How the hell does light rail track cost $2.5M/mile? How did people build railroad tracks back in the days of horses and buggys?
Part of it is that some folks really hate rail, so much so that they will continually sue anyone who is working to build it. They will argue wildlife endangerment, habitat destruction, cancer risk, suicide risk, traffic risk, earthquake/disaster risk, global epidemic risk, job preservation/creation/destruction risk, you name it. Anything to get back in court and have a judge temporarily suspend work. Because you hire someone to work on a project, and they can't because of some court order, you still have to pay them. So what happens is these projects have 'burn rates' (which is the cost of renting equipment (or depreciating it if you own it) and labor and materials (some of which degrade over time if not used)) and then you have 'able to work' days. Actual work days might be 90 for a mile of track, but time actually passed is like a year. So the other 275 days people sat on their hands while expensive lawyers argued to get work restarted.
Its one of the things I bring up at town hall meetings with politicians. The tax payer, and the 'NIMBY' [1] folks, fight a very asymmetric kind of warfare. No court challenges until funds are committed, and then six. You need look no further than the maneuvering around the California High Speed Rail project to see it play out in all of its ugliness.
[1] NIMBY -acronym Not In My Back Yard for people who are opposed to any new infrastructure near where they live.
It's the opposite in the USA.
The Economist had an interesting report on the reasons for the difference: http://www.economist.com/node/16636101
The U.S. instead tends to work on a model where the legislature passes general rules, and then agencies administer the rules in specific cases. So, for example, a specific rail plan is proposed pursuant to a piece of legislation, but the plan is not itself a piece of legislation superseding others. That leaves it open to all sorts of lawsuits alleging that it didn't comply with the legislation that applies to it.
>San Jose was celebrating their first 4 miles of light rail (in just 10 years from the start of the project!)
> Actual work days might be 90 for a mile of track, but time actually passed is like a year
So currently, San Jose can build 0.25 mi/year. Optimistically, with no lawsuits, their actual work days could increase to say, 225 days/year, which is 2.5x faster. So we're up to say, 0.66 mi/year, which still sounds way too low. What are the other bottlenecks?
I've gotten some positive feedback for that but have yet to find someone willing to actually submit it in a bill.
I'm not saying an undersea rail system is practical or smart. I'm just asking the relevance of your comparisons to US urban construction costs to begin with.
As a suggestion, a different tone might make your post seem more useful and less trollish. For example "An undersea tunnel will require serious construction breakthroughs to be practical. As a comparison, today's costs...". That would be a lot more constructive than attacking the people behind the article.
My initial point is a prima facie argument, the proposal is impractical by inspection. I certainly stand by that assertion, but as part of the supporting argument we've been discussing land based construction with the implicit, albeit not as well supported, stipulation that sea based construction would always be more expensive than land based.
An interesting way to approach the problem would be to outline the design space in terms of operation cost, development cost, and rate of return and see what sort of solutions, if any, might fit inside that box.
How can we get back to a society that is able to engage in large scale projects again? Look at the rapid low-cost subway construction in China today.
I think you're a super smart guy with really broad interests, experience, and knowledge. I think you could make the impossible happen if you applied yourself to it.
Modern trains also are heavier and accelerate and decelerate faster than the trains you see in westerns. Both mean that they exert greater forces on the rails.
Finally, safety standards are way higher. That means that material must be of higher quality and tested better, both at the factory and after installation.
[1] http://tacnet.missouri.org/history/railroads/rrcosts.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma_Railway
Five hundred men died for every mile of track laid, but hey, they had too many prisoners anyway!