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Texas Central Railways is still working out the details of how the project will be financed.  As I understand it, they won't have good cost estimates until the environmental impact study has been completed and a route has been chosen.  Given the tendency of projects of this magnitude to come in late and over cost, estimating the final cost is a dicey exercise. Whenever someone says that a large project will cost a number, e.g. $10 billion, I discount it.  Having been involved in developing the cost estimates for several power plant construction projects, we never gave a specific number.  We came up with a range of numbers based on scenario probabilities.  Ignorniing my own admonition, if the project were built for the quoted $10 billion and, furthermore, if the construction work in progress were funded with short term construction loans, whilst the permanent financing was funded at the current U.S. Treasury long bond rate, and the long term financing was placed at the time the construction work in progress was closed to plant and equipment in service, the cost of the project would be approximately $15.5 billion.  To this one would need to add the cost of the construction work in progress loans.  Needless to say, this is a lot of ifs. If the project sponsors get substantial financial support from the equipment manufacturer, as well as the Japanese export/import bank, the total cost could be less because of the lower debt service cost. This project is as much about giving Japanese high speed railway equipment manufacturers a platform to export their technologies to the United States as it is about meeting the passenger transport needs of Texas.  If the project is successful, it could open wide the U.S. market for Japanese high speed rail technology. That's OK as long as the Japanese continue to buy Boeing airplanes.
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