[arcticbull]

Well that's just inefficiency or graft. The rest of the world is able to achieve far more for far less cost.

> Many commenters with a lot of hatred for San Francisco’s unique brand of dirext democracy are sadly OK with overruling the expressed will of the people not to turn our home into New York just so some tech billionaires can sell more banner ads.

Who's our? Generally voters tend to be older, wealthier and landowners. The large pile of younger, less wealthy, more transient renters isn't represented well. I don't think the outcome means the system works.

[shuckles]

Furthermore, it’s not even a big city problem. California High Speed Rail has been an immensely expensive project so far, an order of magnitude more than comparable systems, and the only segment built is in Central California, not the expensive coasts.

[ic0n0cl4st]

> Well that's just inefficiency or graft. The rest of the world is able to achieve far more for far less cost.

Citation?

> Who's our? Generally voters tend to be older, wealthier and landowners. The large pile of younger, less wealthy, more transient renters isn't represented well. I don't think the outcome means the system works.

That’s how democracy works. If you don’t vote, you don’t have a voice.

[arcticbull]

> Citation?

All costs below are in $USD nominal per mile of fully-underground subway system.

NYC subway extension, east side: $3.7B per mile.

SF Central subway: $928M per mile.

Tokyo: $400M

Beijing: $240M

Berlin: $327M

Naples: $194M

Milan: $175M

This is backed up by a Citylab analysis:

  Alon Levy at Citylab shows approximate range of underground rail construction costs in continental Europe and Japan is between $100 million per mile and $1 billion. Most subway lines cluster in the range of $200 million to $500 million per mile.

  The US has a range of subway construction costs of $600 million to $2.6 billion per mile. The US median price cluster is $800 million to $1 billion per mile.

And of course plotted in Tableau [5].

> That’s how democracy works. If you don’t vote, you don’t have a voice.

Indeed.

[1] https://www.marketplace.org/2019/04/11/subways-us-expensive-...

[2] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/01/subways-and-light-rail...

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-26/the-u-s-g...

[4] https://pedestrianobservations.com/2011/08/22/construction-c...

[5] https://public.tableau.com/profile/romic2976#!/vizhome/EnoTr...