Submitted by nowaysingh t3_ysa2bf in Futurology
Surur t1_iw2c4g6 wrote
Reply to comment by YaAbsolyutnoNikto in What will be future like next 5 years, 10 or 15 years. by nowaysingh
> Road construction and maintenance is much more expensive than public transport infrastructure, so don’t tell me they don’t have the money to pour into these projects.
This is 100% wrong and I have no idea where you got this idea.
Train tracks are about 10-100x as costly as roads per mile, and running PT is much more expensive than maintaining roads.
For exactly this reason you will not see massive investment in PT.
YaAbsolyutnoNikto t1_iw2d7cx wrote
Those numbers are completely incorrect lol. And especially so when taking into account the negative externalities that road construction, maintenance and individual transport creates and also the opportunity cost of not having denser living spaces (which increases tax revenues).
Surur t1_iw2g3b6 wrote
> And especially so when taking into account the negative externalities that road construction, maintenance and individual transport creates and also the opportunity cost of not having denser living spaces (which increases tax revenues).
Ignoring whether these things are real or not, do you actually think anyone will care?
> Those numbers are completely incorrect lol.
You swallowed too much propaganda.
> In the United States, most recent and in-progress light-rail lines cost more than $100 million per mile. Two light-rail extensions in Minneapolis, the Blue Line Extension and the Southwest LRT, cost $120 million and $130 million per mile, respectively. Dallas’ Orange Line light rail, 14 miles long, cost somewhere between $1.3 billion and $1.8 billion. Portland’s Orange Line cost about $200 million per mile. Houston’s Green and Purple Lines together cost $1.3 billion for about 10 miles of light rail.
For roads:
> New Construction 2 Lane Undivided Urban Arterial with 4' Bike Lanes: U01 $4,285,161.73
https://www.fdot.gov/programmanagement/estimates/documents/costpermilemodelsreports
That's $4 million vs $100 million btw.
People have been lying to you, and you have swallowed it up.
YaAbsolyutnoNikto t1_iw2if6u wrote
Dude, did you even read the title of the article you posted? “Why It's So Expensive to Build Urban Rail in the U.S.”
You’re comparing the inflated US figures to those of the industry. The US is simply the most car centric place in the entire free world. It’s not a good representative of the cost of roads vs public transport. The article itself says it.
Also, I’m not American. So, if I’d accept to play that unfair game, I have no reason to. It doesn’t affect me at all.
Also, of course cities and countries will consider the negative externalities and the effect on tax revenues… what do you think their job is? Urban planners, economists, politicians, etc. just sit around approving random projects all day? It’s literally what a bunch of people are hired to do. Industrial economists in particular: that’s their entire job (analysing externalities).
Believe it or not, but companies and governments take years to approve projects for a reason (sometimes inefficiencies, yes, but also because there’s a bunch of stuff to consider).
Surur t1_iw2iu5u wrote
> Also, I’m not American.
So you think this is a uniquely US problem? In UK they are about to cancel HS2 high speed rail because cost spiralled to more than £100 billion
Tell me which country you are in, and I will look up your local figures.
> Also, of course cities and countries will consider the negative externalities and the effect on tax revenues… what do you think their job is?
No, they look at their budget, and what they have to spend now lol. You live in a fantasy world, especially when it comes to developing economies.
So you are in Portugal:
> In February 2009, the government of Portugal announced plans to build a high-speed rail line from Lisbon to Madrid; this plan was cancelled in March 2012 amidst a bailout programme of financial assistance to the Portuguese Republic.[1] The project was valued at €7.8 billion and the government had claimed it would create 100,000 jobs.[2] The line would link to Spain's Southwest Corridor.
Lol
In Portugal the government spends more than 200,000 Euro per mile on rail track per year.
In Portugal the government spends around 70,000 Euro per km on roads.
> In some other countries (i.e. Austria, Croatia, The Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland and Japan) the infrastructure costs are significantly above € 40,000 per kilometre road network. In Portugal and Croatia, the large-scale investment programmes in the 1990s and the first decade of this century largely explains the high cost levels
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