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Re: Astonishing cost to build new Light Rail vs Interstate Hwy Lane Really? Or, just more "fake news"?
Author: FUD
Date: 12-17-2019 - 21:58
Last time I saw an urban freeway project being designed and costed, $10 mil a mile was pretty much what the sound wall cost.
As for light rail, in San Francisco it can get close to $1 billion a mile (see: Chinatown subway). That's an outlier, though; it's usually less. DuckDuckGo isn't cooperating right now regarding light rail construction cost searches, but a reasonable number for a downtown line or one involving a lot of structure and/or right of way acquisition could be in the $300 mil neighborhood. That's not an average line, but one with complications.
The place I want numbers for to put that stuff in perspective is San Diego, but I probably would need to talk with somebody there to get them. They did the first modern light rail line (very inexpensively, by avoiding federal funding), but I'm not sure the (by modern standards ridiculously low) numbers thrown around for that include everything (such as the railroad purchase that made the line possible in the first place). And besides, it was done around 1980s, and construction costs have inflated just a bit since then. They've done several good-sized extensions since then, with gradually increasing needs for structures and tunnels and general fanciness (just rebuilding freight railroad tracks and installing catenary with plain street-level stations and calling it a light rail line doesn't fly any more). So they might be a good study of how things evolved.
SacRT is looking at adding a passing siding (including rebuilding one station) and extending double track (including rebuilding another station) on the Folsom line so train frequency can be increased to 4x an hour instead of 2x as it is now. Going through the preliminary design and environmental work now. Its part of a $150 mil project to buy 20 new low-floor cars (their fleet now almost qualifies for museum status), reconstruct stations to work better with the low-floor cars, and do the Folsom work. So the new track part of it (totals a couple of miles of added track in existing r/w) certainly isn't anywhere near $300 mil/mile.
As for light rail, in San Francisco it can get close to $1 billion a mile (see: Chinatown subway). That's an outlier, though; it's usually less. DuckDuckGo isn't cooperating right now regarding light rail construction cost searches, but a reasonable number for a downtown line or one involving a lot of structure and/or right of way acquisition could be in the $300 mil neighborhood. That's not an average line, but one with complications.
The place I want numbers for to put that stuff in perspective is San Diego, but I probably would need to talk with somebody there to get them. They did the first modern light rail line (very inexpensively, by avoiding federal funding), but I'm not sure the (by modern standards ridiculously low) numbers thrown around for that include everything (such as the railroad purchase that made the line possible in the first place). And besides, it was done around 1980s, and construction costs have inflated just a bit since then. They've done several good-sized extensions since then, with gradually increasing needs for structures and tunnels and general fanciness (just rebuilding freight railroad tracks and installing catenary with plain street-level stations and calling it a light rail line doesn't fly any more). So they might be a good study of how things evolved.
SacRT is looking at adding a passing siding (including rebuilding one station) and extending double track (including rebuilding another station) on the Folsom line so train frequency can be increased to 4x an hour instead of 2x as it is now. Going through the preliminary design and environmental work now. Its part of a $150 mil project to buy 20 new low-floor cars (their fleet now almost qualifies for museum status), reconstruct stations to work better with the low-floor cars, and do the Folsom work. So the new track part of it (totals a couple of miles of added track in existing r/w) certainly isn't anywhere near $300 mil/mile.
