4 ms·

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?

by Eliezer 14y ago

abraham 14y ago
Slave labor and "slave" labor.
- shmulkey18 14y ago
  Slave labor was too expensive to use because you risked losing your valuable capital. Instead new immigrants were used such as Irish (East Coast) or Chinese (West Coast).
  - planetguy 14y ago
    Slave labour was used sometimes, e.g. the Thailand-Burma railway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma_Railway 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!
  - abraham 14y ago
    That's the "slave" labor.
mostly_harmless 14y ago
I feel that most of the cost is for tunneling and the difficulties of working in such a space as a subway system. as for normal railroads, a quick googling shows that the cost is much more conservative, with a 1995 estimate[1] stating about $250,000 per mile to rehabilitate an existing railroad. [1] http://tacnet.missouri.org/history/railroads/rrcosts.html http://tacnet.missouri.org/history/railroads/rrcosts.html
- psyklic 14y ago
  Light rail is above ground, often operating alongside street traffic.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
That is a great question, I wish I could reasonably answer it. I'm a big fan of rail, and while San Jose was celebrating their first 4 miles of light rail (in just 10 years from the start of the project!) I was looking that the marker in the Sacramento Rail museum (recommended) commemorating the laying of 10 miles of the Union Pacific rail line in one day. 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.
- jamesaguilar 14y ago
  Isn't this part of why rail is a lot easier to do in Europe? My understanding is that it is a lot harder to sue over stuff like this there. Maybe someone familiar with Europe's rail situation can chime in.
  - theorique 14y ago
    Passenger rail is excellent in Europe, but rail freight is atrocious. 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 http://www.economist.com/node/16636101
Someone 14y ago
They built awfully bad ones, by today's standards. Rails weren't prestretched and welded together. Instead, they left gaps between rails to cater for temperature differences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_(rail_transport)#Joining_rails http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_(rail_transport)#Joining_...) 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.
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  There is also the issue that the FRA in the US makes trains considerably heavier than equivalents in the rest of the world. http://www.ebbc.org/rail/fra.html http://www.ebbc.org/rail/fra.html

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?

by Eliezer 14y ago

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?

abraham 14y ago

Slave labor and "slave" labor.

shmulkey18 14y ago
Slave labor was too expensive to use because you risked losing your valuable capital. Instead new immigrants were used such as Irish (East Coast) or Chinese (West Coast).
- planetguy 14y ago
  Slave labour was used sometimes, e.g. the Thailand-Burma railway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma_Railway 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!
- abraham 14y ago
  That's the "slave" labor.

mostly_harmless 14y ago

I feel that most of the cost is for tunneling and the difficulties of working in such a space as a subway system. as for normal railroads, a quick googling shows that the cost is much more conservative, with a 1995 estimate[1] stating about $250,000 per mile to rehabilitate an existing railroad. [1] http://tacnet.missouri.org/history/railroads/rrcosts.html http://tacnet.missouri.org/history/railroads/rrcosts.html

psyklic 14y ago
Light rail is above ground, often operating alongside street traffic.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

That is a great question, I wish I could reasonably answer it. I'm a big fan of rail, and while San Jose was celebrating their first 4 miles of light rail (in just 10 years from the start of the project!) I was looking that the marker in the Sacramento Rail museum (recommended) commemorating the laying of 10 miles of the Union Pacific rail line in one day. 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.

jamesaguilar 14y ago
Isn't this part of why rail is a lot easier to do in Europe? My understanding is that it is a lot harder to sue over stuff like this there. Maybe someone familiar with Europe's rail situation can chime in.
- theorique 14y ago
  Passenger rail is excellent in Europe, but rail freight is atrocious. 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 http://www.economist.com/node/16636101

Someone 14y ago

They built awfully bad ones, by today's standards. Rails weren't prestretched and welded together. Instead, they left gaps between rails to cater for temperature differences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_(rail_transport)#Joining_rails http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_(rail_transport)#Joining_...) 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.

rogerbinns 14y ago
There is also the issue that the FRA in the US makes trains considerably heavier than equivalents in the rest of the world. http://www.ebbc.org/rail/fra.html http://www.ebbc.org/rail/fra.html