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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

Sound Transit is spending $54 billion to build a few miles of light rail.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/sound-tra...

Keep in mind that's 62 miles of rail, both above and below ground. Not saying it's a good price, but ~$900 million a mile is a bit better than ~$3.5 billion per mile.

That’s mostly above ground rail through suburbs. DC built the silver line for 1/3 that in similar areas. (Still breathtakingly inefficient compared to $450 million for digging under fricking Paris).

How much did the land acquisition cost, though? I imagine that's relatively expensive in Seattle?

It was mostly built in the right-of-way of existing roads, so it's probably not comparable to projects that involved a lot of land acquisition.

That’s not true. The majority of the costs in the light rail project discussed (ST3) involves ROW acquisition, for above grade or underground rights of way.

You may be thinking of the original light rail or Sound Transit 2.

The original light rail was kind of a disaster but since then the management has changed; we will see how ST2, currently in construction, plays out.

I was referring to the Silver Line addition to DC's metro system. It mostly runs in the median of 267.

The cost is dominated by the price of the underlying land, which is privately owned. The actual construction cost is much lower than $900 million a mile.

Considering that ST continues to ignore the Eastside Rail Corridor, I'm not sympathetic to their ROW purchase costs.

Is it though? Considering it's light rail with 3 or 4 cars max vs 2nd ave subway being heavy rail with far longer trains, I'm not sure how much better it is.

The $54 B doesn't include cost overruns which are already happening!

The cost overruns are because the cost of land and contractors are rising at an astronomical rate. I forget the exact numbers, but they planned for land appreciation of something like 10%, and the real cost has turned out to be double that.

Considering ST3 hasn’t broken ground yet, I find it hard to believe that the cost overruns are due to construction.

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