You can compare the price of a transport network in three ways, and all three tell a different story. The construction cost per kilometre tells you how much the concrete costs. The cost per trip tells you how much it costs to move one person, once. And the cost per user, per year tells you what the network really costs society, year after year. Here are all three.
1. The construction cost, per kilometre
The first instinct: how much does each kilometre built cost? The bike tunnel benefits from a tiny diameter (3.6 m, versus 12 to 15 m for a road or metro tunnel) and from stations without platforms or rail cars. Hence a cost per kilometre in a class of its own.
| Mode of transport | Length | Total cost | Cost / km |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bike tunnel — Bike Tunnel Québec | 150 km | ≈ $11.2B | ≈ $74M/km |
| Light metro — REM, Montréal | 67 km | $9.4B | ≈ $140M/km |
| Tramway — TramCité, Québec | 19.3 km | $7.6B | ≈ $394M/km |
Sources: REM, $9.4B for 67 km (2024 cost); Québec City tramway TramCité, $7.6B for 19.3 km (2024 estimate); bike tunnel, realistic scenario from the Construction page ($11.2B for 150 km). Construction costs in constant dollars. And even so, the REM is the most economical type of metro: a classic heavy metro, bored deep underground — like the extension of the blue line in Montréal — exceeds a billion dollars per kilometre.
Key takeaway: for the price of building a single kilometre of tramway, you build more than five kilometres of bike tunnel. And even compared to the REM — a light metro reputed to be economical — the tunnel remains nearly twice as cheap per kilometre.
2. The cost per trip, versus the RTC
A « trip » (or journey) is a route from point A to point B: going to work is one, coming back is a second. As the Study page explains, the region counts on the order of 550 million trips per year, across all modes; the tunnel's target — 10 % — therefore represents about 55 million trips per year. For its part, the RTC (Québec City's transit authority) carried 31.5 million journeys by bus in 2024, on an operating budget of $280.7M.
By dividing the operating budget by the number of trips, you get the real cost of each journey:
| Network | Trips / year | Operation / year | Cost per trip |
|---|---|---|---|
| RTC — bus (actual 2024) | 31.5M | $280.7M | ≈ $8.90 |
| Bike tunnel — 10 % target | 55M | $212M | ≈ $3.85 |
RTC: $280.7M ÷ 31.5M journeys (actual 2024 budget and ridership). Bike tunnel: $212M ÷ 55M trips (realistic operation from the Operation page, target ridership). Both figures exclude construction, compared separately in table 1.
And the user in all this? On the RTC network, fares bring in only $76.4M — about 27 % of the real cost; the public absorbs the remaining $6.50 or so per trip, and the passenger pays on average $2.43 per journey. On the tunnel side, a modest access fee (on the order of $30 to $50 per month) works out to about $1 per trip — and the user gets, as a bonus, their daily exercise.
To be honest: 55 million trips is a target, not a given. Even at the RTC's current ridership (31.5M), the tunnel would come to ≈ $6.70 per trip in operation — still below the RTC. And a bike is not a bus: it requires pedalling, replaces neither paratransit nor long distances. The comparison holds for what it measures — the cost of moving one self-sufficient person, over an urban distance.
3. The cost per user, per year
Beyond the concrete and the trip, it is the annual cost per user that really counts: what each person served costs society, year after year, once everything is added up.
| Mode of transport | Annual cost / user | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Automobile | $8,000 – $12,000 | Purchase, fuel, insurance, maintenance, parking, plus public costs (roads, police, snow removal) |
| RTC — public transit | ≈ $4,700 | Public subsidy per regular user (operation + capital); users cover only ~27 % of the cost |
| Bike tunnel | ≈ $2,180 | Amortization of $11.2B over 50 years (≈ $1,120) + operation (≈ $1,060), spread over 200,000 users |
Bike tunnel: $11.2B amortized linearly over 50 years ≈ $224M/yr, plus $212M of operation, the whole divided by 200,000 users — and before the revenue from an access fee, which would lower the net cost further. RTC: calculation derived from its 2024 budget — operating subsidy ($280.7M minus $76.4M of user revenue ≈ $204M/yr) plus capital ($2.9B over 10 years ≈ $290M/yr), the whole spread over ≈ 105,000 regular users (working assumption: the RTC publishes its journeys, not its number of regular users). Automobile: private and public costs combined — the CAA calculator alone puts the private costs of a popular model between $8,500 and $9,700/yr, even before the public share (roads, snow removal, police, health), estimated at $6,900/yr per family of four in Québec. The $8,000 to $12,000 range is therefore conservative.
Why we do not add borrowing interest. All the figures on this page — ours as well as those of the REM, the tramway and the Alto high-speed train — are in constant dollars, without financing interest. This is a choice of honesty, not convenience. Major public projects almost always announce their cost this way: the $60 to $90B of the Alto high-speed train, the $7.6B of the Québec tramway and the $9.4B of the REM are all capital construction costs, excluding interest and excluding operation. If we added interest to our project alone while comparing it to their gross figures, we would put ourselves at a disadvantage and the comparison would be skewed. The rule must be identical for all: either you add interest to every mode, or to none. We chose the second option, the simplest and most transparent. Interest is very real — the government borrows to build, whatever the project — but it applies to all in the same way and therefore does not change the ranking of the modes.
One user for ≈ $2,180 per year.
The bike tunnel serves a user for far less than the RTC, and three to five times cheaper than an automobile. The reason? An asset that lasts — underground concrete, sheltered from frost, lives 75 to 100 years and is amortized over 50 — spread over 200,000 users, with no heavy fleet to replace every fifteen years.
All amounts are orders of magnitude, in constant dollars. A formal economic study would pin down the definitive values. The tunnel figures come from the Construction and Operation pages; those of the RTC, from its 2024 budget ($280.7M of operation, 31.5M journeys, $76.4M of user revenue, capital program of $2.9B over 10 years).
Main sources. Québec heavy-transit comparables. REM — $9.4 B for 67 km (cost rose from $7 B in 2018 to $9.4 B in 2024, according to the Auditor General): Le Devoir, La Presse ; $125 M/km according to CDPQ Infra (98,5 Montréal, official CDPQ Infra fact sheet). Québec Tramway — $7.6 B for 19 km, entry into service planned for 2033: La Presse, Le Devoir.
RTC and automobile. RTC's 2024 operating budget — $280.7 M and a capital program of $2.9 B over 10 years: official RTC release and budget document (PDF) ; 2024 ridership — 31.5 M journeys and $76.4 M of user revenue: Radio-Canada. Private costs of the automobile: CAA-Québec calculator, worked examples in Protégez-Vous ($8,465/yr for a popular new SUV, 20,000 km/yr). Public costs of the automobile — the automobile system costs $43 to $51 B per year in Québec, of which $6,900 per family of four in public spending: Trajectoire Québec – David Suzuki Foundation study.