US$1,400,000,000
That’s what Tri-Met is claiming it will cost to build a trolley line from the south edge of downtown to just south of downtown Milwaukie. That’s, what, about a five mile line? US$280 million per mile for a trolley line that’s going to be following railroad rights of way for three of those five miles?
That’s pretty impressive. Is this the way that Tri-Met is going to say “eat it, jerks!” to the people who voted against the (far too expensive at US$70-100 million a mile) S/N line back 10 years ago, or do they seriously think that there’s no way to build a trolley line for less than 20× the cost that it took to build the original Gresham line 24 years ago?
Maybe it’s time for Metro to make sweetheart deals with construction companies that aren’t quite as rapacious as the existing ones? This would probably require that Metro fire Fred “kill fareless square to prevent crime in Gresham!” Hansen and the rest of Tri-Met’s upper management. If an excuse was needed, I think that proposing a US$280 million dollars a mile trolley line would be enough to defend a charge of “they were too incompetent to tie their shoes, let alone run a bus company.”
If I was in the City of Portland’s shoes I’d be saying “We’ll just take the share of the money we’d be putting into this project and use it to build another streetcar line down to Tacoma Street.” Because even if enough graft had crept in to double the cost of building a streetcar line, it would still cost less than the amount of coin the CoP would have to spend to buy into this turkey of a plan. (and it would probably leave enough money in the bank so that the CoP could set up a trolley line endowment to pay operating costs until gasoline costs reached the point where the line started to make money.