side, I’d advocate things like flyovers at Clifton Hill (which should have been done with the new bridge), station rebuilding (and security! but that’s not capital) at North Richmond and maybe Victoria Park, duplication from Keon Park and extension from Epping to Aurora North and Mernda, and maybe duplicating the Heidelberg tunnel if they want to run more than 9tph. From an operational perspective I’d obviously like a higher frequency service – 10 minute frequency at worst as far as Epping and Greensborough. If the $650 million is going towards all these things then I’d be much less critical, but I have a funny feeling it isn’t. We’ll have to wait and see what the project includes I suppose.
The capacity frequency between Heidelberg and Rosanna could be improved without touching the tunnel itself by just extending the double track closer to the tunnel entrances (which would include a second bridge over Burgundy St).
If someone had the time and inclination they could probably get a copy of how those numbers were reached through freedom of information. To the best of my knowledge FOI is an extremely arcane business so you would have to be patient and prepared to slog it out.
Seeing as how no contract has been signed there shouldn’t be a commercial in confidence clause on it.
Anyone at the PTUA into this? Or the good people at the South Morang Rail Alliance?
Thanks Tom and -K. It would be interesting to get the internal reports through FoI, as the public ones often don’t have a high level of detail. All the internal reports should just be published on the DoT website – when it’s taxpayers’ money there should be an extreme bias in favour of disclosure.
Tom, agree that moving the double track closer to the tunnel would help a great deal. I probably wouldn’t touch Burgundy St bridge on account of cost, and you can cut out 2/5 of the 1 km single track section by duplicating from Rosanna to the down end of Brown St without rebuilding any bridges. Double tracking from there all the way to the tunnel is another 200 metres. So 3/5 of the single track could go without having to build another bridge over Burgundy St.
Phin, do you have any idea what the figure for Merlynston/Fawkner was back then? If I wasn’t presently in Outback Queensland then I would research it myself.
How critical do you think track capacity between Clifton Hill and the CBD would be if a more frequent service is operated?
BTW, I was expecting to see more about the Victorian Transport Plan on here – I haven’t seen anything about it other than the various Railpage threads.
Hi Somebody. I’m over it a bit and there is good commentary, mostly anti- in the media.
The Age has picked up the excessive cost of construction quite well.
Mr Bowen is still saying the wrong things but I don’t want TT to become that sort of site.
Probably the most contentious aspect covered so far is the Tarneit line which we can cover under Williamstown etc if you like.
I’m also looking forward to the Sydney issues coming to the fore – a proposed Parramatta metro for example.
Somebody, I’ll have a look and see what I turn up re Merlynston/Fawkner duplication.
Riccardo, agree the VTP can be arduous given it’s basically a rehash of Eddington. I’m just going to do a couple of posts – one on Tarneit (now up), and another on the rail tunnel. I’ve put your local area planning and TOD post up as the headline so things don’t look too Victoria focussed
Phin, this story about Athens metro extesnion to Pireaus at 7.6km will make an interesting comparison of costs. If you don’t regard the Big Mac index as a credible PPP, the OECD publishes a more credible PPP indicator.
And you don’t need to worry about recent AUD:EUR shifts, as the PPP is not sensitive to relative currency levels.
http://www.railwaygazette.com/news_view/article/2008/12/9207/piraeus_extension_retendered.html
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/61/56/39653523.xls (opens using Excel)
You can see that Greece has a similar economic structure to Spain.
I believe the project includes duplication from Epping to Keon Park. That would be about 5 kilometres of tracks.
Other increases in costs relate to grade separations of roads which was not considered in at least the first 2 estimates there.
The South Morang extension will require at least three grade separations costing maybe $20-30 million each (cooper, Pindari, Civic Drive). If the double tracking of Keon Park to Epping is considered enough to warrant grade separations there as well (which IMO it would at least at major arterials) you’re looking at another 3 grade separations at Keon Parade, Settlement Road, Child Road.
Adding 6 grade separations to the cost equates to $200 million.
I also believe that the VTP includes capitalisation of maintenance costs on new projects into the ‘headline’ cost of new projects like South Morang. No idea on those costs but even $5 million per year x 10 years is another $50 million.
So all in all the ‘headline’ price in the VTP is a very high figure that might actually ome to the eddington $300 million for rail construction, another $200 million for required related road projects (grade separations), $100 millino of capitalised maintenance costs laeving maybe $50 million for new stablings/stations/provision for Mernda/Aurora extension/associated urban development (ala Revisatalising Dandenong)/looking at other bottlenecks closer to town to get full value etc.
Thanks Lachie
That still compares poorly with your average Western Australian project. Mandurah had countless grade seps done and even the Armadale line gets 1 or 2 grade seps done per year. Did you know the Victoria Park grade sep cost only $9m in 2006? I suspect there won’t be any more to do on that line.
And why are they throwing grade seps on existing track to Epping into the project cost?
government policy (long standing) states that you cannot upgrade a road without completing a grade separation of a rail line. By ‘upgrade’ I generally mean duplicate.
So it would follow that if you’re upgrading a train line (duplicating Keon Park to Epping) that you may then have to upgrade level crossings as you’re increasing the risk at those intersections.
agree with you though re: overall costs. As someone said ultimately its our money and it would be nice to know how they came up with $650 million! $650 million is not only a high cost that makes the like of us think how are they spending the moeny it is a high cost that will delay the project as the government tries to fund such a big ticket item.
and quickly – don’t know about Victoria Park (I’m not a true train guru – more knowledge on project management/public policy) but on the flip side to that is the Middlebrough Road Grade separation which cost $70 million, and Springvale Road which will cost about $90-120 million.
ultimately I doubt any of the grade separations that may be required out Epping way would cost that much (less train and car traffic) but I imagine that for live tracks it’d cost $30 million minimum and on the new track you might get in at $15-$20 million.
also was $9 millino the contract cost or the project cost. It is one thing to say the physical grade separation cost $9 million but all the lead up work might have been another $5-$10m million e.g. land aquisition, service relocation, design work, other non contract prep works etc.