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by ars 1092 days ago
Looks like the bridge opened about 100 years ago - so that's $6.5 bil/100 years. So that's one data point.

Wikipedia says BART costs about $0.6 bil/year. Which is 10 times as expensive as the bridge. I need figures on yearly maintenance cost for the bridge to make this accurate though.

But so far it's not looking good for BART.
2 comments
Anechoic 1092 days ago
You're comparing a 2-mile, $6.5 bridge to a 130-mile, $0.5 bil/year system and you think this looks good for the bridge?

Not to mention in addition to direct costs, you need to look at externalities.

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ars 1092 days ago
It was not me who made the comparison, that's the person I replied to.

They were comparing number of people crossing the bridge to the total number of people using the entire BART system.

If anything what you say just makes BART look even worse, since a 2 mi stretch of bridge carries a half as many people as a hundred mile long BART system.

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sagarm 1092 days ago
Great comparison! Let's stop maintaining the bay bridge or servicing the bonds. Then rebuild it in 100 years.

That way everyone can use BART :)

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