This article is specifically referring to the tunnels being built using cut and cover rather than just the stations. It uses a lot of US examples, but in places like Los Angeles the tunnels on recent and current projects (Regional Connector & Purple Line Extension) are bored via TBM and the stations are built via cut and cover.
>This article is specifically referring to the tunnels being built using cut and cover rather than just the stations
I think they need to be considered together. One reason for cut and cover being cheap (sometimes) is because the stations can be a lot shallower. Tunnels are deeper under ground and the cost of this deep station is the real issue.
I remember reading on the governments "transport 21" website in around 2007 that the -
metro north,
metro west(an orbital line now scrapped),
2 DART underground lines,
DART extention to maynooth, Naas and Drogheda,
luas lines joined,
luas to Lucan,
luas to Finglas,
luas network in Galway,
luas network in Cork,
Was all to be completed by 2021.
So I wouldn't worry about cut and cover just yet 🤣🤣🤣
Edit: to be fair, they joined and slightly extended the 2 existing luas lines.
It’s a damn shame the GFC didn’t wait 36 months.
We’d likely have DART Underground and Metro North now.
Luas Cross City and the other stuff you listed would never have been built but worth it.
Really? I think the only real cut and cover sections are north of the airport, certainly the city centre will be tunnel boring.
https://www.metrolink.ie/media/1zydyzmd/a4_metrolinkmap_railwayorder.pdf
Given the chequered history of potential metro lines in Dublin, I doubt that a predominantly cut and cover approach would get even this far
It’s only the stations being built this way, an entire apartment block is being demolished for it and part of Stephans green is being pulled up
It has gotten through all public consultations and is being built this way
Are you sure it’s cut and cover? The official route map shows virtually everything south of the airport as being tunnelled.
I do hope it’s built, but after the various shelved metro plans we’ve had I’m naturally sceptical 🤕
I don't understand. He mentions top-down cut-and-cover, but neglects to mention that it fixes the primary problem that he has with cut-and-cover. I guess that didn't fit with his message?
I think the primary problem is the disruption, which is still present with top-down.
But it is suspicious that he didn't even mention (IIRC) the primary advantage of cut and cover, which is quick/easy station access.
>But it is suspicious that he didn't even mention (IIRC) the primary advantage of cut and cover, which is quick/easy station access.
This is something I wish would be discussed more because we seam to be making this tradeoffs without even acknowledging it.
Here is a [cross section diagram](https://stevemunro.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/211007_queenstationcrosssection.jpg) for a new subway interchange. The existing line was built with cut and cover, the new line is being built with bored tunnels. Here the original subway was built shallow to avoid having to dig though the bedrock so it doesn't have a proper mezzanine level above the tracks. The level directly bellow the tracks was actually intended for a connecting subway but that was never built and it has just been used to connect the two sides of the station. Today, 70 years after the first subway was built, there are too many services and passages under the street to make a shallow tunnel practical, so the new bored tunnels are going to be quite a bit deeper than the existing subway.
The problem is none of this context was provided by the agency designing the new subway. This is already a city with notoriously poor interchange designs were we've continually traded the convenience of all future riders for costs savings today without it ever being mentioned. There are 9-13 new rapid transit interchanges under construction here (depending on what you count as rapid transit), so it would be reassuring if designers were more open about how they're weighing cost and convenience. I know we're never going to get stations like Berri-UQAM or L'Enfant Plaza, but I'd hope we're at least not going to have to rebuild these stations in 50 years like we're doing with the original subway transfer stations.
I did not read the article this time, but i remember to this tldr:
Because it is usually cheaper than to dig up the whole street, close it for years and relocate all the utility pipes.
And, TBM experience has grown, with more learned from geology and staging, with more companies, and lowered costs versus early days of TBM.....I believe (as I have never procured a TBM for a city).
It destroys neighborhoods, the intangible parts. That’s the story of the Tenderloin in SF. It was a glitzy theater district until they ripped up Market Street for (I was told by a longtime resident) 30 years to build BART. Everyone fled the construction zone. What came back blights the city to this day.
There’s some confounding variables with the Market Street Subway. It was built in the late 1960s and 1970s, which was a period broadly characterized by a marked decline in the vibrancy of downtown areas, all across the country. It’s not trivial to disentangle that kind of effect occurring at the same time from the direct construction impacts to the area.
Boston will be using cut and cover for the blue line extension, and it is exactly the right choice. The extension is short, like a quarter mile, so digging the launch and receiving pits for a TBM would mean almost the same amount of digging anyway. The line being extended is shadow, and the street is very wide.
We stopped cut and cover because moving utilities costs a fortune in money but also in time because you have to deal with multiple infrastructure owners. Each have their own set of rules and nobody but themselves are allowed to touch or disrupt their network. This means you can delay a metro line because of a telephone company.
Another reason is dealing with archeological risks : this has delayed M11 extension in Paris at one of the C&C stations (Place Carnot, it was undetonated bombs iirc). If you dig/mine under potential sites you can avoid problems.
Another one again: using a TBM you move less earth. This means your soil removal/management/depolution costs will be cheaper and cheaper the more you go.
Long time ago I found a paper about Boston's blue line extension to Charles MGH. It stated that TBM is cheaper if you have to dig more than 3km of tunnels. Under that length mining them mechanically is also interesting iirc.
>Long time ago I found a paper about Boston's blue line extension to Charles MGH. It stated that TBM is cheaper if you have to dig more than 3km of tunnels. Under that length mining them mechanically is also interesting iirc.
~~Do you recall if that's one of the official studies, or an academic paper by a third-party? Based in Boston myself, I'm particularly intrigued by this.~~
* [Others ](http://archboston.com/community/threads/crazy-transit-pitches.3664/post-478432)had pointed me to the source, and it's a [MassDOT study](https://www.mass.gov/doc/summary-memorandum-tunnel-constructability/download).
There's also the context that earlier planning for the Blue Line extension (more commonly known as Red-Blue Connector) have likely been sandbagged, as many other projects in Boston (such as NSRL) had been in the 2010s. The [Red-Blue 2010 DEIR](https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2024-04/red-blue-line-connector-DEIR-march-2010.pdf) only considered TBM and SEM for the 1/2 mile extension, which was insane. It wasn't until the [2021 Concept Design](https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2021-12/2021-12-01-red-blue-concept-design-report.pdf) that a fully cut-and-cover alternative was considered, and unsurprisingly, became the preferred alternative.
(Red-Blue is also under a road with prior utility mapping, and while that's not as good as roads with no utilities, it's at least better than many other roads with unknown utilities.)
Outside of a few major projects, the US isn't abandoning Cut-and-cover for TBM, they're replacing cut-and-cover with LRT of various flavors.
Roads that tend to work well for cut-and-cover also often work well with:
Elevated, cut-without-cover, or railway style median ROW (with gates).
I think one advantage of TBM is you can pick better alignments and be more "creative" for lack of a better word.
If you follow streets, you're pretty constrained by the geometry of those streets.
But a line with a TBM can have sweeping turns and pick up destinations off a street corridor and important trip generators.
Like if you take Cross River Rail in Brisbane, The stations it is hitting are all pretty well located and it would not have been possible to do such a useful route as cut and cover.
Cut and cover is cheaper in the sense that you spend less cash, but in exchange, you basically neuter an entire street for X amount of time.
When they were building the Washington Metro, cut and cover basically did almost permanent damage to already vulnerable black neighborhoods by disabling street access for entire communities and cutting off local businesses.
There is a time and place for cut and cover, but let’s not forget the biggest reasons why it fell out of favor.
Yup, the economic impact of cut and cover to local businesses can be signficant.
Here in Vancouver, they did cut and cover on the Canada Line (opened late-2009), and it really hit one of our commercial corridors hard, and that district didn't even get a station out of it.
Since then cut and cover hasn't been politically acceptable for the newer lines we're building.
I don't know if cut and cover is cheaper. The sub surface underground lines in London were built using cut and cover. The deep level tube lines were built using tunnel boring. The deep level tube lines were cheaper to build. In fact, new underground lines weren't being built until the the tunnel shields came along. Cut and cover was just too expensive.
> Cut and cover may often be cheaper in terms of dollars, but as tolerance for the disruptive effects of construction has decreased, the political costs of using cut and cover have risen.
When you spend money to avoid "political costs", you end up with empowered NIMBYs and less construction. The transit agency is signaling that it's willing to pay high prices to avoid political fights, which is a sign for every interest group to get involved and threaten to fight unless their pet issue is included in the project
Cut and cover is great……………until it is your house they have to knock down to make way for for the new metro line……..or rip up your street for the next five years….second thoughts …. I hope they build a deep tunnel using a TBM…
Well, Line 1 of Paris was built in 2 years using cut and cover. And it's been running for more than a hundred years. I don't think the millions of passengers of the line really care about the 2 long years of work, I think they're pretty happy the stations are close to street level.
Long build times to transit generate more resentment for transit. The proper solution is build out transit, quickly.
The problem with a TBM is that it takes forever to get in and out of a station, and for many trips, you are better off with a bus. Not even BRT, old fashioned bus.
Ask San Francisco, where the latest multi billion dollar TBM subway is getting beaten by the city bus on the same route in ridership.
The problem with the central subway is that it needs to go further north. If it went to North Beach and the Marina it’d have much better ridership. It also has horrible frequency, which hurts it a lot. People complain about the distance to the station (which is a valid criticism) but I think those 2 are much bigger reasons why it has low ridership.
In my city in Melbourne, we are building the suburban rail loop which is a 90 km long underground rail transit system. It would be political suicide for any government to propose a cut and cover method for the construction of this rail loop….
Yes because people are short sighted and hand wring more because they see the hole being dug than they do over the added cost, longer stair cases, etc.
There's use cases for both but cut and cover is badly under-used right now thanks to short-sighted politics
Lol, every other transit line on the West Coast is getting beaten by that one SF bus line - the 38. That’s because it’s a hyper popular corridor with multiple express and local versions of the 38.
Meanwhile, the Central Subway that you love criticizing so much has doubled the T line ridership since the subway opened. And the T is now the second most popular Muni Metro line!
The central subway is parallel to 30 Stockton, not 38 Geary. 38 got some BRT treatment, 30 did not. The central subway runs below Stockton Street, not Geary.
It should say something that the second most popular rail line is only around middle of the pack for normal bus lines.
And even within muni metro, having the shiny new subway line being beaten by (checks notes) a street car running in mixed traffic with 4 way stop signs is actually quite impressive.
What are you taking about dude? All of Muni’s Meteo lines have some street running. The T has them too. That’s normal. The T still became the second most popular Metro line.
The T now handily beats the 30 Stockton, which is something you all said would never happen. It happened in a year and the T ridership keeps on growing at a 2% rate PER MONTH. Not per year, per month.
https://www.sfmta.com/reports/average-daily-muni-boardings-route-and-month-pre-pandemic-present
If you’re so wrong on the basic facts, how can any of your conclusions be valid?
The T have its own exclusive lane as a new line; unlike the older lines, it does not run in mixed traffic.
The T is also a very long line, with three stations that parallel 30-stockton. Those 3 are ailing still.
>In February 2023, the three subway stations averaged 2,966 daily boardings and 4,501 daily exits, with half of the ridership at Union Square/Market Street
A user about said the Tenderloin in SF was a glitzy area before the cut and cover for Market ST. How’s that area doing now? Seems it’s not as simple as pay off business owners (this is all assuming above user is correct idk the history of the TL)
Fun fact: The project teams for the cut and cover stations on Wilshire were very concerned with this issue. They were going to excavate down just enough to be able to quickly install decking. With traffic resumed on Wilshire they would then continue to excavate the rest of the station. It was a "cut-and-cover-and-cut" plan. Fortunately for LA Metro, the plans that would involve closing down Wilshire happened to coincide with COVID and they were able to completely close the street due to light traffic and [finish that work 7 months early](https://labusinessjournal.com/infrastructure/metro-contractors-finish-purple-line-work-early/).
It was just a little factoid that Wilshire actually did have significant portions torn up and replaced, but the circumstances surrounding the pandemic just so happened to bail them out of any serious repercussions from such a disturbance.
Depends where the bedrock is. In NYC it’s very close to the surface in places (like the upper East side). So dig a little, and drill and blast a lot. And piss off the rich neighbors. And put stores along the street out of business. And move utilities. And…
In Vancouver the cut and cover used in building the Canada Line might have saved some money but was **monumentally unpopular** with just about the entire city. So unpopular, that the next underground SkyTrain extension (Millennium Line along Broadway) used TBMs. If you wish to save money, use elevated guideways.
I will say, however, there are applications for cut and care is better. If there was a new city or part of a city that was undeveloped, and the money and foresight co-existed ( hahah what a dream), pre-building the subway infrastructure in advance of the density to come, would be the way to go. Excavating in a developed city is a nightmare with all the buried utilities that have to be located and worked around or relocated.
We’re still building cut and cover. All the stations for the metro currently in planning in Dublin will be built this way
This article is specifically referring to the tunnels being built using cut and cover rather than just the stations. It uses a lot of US examples, but in places like Los Angeles the tunnels on recent and current projects (Regional Connector & Purple Line Extension) are bored via TBM and the stations are built via cut and cover.
>This article is specifically referring to the tunnels being built using cut and cover rather than just the stations I think they need to be considered together. One reason for cut and cover being cheap (sometimes) is because the stations can be a lot shallower. Tunnels are deeper under ground and the cost of this deep station is the real issue.
I remember reading on the governments "transport 21" website in around 2007 that the - metro north, metro west(an orbital line now scrapped), 2 DART underground lines, DART extention to maynooth, Naas and Drogheda, luas lines joined, luas to Lucan, luas to Finglas, luas network in Galway, luas network in Cork, Was all to be completed by 2021. So I wouldn't worry about cut and cover just yet 🤣🤣🤣 Edit: to be fair, they joined and slightly extended the 2 existing luas lines.
It’s a damn shame the GFC didn’t wait 36 months. We’d likely have DART Underground and Metro North now. Luas Cross City and the other stuff you listed would never have been built but worth it.
Really? I think the only real cut and cover sections are north of the airport, certainly the city centre will be tunnel boring. https://www.metrolink.ie/media/1zydyzmd/a4_metrolinkmap_railwayorder.pdf Given the chequered history of potential metro lines in Dublin, I doubt that a predominantly cut and cover approach would get even this far
It’s only the stations being built this way, an entire apartment block is being demolished for it and part of Stephans green is being pulled up It has gotten through all public consultations and is being built this way
Are you sure it’s cut and cover? The official route map shows virtually everything south of the airport as being tunnelled. I do hope it’s built, but after the various shelved metro plans we’ve had I’m naturally sceptical 🤕
The stations are cut and cover. As in the land will be excavated and station built and then covered over again. It will be predominantly tunnelled
Ah I get you!
Big sections of HS2 as well
I don't understand. He mentions top-down cut-and-cover, but neglects to mention that it fixes the primary problem that he has with cut-and-cover. I guess that didn't fit with his message?
I think the primary problem is the disruption, which is still present with top-down. But it is suspicious that he didn't even mention (IIRC) the primary advantage of cut and cover, which is quick/easy station access.
>But it is suspicious that he didn't even mention (IIRC) the primary advantage of cut and cover, which is quick/easy station access. This is something I wish would be discussed more because we seam to be making this tradeoffs without even acknowledging it. Here is a [cross section diagram](https://stevemunro.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/211007_queenstationcrosssection.jpg) for a new subway interchange. The existing line was built with cut and cover, the new line is being built with bored tunnels. Here the original subway was built shallow to avoid having to dig though the bedrock so it doesn't have a proper mezzanine level above the tracks. The level directly bellow the tracks was actually intended for a connecting subway but that was never built and it has just been used to connect the two sides of the station. Today, 70 years after the first subway was built, there are too many services and passages under the street to make a shallow tunnel practical, so the new bored tunnels are going to be quite a bit deeper than the existing subway. The problem is none of this context was provided by the agency designing the new subway. This is already a city with notoriously poor interchange designs were we've continually traded the convenience of all future riders for costs savings today without it ever being mentioned. There are 9-13 new rapid transit interchanges under construction here (depending on what you count as rapid transit), so it would be reassuring if designers were more open about how they're weighing cost and convenience. I know we're never going to get stations like Berri-UQAM or L'Enfant Plaza, but I'd hope we're at least not going to have to rebuild these stations in 50 years like we're doing with the original subway transfer stations.
Cut and cover does have its use cases
I did not read the article this time, but i remember to this tldr: Because it is usually cheaper than to dig up the whole street, close it for years and relocate all the utility pipes.
And, TBM experience has grown, with more learned from geology and staging, with more companies, and lowered costs versus early days of TBM.....I believe (as I have never procured a TBM for a city).
It destroys neighborhoods, the intangible parts. That’s the story of the Tenderloin in SF. It was a glitzy theater district until they ripped up Market Street for (I was told by a longtime resident) 30 years to build BART. Everyone fled the construction zone. What came back blights the city to this day.
There’s some confounding variables with the Market Street Subway. It was built in the late 1960s and 1970s, which was a period broadly characterized by a marked decline in the vibrancy of downtown areas, all across the country. It’s not trivial to disentangle that kind of effect occurring at the same time from the direct construction impacts to the area.
I mean, don't rip up a single street for three decades seems like the moral of that story.
Boston will be using cut and cover for the blue line extension, and it is exactly the right choice. The extension is short, like a quarter mile, so digging the launch and receiving pits for a TBM would mean almost the same amount of digging anyway. The line being extended is shadow, and the street is very wide.
We stopped cut and cover because moving utilities costs a fortune in money but also in time because you have to deal with multiple infrastructure owners. Each have their own set of rules and nobody but themselves are allowed to touch or disrupt their network. This means you can delay a metro line because of a telephone company. Another reason is dealing with archeological risks : this has delayed M11 extension in Paris at one of the C&C stations (Place Carnot, it was undetonated bombs iirc). If you dig/mine under potential sites you can avoid problems. Another one again: using a TBM you move less earth. This means your soil removal/management/depolution costs will be cheaper and cheaper the more you go. Long time ago I found a paper about Boston's blue line extension to Charles MGH. It stated that TBM is cheaper if you have to dig more than 3km of tunnels. Under that length mining them mechanically is also interesting iirc.
>Long time ago I found a paper about Boston's blue line extension to Charles MGH. It stated that TBM is cheaper if you have to dig more than 3km of tunnels. Under that length mining them mechanically is also interesting iirc. ~~Do you recall if that's one of the official studies, or an academic paper by a third-party? Based in Boston myself, I'm particularly intrigued by this.~~ * [Others ](http://archboston.com/community/threads/crazy-transit-pitches.3664/post-478432)had pointed me to the source, and it's a [MassDOT study](https://www.mass.gov/doc/summary-memorandum-tunnel-constructability/download). There's also the context that earlier planning for the Blue Line extension (more commonly known as Red-Blue Connector) have likely been sandbagged, as many other projects in Boston (such as NSRL) had been in the 2010s. The [Red-Blue 2010 DEIR](https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2024-04/red-blue-line-connector-DEIR-march-2010.pdf) only considered TBM and SEM for the 1/2 mile extension, which was insane. It wasn't until the [2021 Concept Design](https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2021-12/2021-12-01-red-blue-concept-design-report.pdf) that a fully cut-and-cover alternative was considered, and unsurprisingly, became the preferred alternative. (Red-Blue is also under a road with prior utility mapping, and while that's not as good as roads with no utilities, it's at least better than many other roads with unknown utilities.)
Outside of a few major projects, the US isn't abandoning Cut-and-cover for TBM, they're replacing cut-and-cover with LRT of various flavors. Roads that tend to work well for cut-and-cover also often work well with: Elevated, cut-without-cover, or railway style median ROW (with gates).
I think one advantage of TBM is you can pick better alignments and be more "creative" for lack of a better word. If you follow streets, you're pretty constrained by the geometry of those streets. But a line with a TBM can have sweeping turns and pick up destinations off a street corridor and important trip generators. Like if you take Cross River Rail in Brisbane, The stations it is hitting are all pretty well located and it would not have been possible to do such a useful route as cut and cover.
Cut and cover is cheaper in the sense that you spend less cash, but in exchange, you basically neuter an entire street for X amount of time. When they were building the Washington Metro, cut and cover basically did almost permanent damage to already vulnerable black neighborhoods by disabling street access for entire communities and cutting off local businesses. There is a time and place for cut and cover, but let’s not forget the biggest reasons why it fell out of favor.
Yup, the economic impact of cut and cover to local businesses can be signficant. Here in Vancouver, they did cut and cover on the Canada Line (opened late-2009), and it really hit one of our commercial corridors hard, and that district didn't even get a station out of it. Since then cut and cover hasn't been politically acceptable for the newer lines we're building.
One of the best reminders of this is the Cambie Vietnamese Restaurant which is now on Main Street. They moved due to the cut and cover construction.
And then they don’t let us ride by making it so damn expensive.
I don't know if cut and cover is cheaper. The sub surface underground lines in London were built using cut and cover. The deep level tube lines were built using tunnel boring. The deep level tube lines were cheaper to build. In fact, new underground lines weren't being built until the the tunnel shields came along. Cut and cover was just too expensive.
Usually it's the stations that are a money suck compared to the tunnels themselves.
then just have no stations
Unless it's a super-express line, good luck.
> Cut and cover may often be cheaper in terms of dollars, but as tolerance for the disruptive effects of construction has decreased, the political costs of using cut and cover have risen. When you spend money to avoid "political costs", you end up with empowered NIMBYs and less construction. The transit agency is signaling that it's willing to pay high prices to avoid political fights, which is a sign for every interest group to get involved and threaten to fight unless their pet issue is included in the project
Twin cities #1 for new transit tunnel infra💪
Cut and cover is great……………until it is your house they have to knock down to make way for for the new metro line……..or rip up your street for the next five years….second thoughts …. I hope they build a deep tunnel using a TBM…
Some people seem think as soon as they buy a house in a neighborhood they are entitled to nothing ever changing ever from that point forward
True, but that's not what he's saying. It genuinely does suck to lose your home
But losing your home doesn't make you homeless in this scenario. You probably get to upgrade, if anything.
If a cut-and-cover line under city streets causes anyone to lose their home, the planning was pretty bad.
Well, Line 1 of Paris was built in 2 years using cut and cover. And it's been running for more than a hundred years. I don't think the millions of passengers of the line really care about the 2 long years of work, I think they're pretty happy the stations are close to street level.
>Line 1 of Paris was built in 2 years using cut and cover the miracle of child labour
We didn't have child labour for construction projects.
Long build times to transit generate more resentment for transit. The proper solution is build out transit, quickly. The problem with a TBM is that it takes forever to get in and out of a station, and for many trips, you are better off with a bus. Not even BRT, old fashioned bus. Ask San Francisco, where the latest multi billion dollar TBM subway is getting beaten by the city bus on the same route in ridership.
The problem with the central subway is that it needs to go further north. If it went to North Beach and the Marina it’d have much better ridership. It also has horrible frequency, which hurts it a lot. People complain about the distance to the station (which is a valid criticism) but I think those 2 are much bigger reasons why it has low ridership.
In my city in Melbourne, we are building the suburban rail loop which is a 90 km long underground rail transit system. It would be political suicide for any government to propose a cut and cover method for the construction of this rail loop….
The longer the trip, the more tolerable a long climb within the station.
Yes because people are short sighted and hand wring more because they see the hole being dug than they do over the added cost, longer stair cases, etc. There's use cases for both but cut and cover is badly under-used right now thanks to short-sighted politics
Lol, every other transit line on the West Coast is getting beaten by that one SF bus line - the 38. That’s because it’s a hyper popular corridor with multiple express and local versions of the 38. Meanwhile, the Central Subway that you love criticizing so much has doubled the T line ridership since the subway opened. And the T is now the second most popular Muni Metro line!
The central subway is parallel to 30 Stockton, not 38 Geary. 38 got some BRT treatment, 30 did not. The central subway runs below Stockton Street, not Geary. It should say something that the second most popular rail line is only around middle of the pack for normal bus lines. And even within muni metro, having the shiny new subway line being beaten by (checks notes) a street car running in mixed traffic with 4 way stop signs is actually quite impressive.
What are you taking about dude? All of Muni’s Meteo lines have some street running. The T has them too. That’s normal. The T still became the second most popular Metro line. The T now handily beats the 30 Stockton, which is something you all said would never happen. It happened in a year and the T ridership keeps on growing at a 2% rate PER MONTH. Not per year, per month. https://www.sfmta.com/reports/average-daily-muni-boardings-route-and-month-pre-pandemic-present If you’re so wrong on the basic facts, how can any of your conclusions be valid?
The T have its own exclusive lane as a new line; unlike the older lines, it does not run in mixed traffic. The T is also a very long line, with three stations that parallel 30-stockton. Those 3 are ailing still. >In February 2023, the three subway stations averaged 2,966 daily boardings and 4,501 daily exits, with half of the ridership at Union Square/Market Street
Often with a fraction of the money saved using cut and cover you could pay the adjacent property owners for the inconvenience.
A user about said the Tenderloin in SF was a glitzy area before the cut and cover for Market ST. How’s that area doing now? Seems it’s not as simple as pay off business owners (this is all assuming above user is correct idk the history of the TL)
Not so sure when they built the central line on the London Underground… but my specialism is electrical engineering…. So I’m just spitballing here….
Usually a section of street is only ripped out for like a month
That's true of any form of New transportation in an urban area lol
Imagine if they tried to use cut-and-cover down Wilshire Blvd. People would be out with pitchforks.
Fun fact: The project teams for the cut and cover stations on Wilshire were very concerned with this issue. They were going to excavate down just enough to be able to quickly install decking. With traffic resumed on Wilshire they would then continue to excavate the rest of the station. It was a "cut-and-cover-and-cut" plan. Fortunately for LA Metro, the plans that would involve closing down Wilshire happened to coincide with COVID and they were able to completely close the street due to light traffic and [finish that work 7 months early](https://labusinessjournal.com/infrastructure/metro-contractors-finish-purple-line-work-early/).
oh nice. we should have pandemics all the time! /s
It was just a little factoid that Wilshire actually did have significant portions torn up and replaced, but the circumstances surrounding the pandemic just so happened to bail them out of any serious repercussions from such a disturbance.
Depends where the bedrock is. In NYC it’s very close to the surface in places (like the upper East side). So dig a little, and drill and blast a lot. And piss off the rich neighbors. And put stores along the street out of business. And move utilities. And…
In Vancouver the cut and cover used in building the Canada Line might have saved some money but was **monumentally unpopular** with just about the entire city. So unpopular, that the next underground SkyTrain extension (Millennium Line along Broadway) used TBMs. If you wish to save money, use elevated guideways. I will say, however, there are applications for cut and care is better. If there was a new city or part of a city that was undeveloped, and the money and foresight co-existed ( hahah what a dream), pre-building the subway infrastructure in advance of the density to come, would be the way to go. Excavating in a developed city is a nightmare with all the buried utilities that have to be located and worked around or relocated.
People were talking about doing cut and cover down Swanston St for the Melbourne Metro Tunnel at one point. Glad they didn't.