Forward thinking or clutching at straws?

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

According to Reuters, London has just approved a $33 BILLION dollar super new subway…

Green light for London’s $33 bln Crossrail link

By Pete Harrison and Sumeet Desai

LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Britain finally approved a new 16 billion pounds ($33 billion) underground rail link across London designed to carry 200 million passengers a year and ease the capital’s clogged transport network.

The government on Friday hailed Crossrail as Europe’s biggest civil engineering project and said it should be running by 2017.

…

note that London will host the Olympics in 2012…so only parts of this may be useful by then, but the article states that this will help with the anticipated growth as a result of the olympics .

How does this estimated cost compare with Boston’s Big Dig (Estimated and most recent actual…)?

Given the tenor of discussions related to light rail and other urban transportation initiatives here in the US, I doubt anything of this magnitude for Public Transportation is possible in the US…

What do you think?

2

Well, here in Manhattan, they’re building a subway along Second Avenue that’s only going to run 6 miles or so. The published estimates for that project, with stations, is about $17 billion. Also, the Long Island Rail Road access tunnels to Grand Central Terminal, when it’s all added up, is in the same order of magnitude. Just those two together are in the same ballpark as the London project, and NYC isn’t even having an Olympics. Now if you want to talk big-bucks, the politicians want to build new rail tunnels to accommodate freight traffic from New Jersey to Long Island.