Posted on 10/28/2023 5:52:20 AM PDT by george76
The city of San Francisco is in the process of constructing a downtown-area railroad extension that is estimated to cost in excess of $4 billion per mile of tunnel, The San Francisco Standard reported.
The extension, known as The Portal, is a tunneled rail service that would connect the Salesforce Transit Center in the city’s downtown corridor to Caltrain and future high-speed trains, according to the Standard. The project’s overall cost estimate was recently revised up from $6.5 billion to a total of $8.25 billion, which makes for a per-mile cost of over $4 billion,
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“[Y]ou’re seeing some whopping projected cost increases, not just for The Portal, but for other projects in the Bay Area,” John Goodwin, a spokesperson for the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), which will operate the service, told the Standard.
Lily Madjus Wu, a spokesperson for the public utility company Transbay Joint Powers Authority, that will construct The Portal told the Standard that the U.S. government has been petitioned to fund half the project’s cost.
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Only San Francisco could manage *$6.8 billion per mile* rail extension between two stations.
This city is run by children.
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In New York City, new tunneling for Metropolitan Transportation Authority subway lines has cost between $1.5 and $3.5 billion per mile, The New York Times reported, which is, itself, seven times the average cost of subway construction in metropolitan areas around the world.
The MTC, meanwhile, has been selling merchandise about The Portal and engaging in public relations campaigns to promote its construction, according to the Standard.
The High-Speed Rail (HSR) project connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles, which would be at one end of The Portal, has itself been widely criticized for construction delays and heavy cost overruns. Despite an initial budget of $33 billion in 2008, when it was first approved by ballot proposition, the cost is currently projected to reach $128 billion in total, with the first phase of the project, connecting Merced with Bakersfield, not expected to be ready until 2030.
The city of San Francisco, has well, as been widely criticized for high levels of homelessness and crime, public sanitation issues and open-air drug use. Many businesses have reportedly exited the city as a result.
Article: “The High-Speed Rail (HSR) project connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles”
Note from breaking news in the year 4000 A.D.:
“Rumors abound that the mythical city of San Francisco has finally been found in the ocean off the coast of California. Skeptics argue that the fragments of maps of a high speed train between San Francisco and Los Angeles are proof the finds are frauds since no such trains were ever built.”
Lol.
Agree. This is like giving a kidney transplant to someone dying of pancreatic cancer.
No, but if government must subsidize rail passenger service, waste and incompetence is inevitable.
Florida’s Brightline is a good example of what can happen when the private sector is in charge.
The SR-71 Blackbird cost $200,000 per mile to fly. It could fly 6,000,000 miles per each mile of the build. Not the greatest analogy, but interesting.
In New York City, new tunneling for Metropolitan Transportation Authority subway lines has cost between $1.5 and $3.5 billion per mile, The New York Times reported, which is, itself, seven times the average cost of subway construction in metropolitan areas around the world.
1. One of the biggest factors in tunnel construction is the underlying geological conditions of the project site, which vary widely from one part of the world to another. In a city like New York, for example, you have a combination of subway tunnels below sea level that require boring through dense bedrock for many of the tunnels.
2. Working around existing infrastructure and land improvements makes a project far more expensive than it would be if you are building something new from the ground up. I worked in the planning and preliminary design phase of one major New York City project some years ago where 50% of the project cost related to the complexities of relocating utilizes without disrupting service, working around existing building foundations, and keeping the adjoining streets and subway lines open during construction. The project was never built because of the excessive cost.
3. Many elements of large infrastructure projects have fixed costs that do not vary proportionately with the size of the project. There are economies of scale that apply to almost every stage of the planning-design-construction process. The cost of designing a one-mile tunnel, for example, is going to be substantially more than 1% of the cost of designing a 100-mile tunnel. And the one-mile project doesn’t use only 10 workers if the 100-mile project is done with 1,000 workers.
OK, out of your experience, which is considerably better than my math, do you really believe a 2 mile rail line could cost the city over 8 billion?
That seems very high to me, but so was the original estimate of $6.25 billion.
This is my shocked face.
Chicago has a Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue.
These $4 Billion miles will have to compete.🚂💲💲💲💲💲💲💲
~$63,000 per inch.
With all the taxpayers flee San Fran, It will become as filthy as the BART.
Musk could do it for less.
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