Projet Montral's Pink line: Pipe dream or election game-changer?

As the underdog in the race for city hall, Projet Montral needed a proposal that could grab the public's attention and swing votes its way.

The party's proposed Pink line expansion to the Metro system, announced earlier this week, grabbed everyone's attention, all right.Whether it can accomplish the second goal will depend on how realistic Montrealers believe the project to be.

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Denis Coderre, who is seeking a second term as mayor, abruptly dismissedthe idea of building a new Metro line that would cut diagonally across the city and consist of 29 stations.

"You have to be realistic. The Just for Laughs Festival is over," he told reporters Wednesday in Pierrefonds. "We know it won't work, so why entertain false hopes?"

However,engineering and public policy experts consulted by CBC News offer a more nuanced analysisof the proposalto build a 29-kilometre Metro line from Montreal North to Lachine.

On the one hand, they acknowledge the line meets a need, andfinancing is available. On the other hand,they believe Projet's estimated price-tag of $6 billion and its six-year timeline might be overly optimistic.

The route

ProjetMontralhas made appealing to the "sardine class" its way of referring to cramped Metro commuters a priority of its campaign. And the Pink line, it says, will alleviate some of the demand on the city's other subway lines.

"We clearly, right now, still have a deficit in public transportation in Montreal," saidGrardMounier, a strategic advisor specializing in infrastructure and project financing for the law firmLavery."Everyone is agreed that the Orange line is saturated."

The Pink line, as it's currently sketched out, is designed to travel through some of the densest neighbourhoods in the city, giving them more rapid access to the downtown core.

Normally that would give rise to concerns about disruption to businesses and residents during construction. But Projet's proposal banks on new engineering technology a tunnel-boring machine that digs pathways deep underground.

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TBMs, as they'reknown in the industry, have allowed a number of cities in Europe and North America to undertake complicated infrastructureprojects without getting bogged down in costly expropriations, rewiring electrical grids and digging up sewersystems.

"Tunnel-boring machines are potentially more efficient and can minimize disruption in some ways, but they're not a magic bullet solution," saidMattiSiemiatycki, a geography and planning professor at the University of Toronto.

Because the machines operate deep undergroundand are difficult to access, technical problems can mean costly and lengthy delays, saidSiemiatycki,who recently wrote a paper on cost overruns in public infrastructure projects.

The financing

That raises the question of Projet's proposed $6 billion budget.

When the party announced the Pink line earlier this week, it mentioned three potential sources of funding: the new federal infrastructure bank, the federal public transit infrastructure fund and a provincial infrastructure fund.

These funds reflect the willingness of both Quebec and Ottawa to fork out cash for big infrastructure projects, and that should heartenthe project's supporters.

"There is a a massive amount of capital available in Canada to finance any large-scale transportation project," saidMounier.

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But althoughProjethas stated its preference for the Pink line to beentirely publicly funded, it may not have the choice if the infrastructure bank is involved.

Ottawa envisions the bank, which is not yet fully operational,being used to leverage private investment in public projects.Private investors are likely to want to recoup their investments through real estate developments along the Metro line.

"I really think that Projet Montral ... is going to have to be candid about the fact that there is going to need to be development on these stations, and beside these stations, in a way that generates ... commercial income for the private partners," saidBrian Kelcey, founder the urban affairs think-tank, State of the City.

Budget and timeline

It is, arguably, the ability to bring a large infrastructure project in on time and on budget that has Montrealersmost skeptical.

The five-kilometre extension of the Metro's Orange line to Laval ended up costing$745million, hundreds of millions more than initial estimates.

That project, however, didn't make use of TBM technology, which has dramatically altered the infrastructure calculus.

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Madrid and Barcelona have used TBMsto complete projects in less timeand for less moneythan Projethas budgeted for the Pink line, saidKelcey, a former adviser to Ontario'sMinistry of Transportation.

But using European models ignores the different cultureand contextof infrastructure construction in Canada.

"In North America ... and Canada in particular, we're lousy at containing costs for subway and transit construction.We're lousy at building quickly,"he said.

Projet'scosting, moreover, may be on the ambitious side. In Europe and North America, the price range for subway projects is between$300 million and $500 million per kilometre.

If the Pink line comes in at the low end of that range, that means the 21-kilometre underground stretch alone would cost $6.3 billion. The plan also calls for an eight-kilometre overland corridor between downtown and Lachine, though that section will likely be cheaper to build.

"Six billion dollars is a lot of money, don't get me wrong," said Jean Habimana, who heads the tunneling group in the Montreal office of Hatch, an engineering consulting firm.

"But in the grand scheme of things, if you're talking about 30 kilometres, it may not be enough."

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