In the Pacific NW, I'd settle for a train that managed to average 60mph.
The PNW used to be well served with trains. Now - the government has destroyed most of the right-of-way. What's left is still being destroyed at a rate of maybe 2 miles for every new mile of track laid.
They decided the Battery tunnel wasn't good enough anymore. So they dug a new tunnel. What to do with the excavated rubble - why stuff it in the old Battery tunnel, rendering it unusable.
The government likes to buy tunnel boring machines. What do they do when finishing a tunnel? Why, the sell the zillion dollar machine for scrap! After all, what spends money faster than buying a new boring machine for the next tunnel!
> They decided the Battery tunnel wasn't good enough anymore. So they dug a new tunnel. What to do with the excavated rubble - why stuff it in the old Battery tunnel, rendering it unusable.
What did you want done with that tunnel? I think it had earthquake issues separately from the viaduct, and without the viaduct, I'm not sure how useful the tunnel would be anyway. Stuffing it with the rubble reduces the cost of rubble disposal and fills the tunnel without the cost of fill dirt or whatever. The new tunnel is definitely nicer than the old one, but I don't drive around seattle enough to know if it has the same utility.
> The government likes to buy tunnel boring machines. What do they do when finishing a tunnel? Why, the sell the zillion dollar machine for scrap! After all, what spends money faster than buying a new boring machine for the next tunnel!
I'm not sure how reusable these machines are; they kind of all come in different sizes and have customized needs, and they're hard to store. Can't just leave them halfway through the tunnel for years....
But yeah, Seattle loves tunnels almost as much as Kitsap traffic engineering departments love traffic circles, but Seattle has a bigger budget.
The claim was that the old Battery tunnel had earthquake issues. I don't believe it would have been more expensive to put a liner in than bore a new tunnel with a liner. What use to put it to? More capacity! Could have run light rail through it. Made it a bike tunnel. Make it a pedestrian mall.
The big cost of boring tunnels is the boring machine. At minimum, they could have simply kept right on boring. Doubtless Seattle could use a lot more tunnels for mass transit. Seattle has a terrible right-of-way problem, mainly because they wrecked all the rail right-of-way.
I don't see the issue with just storing it at the end of the tunnel. It wouldn't be long before it was clear another tunnel would be needed.
Anything tolled has a utility value to me of zero.
I already pay state gas taxes, vehicle licensing fees, etc. If I visit Seattle I really don't want to spend extra money to cross the lake, or drive under the city. In fact, that parking costs money and there aren't good IO interfaces (parking garages) at the edges linked to the mass transit core within only encourages me to avoid the mess and expense.
Since I also don't live IN that particular area I don't really get to vote on the issue other than with my unwillingness to pay the fee and thus not use what was once a not-taxed route through the area; before they tore it down and replaced it.
There are many, many systemic issues though, and like the PG&E fires, and wild fires generally, this is but one more symptom of a lack for looking at the big picture and planning accordingly. Bigger than any corporation and most voters speaking up a time or two a year can hope to view. If only politics weren't about popularity, but about civic responsibility.
Road tolls are the best way to allocate a road's bandwidth, in my opinion. Every road should be tolled, dynamically (which already happens on highways near Seattle).
I do not see any other solution to preventing gridlock in the face of insatiable demand, if that is the goal. A growing population will chew threw however many lanes get added to a road.
Tunnel boring machines are somewhat consumable, the cutting head and outside of the machine erodes over time and they have a service lifetime of the few years they spend boring the tunnel.
Bertha spent a lot of time working and had to be spectacularly dug up to deal with excessive wear on the mechanisms, so by time it emerged in SLU it was at the end of its service lifetime.
Sound Transit has been rebuilding and reusing their machines.
> Sound Transit has been rebuilding and reusing their machines.
I don't have a reference, but I read in the Seattle Times that after they finished a tunnel, they cut up the machine for scrap after boring one tunnel. The reporter never asked why.
Is this true (the railway cost)? Which rail specifically, what destinations/points does it service -- any link/source? Not doubting you by any means, just interested in more information.
The whole thing is estimated to be around $80-90B (probably more, given the current inflation).
With the money already allocated, plus if they had managed not to waste 25B out of that 30B (and the fraud was only 5b), they would have had enough money to get at least half of it done....
Get a major piece of infrastructure done, and help with global warming/emissions goals.
But, no. Not in Cali. And that's why nothing gets build. Sheer, Government waste at work... The state is being led by trust-fund babies, that found everything ready, and never had to work for it, and they are just squandering all that fortune.
> The whole thing is estimated to be around $80-90B (probably more, given the current inflation).
> With the money already allocated, plus if they had managed not to waste 25B out of that 30B (and the fraud was only 5b), they would have had enough money to get at least half of it done....
Don't projects like this almost always significantly overrun projected costs?
Oh, they certainly will, and this one will be the mother of them all. Original projections of $33 billion, now up to $100 billion. Tutor Perini (Dianne-Feinstein-related company) will have a field day.
You can be a genius investor like Nancy Pelosi or you can be a genius construction company owner like Ms. Feinstein's husband. Either way, California rewards hard work and skill.
