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Comment by vkou

8 years ago

> There is tons of waste in government, I think we know that. But, politicians will add more - so long as it gets them votes. Interestingly, in this case, the guy campaigned on prosperity for the local economy. The project must not disrupt local business. Got to make money, after all. Yet, it slowed the project down and probably added a good 10% to the overall budget. The lengths we went to were absurd.

Contrast that to the Canada line in Vancouver, which was built using a cut-and-cover method. All the business owners in the Cambie corridor were convinced that this would be a minimal disruption to their business.

By the time construction was done, every single merchant along the corridor went out of business. Strangely enough, cut-and-cover proposals for more subway lines in Vancouver are as dead as a Monty Python parrot.

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vkou

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yongjik  8 years ago

That's interesting. What did they do so wrong to drive everyone out of business?

In Seoul I grew up watching subway construction all the time. Yes the local traffic suffers for many years, but the underground construction is covered with iron roofs that allow overground traffic, and people get used to it. After all, a street is likely to have subway construction because it had a large number of people using it: these people don't suddenly go away. (If they did, it would be a major blunder on the part of subway planners!)

  • vkou  8 years ago

    > That's interesting. What did they do so wrong to drive everyone out of business?

    The whole street looked like a large bomb crater for a year.

    Yes, you could still access the buildings, but why on earth would you shop on Cambie, when you could go the next block over to Robson. Even a 10% reduction in customers could sink many retail businesses, over such a period of time.

mjevans  8 years ago

Maybe it would be cost effective to plan it such that everything in that area is re-located and re-vitalized for when things come back online.