Re: HSR Palmdale to LA alignment- Yes the "dual use" toll road/rail tunnel would be a perfect P-3
Author: BOB2
Date: 09-19-2018 - 19:27
Clem, you do know that it's not ethical to use my work and charge your client for it, right? And you do know that Caltrans tells me I am entitled to be charging the CHSRA $175 an hour for this reply.....
Yes, you could certainly build a toll road and rail dual use tunnel, by using a "public-private" partnership ("P-3))model, by letting a franchise for a private sector firms to design-build-operate-maintain (DBOM). We looked at this route and this "pairing" of choo-choo and toll road when I was working with a large international firm which was looking at building the 710 tunnel using the P-3 model.
The 118 to 14 route is ideal, demand (from a financing point of view) was virtually "infinite" given present and future travel demand, with or without more choo-choo's. It is a routing that potential saves users miles of additional travel, and up to 40 minutes of travel time in the most congested conditions. And, compared to the numbers we were using for out work on the 710 tunnel this was a relatively cheap route for the volumes that would likely use it.
The biggest problem that CA seemed to have back then with real privately financed franchise model P-3's like this, was that the politicians couldn't seem to find a "tit" on this "cow", to hook up the "milking machine", for milking the taxpayers with "change orders", like they've become addicted to for the campaign contributions these seem to generate.