Brazil is planning to build a 317 mile HSR line for $16B. CAHSR is a 430 mile line with a $98B price tag. That's $50M/mile in Brazil vs. $230M/mile in CA.
That's more than 4X the cost per mile! What gives?
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
oltmannd Brazil is planning to build a 317 mile HSR line for $16B. CAHSR is a 430 mile line with a $98B price tag. That's $50M/mile in Brazil vs. $230M/mile in CA. That's more than 4X the cost per mile! What gives?
If my memory serves me correctly, I believe the latest numbers for the CHSR Project have been scaled back to $68 billion before financing. Depending on the terms of the financing, it can double the cost of a long term capital project.
Don,
Brazil is not infested with enviormentailist wackos and their lacky politicians.
Mac
The CA HSR project price tag is also in year of expenditure dollars. Since it is a several decade long project at this point, that drives up the total projected cost based on a 2 or 3% inflation rate. The CA HSR project also has multiple significant mountain ranges with miles of tunnels that push up the total price tag. I don't know what the terrain issues and likely land acquisition costs are for the Brazil HSR route. $/mile is a rather crude metric to compare HSR projects.
IMO, once the CA HSR project goes through a proper cost engineering phase, the final price tag for the route outside of the San Jose-SF and LA corridor segments will go down.
Land purchase costs?
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
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