Re: TrainNews eBart
Author: mook
Date: 12-31-2013 - 12:44
You're right - inflation has occurred.
Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics' CPI calculator, it takes $669.74 in 2013 to buy what $100 did in 1968 (when BART began to operate). Construbtion costs have inflated even more, but I don't have a ENR account to get the indexes for Way Back.
So if the original BART cost $1B to build (probably not far from that after all the last-minute updates), it would be almost $7B to build it today if you go by CPI. Given Bay Area real estate and construction cost (not just national CPI) inflation it would probably cost much more than $10B to build it from scratch today.