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It's not about space. You don't spend $105,000,000,000 on land. You can spend real money on construction that causes a minimum of inconvenience. Say you want t
by Arnt 5y ago
It's not about space. You don't spend $105,000,000,000 on land.
You can spend real money on construction that causes a minimum of inconvenience. Say you want to build on a road median, and then someone imposes a requirement that at most one lane be closed during the construction. The land isn't a problem, doing the construction while closing only one lane is expensive.
There are other variants. Basically, every time either the route or the construction is constrained, the cost goes up. You have to enter a city at one spot instead of 10m/100m further east? You have to build a bridge at one spot instead of 5km further west? I know examples where both of those caused well over 100% cost increases.
- Arnt 5y agoI want to digress. http://www.railfaneurope.net/tgv/images/construction/vdcavignon4.jpg http://www.railfaneurope.net/tgv/images/construction/vdcavig... shows a part of TGV track being lifted into place. TGV is cheap high-speed track, particularly if one is willing to leverage the experience the French have built. That seems to be for a bridge, so not cheap, but the width ought to match the usual track width. Would that fit in a road median? It seems implausible. If not, then it's a fair assumption that building something narrower will add to the cost. The French didn't spend extra to build wider than optimal tracks, after all. EDIT: I found http://www.railfaneurope.net/tgv/track.html http://www.railfaneurope.net/tgv/track.html and… wow.