Comment by bb88
9 years ago
> If you're trying to compare costs with Boring,
Actually I'm not. I just want to point out that public trains cost huge amounts of money for investment, they need special infrastructure which many US cities don't have, and the only way they work feasibly is if the population density is high enough so the taxes will support them.
In other words, there's a huge upfront cost to even considering building a system that most cities/governments will choose roads over rail.
A bus on the other hand is $300,000, holds around 60 passengers, and uses the same infrastructure the city already has, and doesn't incur the need to have right of way fights with land owners.
What would you realistically do given the choice?
That seems orthogonal to the point 'geofft was making, which seems like if you're going to spend the resources to dig tunnels, it makes more sense to fill them with trains than with personal cars.
A bus without special bus lanes is a pretty bad public transit system, the sort of thing that makes people conclude that this whole public transit idea was a mistake in the first place and we should just invest in better car infrastructure. And getting special bus lanes is pretty politically difficult in its own way (although it's a different sort of fight than right-of-way fights).
If I had the choice of spending $3 million to buy 10 buses, or to do nothing at all, I'd save the $3 million and wait until it's feasible to develop something that the city will keep wanting to fund.