Hacker News Reader

Comment by oefrha | Hacker News Reader

> Officials had started planning for a street-level rail connection between booming Ontario International Airport and a commuter train station 4 miles away, with an estimated cost north of $1 billion.

Tangential but this is crazy. A cursory search tells me high speed rail cost US $17-21m per km in China and US $25-39m per km in Europe in 2014, according to World Bank.[1]

[1] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/07/10/c...

View on HN

It might not be fully comparable, since most kilometers of high speed rail will be on the countryside and not in the city. The construction costs in city centers are always much higher. E.g. "Stuttgart 21" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21) which is about redoing railway in the Stuttgart area is also in the billion € range, despite being less than 60km (> 150M€/km) - and the majority of the 10B€ for that will probably be spent on the less than 10km of tracks inside the city.

That said the Ontario cost certainly still feels high.

The ongoing construction of the new broadway extension for Vancouvers skytrain system is even more costly. They are also building around 4 miles, and the estimated cost is 3 billion CAD (https://www.infrastructurebc.com/projects/projects-under-con...).

US building costs are high, but I don't think this is a fair comparison. Ontario, California is part of the Los Angeles metro area. Building a new railway inside any already-developed metro area is obviously going to cost much more than building a railway in the open countryside. The cost also likely includes the stations at either end.

I'd guess that's a classic case of economies of scale, although inflated property costs and government corruption could also be playing a role. However, compare to China(wiki):

> "The HSR network reached just under 38,000 km (24,000 mi) in total length by the end of 2020. The HSR building boom continues with the HSR network set to reach 70,000 km (43,000 mi) in 2035."

At that scale, costs per km would be expected to drop off on a steep curve, due to economies of scale, distribution of initial investment costs over more km of rail, etc.

... and China's more ruthless powers of Eminent Domain to acquire land

Having your home demolished for a development project in China used to be like hitting the jackpot, because it meant your cheap old property will often be exchanged for expensive new apartment(s) in addition to massive cash compensation. There’s literally a nascent social class in China called 拆迁户 (relocated households, roughly) known for getting ridiculously rich overnight. A shitty old family home in the right place in Shanghai could net you something like $10-20m, for instance.

I heard that compensation has been vastly scaled back since a year or two ago, but I don’t know the details.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com