Alon Levy, co-lead of the transportation and land use program at New York University’s Marron Institute, has spent years studying why some countries are able to build transport infrastructure cheaply and others aren’t.
Though the preliminary business case of the expansion of Gold Coast light rail includes few details, Levy estimates that the project may ultimately cost as much as 10 times more than comparable European infrastructure.
Those include, Levy says, a lack of contracting transparency, over-engineering, politicisation, poor allocation of cost risk – and above all, contracting out to the private sector.
Continuity of service is a massive advantage to reroutability. If there’s an accident or track damage affecting the rail route, that’s the end of the service for the time being. A bus will simply take an alternate route - and depending on the disruption, alternations may have no impact on the ability to service all route stops.
On power efficiency, I’m willing to bet the draw required for tram car conveyance is heavier than what’s needed for buses carrying an equivalent number of passengers. It would be interesting to see figures on that front.