15 miles X $1.22 billion per mile = $18.3 billion, and that's BEFORE cost overruns additional graft etc...
Posted on 08/11/2014 7:40:42 AM PDT by george76
The cost of the high-speed rail project might be going above the current estimate of $68 billion.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority recently announced a strategic shift to consider an alternative for its 40-mile Palmdale-to-Burbank link. Instead of the current plan of running it parallel to the Palmdale Freeway, the new line would run through a tunnel under the San Gabriel Mountains.
According to Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who has advanced the idea, the tunnel would be about 15 miles long.
...
it’s possible to calculate a rough — very rough – estimate. Let’s start with something we know: the tunneling cost for the proposed extension of the Long Beach 710-Freeway: $6 billion for a 4.9-mile segment, which works out to $1.22 billion per mile.
As mentinoned, the San Gabriel Mountain tunnel link for high-speed rail would be 15 miles long. If it costs as much do dig that tunnel as the 710 freeway extension, that would be $1.22 billion per mile, or $18.3 billion total (15 miles X $1.22 billion per mile = $18.3 billion.)
(Excerpt) Read more at calwatchdog.com ...
Tunnel crew...you can figure union rates at $30 an hour. Toss in some accidents and a simple two-year project can turn into a six-year project. You could milk this till the cows come home.
Aren’t those Seattle guys still paid while the digging machine sits?
Yeah, a tunnel in earthquake country sounds like a great idea to me.
That 68 billion could end Kalifornia’s drought problems forever, by way of aqueducts from soggy Washington and Oregon. Fact. Pretty much follow the existing I-5 corridor.
MIGHT? Please, it will be at a minimum 4x the original estimates. Probably closer to 7x.
At the rate people and jobs are bailing out of California, there won’t be anyone left to ride it.
15 miles X $1.22 billion per mile = $18.3 billion, and that's BEFORE cost overruns additional graft etc...
Better yet, invest it in desalination plants to serve the big coastal cities. Oh, I forgot. They use "evil" electricity produced by either nukes or fossil fuels. I guess the RR/tunnel is an electorally safer endless boondoggle for the corrupt politician/union complex.
“... might be going above the current estimate of $68 billion. “
Might be?
Might be?
Good gawd, man, we’re talking liberals here.
They could not manage a kool aid stand, let alone anything requiring adult judgement.
Mexifornica...fornia is doomed.
Best the big one comes early and ends their suffering early.
That’s almost $2,000 per person for every legal and illegal resident in the State of California. Even liberals didn’t used to be quite that wasteful.
So, which politician owns land along the new, proposed route?
Please...the tunnel will only add to the increases already in place for this abomination...
Nothing more than a “jobs program” for unions, lawyers and other scum feeding at the taxpayer trough...then again, many of those same taxpayers voted for this idiocy...
Hard to feel anything other than schadenfreude regarding this whole thing...
It will not be “high speed” rail since it will be sharing some of the existing lines and those are primarily freight lines, especially the Tehachapi Loop...not gonna be going fast through there...
Just let some illegals or Hamas guys dig it. They do more with less.
you can add tens of billions to whatever they estimate the cost to be today, by the time they could finish it
do these ventures create employment, in the long run
no - they focus on concentrating employment
telling companies there is no need to move, build or create jobs nearer where people are located, we’ll tax the public to build mass transit to bring the workers to you
it only marginally reduces commute times and continues the paradigm of building concentrations of wealth, people and political power instead of building on dispersal of work and living spaces and local independence
Which earthquake would wipe out that tunnel???
No one in the media seems to have figured it out yet, but the California high speed rail project is nothing more than a cover story for an enormous state land grab which will enrich their coffers by billions once eminant domain, adverse possession, and countless easements are established. Theft on a collosal scale under the guise of public transportation that is neither needed nor wanted.
I understand your post, but what does taking land off the property tax rolls accomplish for state revenues?
This is going to be another “Big Dig” (like in Boston)
It is going to take forever and cost 10 times as much as originally projected.
$68 Billion will seem like a bargain before it is over.
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