Comment by xnx
14 hours ago
Seems like a bargain by comparison! Chicago is about to spend $1 billion/mile to extend an above-ground train line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Line_Extension
14 hours ago
Seems like a bargain by comparison! Chicago is about to spend $1 billion/mile to extend an above-ground train line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Line_Extension
The USA is riding on 100 years of the benefits of scale and economic investment. If the USA was investing $150B a year into building passenger rail, we would not be paying $1B/mile for "new" and "trailblazing" rail projects. If we had to build much of the highway infra we built 75 years ago, but do it now, we'd be paying similar $1B/mile prices for the highways.
Here in Canada we're investing $60-120b on a rail to connect Toronto to Montreal.
I hope your analysis is correct and subsequent passenger rails will be much cheaper!
The best thing about rail in the US is we'll have a lot of premium land for bike paths and AV lanes when the rail gets decommissioned.