Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Inernational Rail Updates

Wow lots going on in the world. We have updates from China, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia.

Lagos is one of the world's densest cities. They plan to float a bond to pay for two new rail lines. I'm not sure where this relates to the BRT lines they have been planning, but part of this project concerns value capture schemes for the land around the transit stations. I wonder if they'll have to change their Euclidian zoning. Sure.

“The Lagos State Government intends to finance the infrastructure for both rail lines through the capital market by floating an estimated N275bn worth of rail infrastructure bonds.”

He also gave the details of the capital cost of project as Okokomaiko-Iddo ($582m), Iddo-Marina ($215m), and Agbado-Iddo ($402m). He stressed that the project would assist in traffic decongestion and landmark public/private partnership and opportunities for real estate development near the rail stations.

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Mecca plans on building a light rail line as well. Seems silly in a place where oil is king no?

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And we've seen the numbers before, but here is an article in another format on China. Business Week:
China is now undertaking the world's biggest railway expansion since the U.S. laid its transcontinental line in the 1860s. Beijing plans to spend $248 billion through 2020 on 75,000 miles of new track, for both freight and high-speed passenger lines. At that point, China's high-speed passenger network will likely be the biggest on earth.

H/T Orphan Road

9 comments:

Unknown said...

I've read it more than once, that we will have to build our way out of this recession. What better way to start?

Anonymous said...

The article on the proposed Mecca light rail line says "It will have capacity for up to 90,000 passengers an hour."

90,000 per hour? Can that be right? Is that not a massive number for one line?

Justin said...

The LRT for Mecca will obviously be designed to accomodate the massive crowds that flock to Mecca yearly. I cannot remember what the pilgrimage is called, but Mecca gets CROWDED at times. This rail line will be useful.

Anonymous said...

whats the lexington ave subway per hour?

njh said...

yeah, mecca gets millions for the special days. If you want to move 3 million people at 90000/hour, that's still 33 hours of standing room only!

whiteguyfromtheprojects said...

its called the haj.

Alon Levy said...

whats the lexington ave subway per hour?

31,000 on the express line, as of a few years ago. The local line has a bit less.

Anonymous said...

"31,000 on the express line, as of a few years ago. The local line has a bit less."

So the capacity of this one light rail line will be 50% more than the busiest heavy rail line in the U.S.? Are they going to sextuple track the Mecca line? How else would this be possible?

Alon Levy said...

First, New York has terrible capacity, because of its old technology. The RER achieves 55,000 passengers per hour on some lines.

Second, third world environments always achieve more crowding than first world ones - for example, in Mumbai the system sometimes reaches 75,000 passengers per hour, even though its outdated signaling only allows trains to run every 4 minutes. If Mecca can run trains every 1.5 minutes, as Moscow does, it can even hit 200,000. It'll be very unsafe, but the Hajj already has safety issues from overcrowding on foot.