Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jandrese 2926 days ago
If he hits the $1 billion target this will be the civil engineering project of the century. It's hard to overstate just how optimistic that figure is compared to literally every other mass transit project worldwide.

The craziest part is that there is already a much cheaper and not that much slower option to get to the airport. This project seems rather Quixotic.
1 comments
rohit2412 2926 days ago
Why is it so unrealistic? For example, this line in Mumbai metro ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_3_(Mumbai_Metro) ), with 34 km of big tunnels and 27 stations is supposed to cost 3.4 billion. Surely, Chicago's 25-30 km line with just two stations (one sort of half built already) and smaller tunnels won't cost so much.
link
jandrese 2926 days ago
Two things. 1 is that they're planning to use a lot of cut and cover which is a lot cheaper but more disruptive. 2 is that the project isn't complete yet so those final cost figures are still fiction.
link
rohit2412 2925 days ago
No, only the stations are cut and cover. They have ordered 17 tbm for the tunnels.

About the cost estimate, I don't have any other completely underground metro line in a developing country to compare. But Is it the labor costs in developed countries?

link