this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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Is that true in California? Caltrain is costing $5.15 billion per mile.
I note with interest that you are repeatedly posting the same cherry-picked factoid.
Average cost per mile for new track in the USA can be anywhere from $100mil/mile to over $1billion/mile for complicated projects like tunneling. This is roughly 50% higher than Europe - most likely for the simple fact that they have a larger industry for it. These are both quite high on an international scale- China builds new track for 24-48mil USD per mile.
Caltrian is not California High Speed Rail
Ok? The point is that rail development is expensive and like an order of magnitude the cost of Aptera. Ideally we could do both but they shouldn’t be put into the same bucket.
No it's not, railway infrastructure comes at a fraction of a cost of highways, the maintenance alone, all the tires, fuel, insurance, etc of cars, even the environment impact (in like the area they cover/destroy) is minute.
All that costs, somebody has to pay.
Really? So we can install thousands of miles of rail for under a billion dollars? Let’s do it!
For raw resources sure, its properties acquisition that gets expensive. You still have to pay even with imminent domain and thats not getting into legal battles and the like. But at least in my neck of the woods I wish they could acquire the old industrial rails and use them for transport for workers.
You mean the huge underground train station & several miles of tunnels around if, with all the work preformed underneath an undisturbed city?
Yes, that is still waaay cheaper than constructing an underground highway of that magnitude/that area (+ an underground station you conveniently included in the estimate) .
Or did you have something else in mind?
Why would you build the highway underground?
Same reasons as railway I suppose - its expensive to destroy a city centre to get the land needed for it.
But you started the comparison with the underground thing.
But the city already has highways. If we started fresh sure let’s do more rail.
My point is just, what infrastructure can you do with say <$1b? It’s a lot of money but not building a whole new railroad kind of money. You can get a few station upgrade projects, a couple of electric trains, etc.
There’s room for private funding of a new electric car company. Save the tax dollars for big infrastructure projects.
New electric car companies only intensity the always insufficient highways & daily rush hours adding time to peoples commutes.
Also cars cost money, we tend to forget that when talking about rail.
With less than 1bn you can build railroads between cities.
Some random sniplet (californiapolicycenter.org:
(That is without car related costs with fall on individuals, or environmental costs that arent counted at all.)
California at the same time is building high-speed rail between LA & SF at 66 million per mile - that is including the railway stations & the city tunnels mentioned previously at billions per mile.
And that's also a stupidly mismanaged project with 200+ million dollars in literally just planning mistakes and human errors (or sabotage).
With low maintenance & basically unlimited capacity I can only see that as a cost efficient project that should have been done 50 years ago.
Why would a new company increase traffic? Like people just have extra disposable income and love going out to drive when everyone else does?
If your argument is, someone who would have bought the car would instead switch to using rail. Then there is no place in the US that has heavy traffic that can also have a new railway built for under $1b.
Why not say that if you can't build a railway system for 20$ then you should stick with the current system that is just so great?
Because you have to approach the two problems differently. If you want to support the expansion of railways, you’ll need political willpower.
But if you’re an individual who needs a vehicle, wouldn’t the best choice be the most efficient one available?
Using 1bn of gov money for car production isn't political willpower?
And political willpower is already finally literally building new rail. Why take that money away and back into cars?
Also, the two issues; cars with or without solar panels, and solar panels on buildings are separate. And panels are ultra cheap.
So cars with solar panels are more efficient simply bcs there is more solar palens that way, regardless of your building having panels or not.
Every panel is a net positive, super effective or slightly less super effective ones.
And you are not putting any more or less panels on your house if you buy a car with or without the 200$ solar panels on/in it.
What government money? Aptera is privately funded. They’ve won some government grants but most of their funding is from investors. They’re not taking money away from rail projects.
And even if we went all in on rail, what are we supposed to do in the years it takes to make the transition? Keep using ICE vehicles?
Sorry, I didn't see any other connection from when you said this:
My bad, but I don't see the relevance otherwise - the tax dollars are already being saved & spent on big infrastructure projects, and the privately funded car company is also underway. Both are already facts.
Nobody is getting rid of cars or making any transitions overnight. How did you come to this anyway?
The very original post I responded to says:
Which implies don’t do cars.
We share that sentiment!