New York Can’t Build, LaGuardia Rail Edition
When Andrew Cuomo was compelled to resign, there was a lot of hope that the state would reset and finally govern itself well. The effusive language I was using at the time, in 2021 and early 2022, was shared by local advocates for public transportation and other aspects of governance. A year later, Governor Hochul has proven herself to be not much more competent than Cuomo, differing mainly in that she is not a violent sex criminal.
Case in point: the recent reporting that plans for rail to LaGuardia Airport are canceled, and the option selected for future development is just buses, makes it clear that New York can’t build. It’s an interesting case in which the decision, while bad, is still less bad than the justification for it. I think an elevated extension of the subway to LaGuardia is a neat project, but only at a normal cost, which is on the order of maybe $700 million for a 4.7 km extension, or let’s say $1 billion if it’s mostly underground. At New York costs, it’s fine to skip this. What’s not fine is slapping a $7 billion pricetag on such an endeavor.
LaGuardia rail alignments
On my usual base map of a subway system with some lines swapped around to make the system more coherent but no new construction, here are the various rail alignments to the airport:
A full-size image can be found here. All alternatives are depicted as dashed lines; the subway extension is depicted in yellow in the same color as the Astoria Line, and would be elevated until it hit airport grounds, while the other two options, depicted as thinner black lines, are people movers or air trains. The air train option going east of airport grounds was Cuomo’s personal project and, since it went the wrong way, away from Manhattan, it was widely unpopular among anyone who did not work for Cuomo and was for all intents and purposes dead shortly after Hochul took office.
The issue of construction costs
Here’s what the above-linked New York Times article says about the rail alignments.
The panel’s three members — Janette Sadik-Khan, Mike Brown and Phillip A. Washington — said in a statement that they were unanimous in recommending that instead of building an AirTrain or extending a subway line to the airport, the Port Authority and the transportation authority should enhance existing Q70 bus service to the airport and add a dedicated shuttle between La Guardia and the last stop on the N/W subway line in Astoria.
The panel agreed that extending the subway to provide a “one-seat ride” from Midtown was “the optimal way to achieve the best mass transportation connection.” But they added that the engineers that reviewed the options could not find a viable way to build a subway extension to the cramped airport, which is hemmed in by the Grand Central Parkway and the East River.
Even if a way could be found to extend the subway that would not interfere with flight operations at La Guardia, the analysis concluded, it would take at least 12 years and cost as much as $7 billion to build.
The panel realized that the best option is an extension of the subway. Such an extension would be about 4.7 km long and around one third underground, or potentially around 5 km and entirely above-ground if for some reason tunneling under airport grounds were cost-prohibitive. This does not cost $7 billion, not even in New York. We know this, because Second Avenue Subway phase 1 was, in today’s money, around $2.2 billion per km, and phase 2 is perhaps a little more. There are standard subway : elevated cost ratios out there; the ones that emerge from our database tend to be toward the higher end perhaps, but still consistent with a ratio of about 2.5.
Overall, this is in theory pretty close to $7 billion for a one-third underground extension from Astoria to the airport. But in practice, the tunneling environment in question is massively easier than both phases of Second Avenue Subway – there’s plenty of space for cut-and-cover boxes in front of the terminal, a more controllable utilities environment, and not much development in the way of the elevated sections, which are mostly in an industrial zone to be redeveloped.
Does New York want to build?
New York can’t build. But to a significant extent, New York doesn’t even want to build. The report loves finding excuses why it’s not possible: they are squeamish about tunneling under the runways, they are worried an above-ground option would take lanes from the Grand Central Parkway (which a rail link would substitute for at higher capacity), they are worried about federal waivers.
In truth, in a constrained city, everything is under a waiver. In comments years ago, Richard Mlynarik pointed out that the desirable standard for railroad turnouts is that they should be straight – that is, the straight path should be on straight track, while the speed-restricted diverging path should curve away. But in practice, German train stations are full of curved turnouts, on which both paths are on a curve, because in a constrained urban zone it’s not possible to realize the desired standard, and a limit value is required. The same is true of any other engineering standard for a railroad, such as curve radii.
The issue of waivers is not limited to engineering or to rail. Roads are supposed to follow design standards, but land-constrained urban motorways are routinely on waivers. Even matters of safety can be grandfathered occasionally on a case-by-case basis. Financial and social standards are waived so often for urban megaprojects that it’s completely normal to decide them on a case-by-case basis; the United States doesn’t even have formal benefit-cost analyses the way Europe does.
And I’ve seen how American agencies are reluctant to even ask for waivers for things that politicians don’t really care about. Richard again brings up the example of platform heights on the San Francisco Peninsula: Caltrain rebuilt all platforms to a standard that didn’t have any level boarding, on the grounds that high platforms would interfere with oversize freight, which does not run on the line, and which the relevant state regulator, CPUC, indicated that they’d approve a waiver from if only the railroad asked. I have just seen an example of a plan to upgrade some stations in the Northeast that is running into trouble because the chosen construction material isn’t made in the United States, and even though “there’s no suitable made in America alternative” is legal grounds for a waiver from Buy America rules, the agency doesn’t so far seem interested in asking.
In general, New York can’t build. But in this case, it seems uninterested in even trying.
The bus alternative
Instead of a rail link, the plan now is to improve bus service. Here’s the New York Times story again:
The estimated $500 million in capital spending would also go toward creating dedicated bus lanes along 31st Street and 19th Avenue in Queens and making the Astoria-Ditmars Blvd. station on the N and W lines accessible to people with disabilities, the Port Authority said. Some of that money could also be spent to create a mile-long lane exclusive to buses on the northbound Brooklyn-Queens Expressway between Northern Boulevard and Astoria Boulevard, the Port Authority said.
Among the criticisms of the AirTrain plan was its indirect route. Arriving passengers bound for Manhattan would have had to travel in the opposite direction to catch a subway or L.I.R.R. train at Willets Point. The Port Authority chose that route, alongside the parkway, to minimize the need to acquire private property. Community groups were also concerned about the impact on property values in the neighborhoods near La Guardia in northern Queens.
To be very clear, it does not cost $500 million to make a station wheelchair-accessible. In New York, the average cost is around $70 million in 2021 dollars, with extensive contingency, planned by people who’d rather promise 70 and deliver 65 than promise 10 and deliver 12. In Madrid, the cost is around 10 million euros per station, with four elevators (the required minimum is three), and in Milan, shallow three-elevator station retrofits are around 2 million per station. Transfer stations cost more, proportionately to the number of lines served, but Astoria-Ditmars is not a transfer station and has no such excuse. So where is the other $430 million going?
The answer cannot just be bus lanes on 31st Street (on which the Astoria Line runs) or 19th Avenue (the industrial road the indicated extension on the map would run on). Bus lanes do not cost $430 million at this scale. They don’t normally cost anything – red paint and “bus only” markings are a rounding error, and bus shelter is $80,000 per stop with Californian cost control (to put things in perspective, I heard a $10,000-15,000 quote, in 2020 dollars, from a smaller American city).
Pedestrian Observations 
And all this isn’t even to mention the insanely long timelines that they give for the bus lane stuff.
Yeah, that too. $1.3 billion for BRT is certifiably insane.
If the contract is bid out at a full price of $1.3 billion, is that sufficiently corrupt and incompetent that a lawsuit would be worth the effort? Hate to throw more fuel onto the fire of transit delayed via litigation, but 20x overspending on BRT is well past my personal red line.
San Francisco shows that paint (in their case, bike lanes) does cost as much as an S-Bahn tunnel.
First of all a bus lane on 19th Avenue isn’t even necessary as it has very little traffic. And second why in the world would it take the Port Authority five years to start a bus lane? And why not the MTA? Just a few unanswered questions.
If agencies had the authority and political capital in America to make simple decisions like painting bus lanes and doing the dirty work of incremental transit improvement, our system would be much less of a mess.
Come on gang, it’s some red paint. How are all these allegedly smart incompetent talking heads managing to dance around the fact that they’re proposing an absurd dollar number for paint? Pay the maintenance staff for OT or Saturday time, and you could have the whole thing converted in weeks (or less) at far less cost than 5 years of community engagement.
What’s the worst outcome? You have to come back later and unpaint the road because the right city councilor complained? Come on.
> What’s the worst outcome?
Car owners leave death threats on your voicemails for years?
With that $1.3B price tag, most of the money has to be earmarked for unrelated stuff paying off the communities along the route and otherwise buying support from entitled motorists. Or are they planning to widen the highway or something?
I believe the BRT option is to widen the highway?
That New York State can’t and doesn’t want to build (at least some projects) is seen in the recently released (after 14 years) Empire Corridor [Not] High Speed Rail Final EIS in February, which compared to the 2014 Draft EIS received no fanfare and almost no press coverage.
To build on the surplus right-of-way on the northside of the existing CSX double-track mainline (ex-New York Central) a new dedicated 90-mph passenger track – with ten mile long segments of double-track for passing meets – from Hoffmans west of Schenectady to Buffalo-Depew (about 270 miles) the state in the FEIS sets out a 25 year timetable for full build-out, for a project comparable to Brightline in Florida that has taken about 11 years from project announcement in 2012 to service start for Miami-Orlando.
Of course, the state in the FEIS doesn’t even propose starting construction till Year 10, but that goes to show how they just push the rail project beyond the term of their responsibility to that of the next administration or the one after that. Now, the Hudson Line projects, and NYC-Albany-Saratoga service improvements are front loaded into the first ten years, with service frequency increases and extensions to Schenectady and Saratoga Springs happening in the first 5 years.
Now most of the FEIS was completed during the Cuomo Administration, which saw that service NYC-Capital District could be significantly improved at a “acceptable cost” within a timeframe that the sitting governor could take credit for before the next gubernatorial election or run for the presidency. In contrast the work proposed west of Schenectady is – like Brightline – a multi-billion project that would take about a decade to fully complete, so to avoid making hard funding commitments with the benefits beyond the short-term political thinking that reigns today in America, they push that part of the FEIS out ten years.
Empire Corridor Tier One EIS
https://www.esparail.org/resources/empire-corridor-eis/
They can file it with all the other studies done since the 50s.
LOL, I’ve got half-a-dozen in PDF form! 😀
NYSDOT first proposed a third dedicated passenger track on the existing mainline ROW Schenectady-Buffalo in a report released in 1969. In the 1980s NYSDOT’s then Rail Division had a third track at 90-mph as a project they wanted to get done next, after their work NYC-Albany. Now NYSDOT is proposed getting this done by 2050… when we’re all dead 🙂
The PRR and Budd proposed that the second generation of Metroliners would be whisking us from Manhattan to Washington D.C. by 1980 or so, Acela is slower than the fastest only generation of Metroliners could achieve. They can file it with all the other studies. It provides employment for white collar workers.
and to beat the dead horse, the government owned it all until free market zealots made us sell it off.
It got some media attention! 😀
A high speed rail plan for New York is not high speed
Print Article from TV Station
http://www.wgrz.com/article/travel/new-yorks-high-speed-rail-plan-not-high-speed/71-c5a4dbe7-26d9-4354-9479-a837fd5beb18
One alignment I’ve wondered about is turning the QueensLink into a true circumferential by extending it north from the Rockaway Beach Branch up Junction Blvd/94th St to LaGuardia. Thoughts? It has echoes of the backwards AirTrain (not direct to Manhattan) but would give connections to a ton of subway/LIRR lines and be useful for circumferential travel, kind of a grande ceinture to the IBX’s petite ceinture.
Yeah, don’t do it – the strength of the Rockaway Cutoff is as a faster radial from the Rockaways and Howard Beach to Manhattan.
The M60 already exists, and connects to the N/W at Astoria Boulevard. It’s a quick journey from the station to the terminals. Might as well beef up service on that bus line. They don’t need a new shuttle bus just for the Ditmars station.
Also new this week:
-PATH extension to EWR not coming in the next 10 years
-EWR Airtrain replacement not coming in the next 7 years
-HBLR extension MIA after 5 years of federal review
Is there a single rail project actively under construction in the NYC metro, aside from route maintenance?
Does Penn Station Access count? I think some track work is being done in addition to the new stations.
NJTransit pokes at extending service to Andover now and then? According to Wikipedia they started that process in 2008. It’s been delayed again to 2026.
Correct, they laid like a mile of track around 2008 and then simply stopped.
The HBLR West Side extension is also not moving
Maybe it’s cheaper to extend the AirTrain Newark Penn Station rather than PATH to the airport?
It’s enough to make a grown adult cry, at this point.
Not enough to make me take a job with MTA in an effort to fix the situation from inside, mind you. I would rather not live in the infrastructure equivalent of the Truman Show.
But, it is sad to watch the largest, most effective transit network (from a ridership density and overall service perspective) in the USA fumble and stumble and fail at every turn. What could New York be, if they expanded their transit competently? How much economic value, time wasted commuting, and lost potential has been left to flounder? (See also: Californian cities foregoing transit and affordable housing almost entirely)
The panel realized that the best option is an extension of the subway.
The best option is to close LaGuardia and fly bigger planes more frequently into JFK and Newark. That isn’t going to happen because rich people originating or destined to the Upper East Side of Manhattan like the short cab ride to LaGuardia. They aren’t going to take a train.
Everybody thinks a train to the airport is a great idea. For other people. Everybody thinks airports are big destinations. They aren’t. Pre=pandemic LaGuardia’s annual traffic was just over 30 million. To keep the arithmetic simple if it was 36,500,000 that’s an average of 100,000 a day. I leave it to you to predict how many people, who will take a cab, even if there is a train, will use it.
A broader focus is needed. If people can get a train, in Manhattan, to most places in the Northeast, that is faster than flying, they don’t need to go to the airport. Any airport.
“close LaGuardia and fly bigger planes more frequently into JFK and Newark”
Setting aside that this suggestion is a few years too late (given the billions spent on the new LGA terminals), how exactly would that happen?
Airlines avoid flying bigger planes unless absolutely necessary because air travellers, like most transit users, prefer the flexibility that comes with higher service frequency. To create that ‘absolute necessity,’ you would need to tighten the already strained landing/takeoff slot regime at JFK, and introduce it to EWR. Assuming you could do that, you would then need to add enough gate capacity to hold aircraft of larger size codes, and enough terminal capacity for the additional 30 million annual passenger movements, at two airports with already limited ramp space and expansion room.
“If people can get a train, in Manhattan, to most places in the Northeast, that is faster than flying, they don’t need to go to the airport.”
8 of the 10 busiest routes from LGA cover more than 1,000 km (the generous upper limit where HSR is competitive against air), as do most of the airport’s listed destinations, which lie in the midwest and south. By all means, improve rail options to replace short-distance flying, and bank on economic and cultural shifts to reduce long-distance travel, but expecting trains to replace an entire major airport is unrealistic.
LaGuardia has a perimeter rule, that doesn’t seem to bother anyone. All of the top destinations are served at EWR and JFK. Most of the traffic is someplace not the top destinations. They can fly the same amount of planes just bigger ones and move the same amount of passengers. Which isn’t going to happen because rich people originating or destined to the Upper East Side like the short cab ride.
There’s a whole lot of changing from one puddle jumper to another puddle jumper in all three airports that could be skimmed off by trains.
“LaGuardia has a perimeter rule, that doesn’t seem to bother anyone.”
Except the airlines – some filed lawsuits against its introduction, and many have lobbied for its relaxation or abolition over the decades since.
“Most of the traffic is someplace not the top destinations.”
As mentioned above, most of the routes go to the midwest and south, outside of HSR range.
“They can fly the same amount of planes just bigger ones and move the same amount of passengers”
As mentioned above, EWR and JFK would have to move more passengers in LGA’s absence, while the ‘same amount of planes just bigger ones’ would take up more terminal and ramp space than the airports can realistically build.
You said the busiest routes. That’s not all the traffic. The puddle jumper from New England that distributes passengers for Mid Atlantc destination puddle jumpers can go away. All all three airports and other hubs like Philadelphia and BWI. And nothing is going to happen because rich people going to and from the Upper East Side like the short cab ride.
I made two claims. One concerned the busiest routes, the other was “most of the airport’s listed destinations”.
where are these new, bigger airplanes coming from? there are only two companies making airliners, and they are pretty much at capacity production-wise.
The same place they come from when airlines realign.
All the recent rail projects that NYC has failed to build should never have been built. They simply avoid providing subway access to those who live beyond walking distance to an existing line. There are approximately 2 million such residents.
A single stop spur to an airport is a triumph in spending vast sums without providing any benefit to those who lack close by rail service. Such a service is likely to be a money sinkhole, if it’s built.
Consider JFK’s AirTrain. Only 8.7 million fares were collected in 2019. LGA has roughly half the number of passengers as JFK. This means a figure of 4.35 million would be more likely target for any LGA link. The AirTrain collects fares both ways. It is necessary to divide its fare total by two for comparing an LGA fare count to that of a NYC subway station. This places the count around 2.17 million for 2019. This would have ranked it 215th among NYC subway stations, on a par with the L train’s Halsey St station.
It would not fare much better against a bus route. It would rank somewhere between 101 and 102. It would have been on a par with the B57 and Q59. *
The LGA proposal hasn’t been a total waste. It succeeded in diverting a lot of attention away from investigating far more extensive rail access deficiencies. I think that has been its primary purpose. The real danger with this strategy is that some plans might actually be funded and built. Consider the East Side Access. Re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic is a metaphor that fits.
*BTW, the Q59 is an ironic comparison. It’s the successor to the old Grand St trolley line, which ran until 1949. It originally ran from the Delancy St Terminal in Manhattan nearly to LaGuardia Airport. It ran up to the airport property on the Junction Blv Bridge over Grand Central Parkway. The airport operator would not allow it to enter their property. Part of the route was along a private right of way.
A LaGuardia subway extension should get much better ridership, for the following reasons:
1. It’s a one-seat ride to Midtown, which matters a great deal for airport travelers with luggage, especially tourists.
2. It’s the most direct route, without the slight pinch at Jamaica.
3. The fare should be subway-equivalent.
4. The ideal way to build the extension should include intermediate stations in Astoria, generating plenty of non-airport trips on the way.
And also, the JFK AirTrain doesn’t collect fares twice. It collects fares once per trip, at the subway end regardless of direction; the subway also collects fares once per trip, at the origin regardless of direction.
“The JFK AirTrain doesn’t collect fares twice. It collects fares once per trip, at the subway end regardless of direction; the subway also collects fares once per trip, at the origin regardless of direction.”
I’m comparing AirTrain to subway stop turnstile counts to find a stop with comparable usage. If somebody enters at the L train’s Halsey St station and goes to Manhattan it’s recorded as a fare. When that person returns the fare is not recorded for those exiting at Halsey St but in Manhattan.
The 2019 paid count was 6.7 million for Jamaica and 2.0 million for Howard Beach. There was no count for any other station. The Howard Beach and Jamaica paid counts included people who were both entering and exiting. An adjustment for the fare collection differences is required to infer usage comparisons from the fare collection data.
“1. It’s a one-seat ride to Midtown…3. The fare should be subway-equivalent…4. The ideal way to build the extension should include intermediate stations”
You mean like the CTA connection to O’Hare?
The use of a station at an airport bares a strong correlation with that airport’s use. In 2019, O’Hare had 84.4 million passengers compared to LGA’s 31.1 million. The O’Hare stop recorded 3.8 million passengers entering (it’s singly counted). On a proportional basis, one should expect about 1.4 million passengers at LGA. I stand by my 2.17 million estimate.
CTA-O’Hare is an example, yeah. It has low modal split by the standards of the RER B or the Piccadilly line (and now Crossrail) and I’m not sure why – Chicago has bad transit by all of those standards, but the Loop is the dominant destination for inbound travelers.
That said, O’Hare is also a very transfer-oriented airport – 84.4 million includes passengers who don’t exit airport grounds except by plane. By O&D passengers, it’s busier than LGA but not by as large a margin (link).
I don’t know whether this html will work – so I’ve also used plain text as well.
Here’s my data source
url: https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/statistics-general-info/annual-atr/ATR2019.pdf
link
Go to page 29 in the report for the numbers I quoted. The annual report does not differentiate between paid and unpaid AirTrain use. The unpaid use is for intra-airport use (between terminals).
Here’s the URL for the paid AirTrain use
Click to access JFK_DEC_2019.pdf
link to AirTrain Stats
Here’s the link to the CTA’s O’Hare use stats, while we’re at it
https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/2019_Annual_Ridership_Report.pdf#page=16
O’Hare CTA station count
Here’s the link to the 2019 NYC Subway counts to complete the documentation.
https://new.mta.info/document/16136
link
I usually want to discover the reason for differences in numbers. There are a few differences that are germane.
First, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BOTS) figures are counting only enplanements, whereas the statistics supplied by the PANYNJ count arriving, as well as departing passengers. One should expect the PANYNJ figures to be twice as much as those from BOTS.
Second, I’m assuming you are referring to the Originating (Dom) tab. The fine print notes this is a ticket count, for domestic passengers. The other tabs, as well as the PANYNJ stats include transfers within the airport. The originating part is good because passengers transferring from one plane to another are not likely to need any kind of transit to the central city.
However, the Originating(Dom) tab includes only domestic flights. International travelers have been known to take public transit to/from airports. I propose the following correction, using the BOTS spreadsheet data. The BOTS spreadsheet has tabs for domestic, international and total enplanements. I took the ratio of the total to domestic enplanements for both ORD and LGA. That ratio is 1.20 for ORD and 1.08 for LGA. This reflects the truth that percentage wise LGA has far fewer international flights than LGA. I then multiplied these ratios by the number of originating passengers for each airport. This would correct the omission of international flights for the originating passenger counts. The ORD number rose from 12.1 million to 14.5 million; the LGA number rose from 7.8 to 8.4 million. I then used the ratio the corrected LGA to ORD numbers to estimate how many passengers an LGA subway train should expect. That number was 2.3 million.
That’s slightly higher than my original 2.17 million passenger estimate, based on total passenger counts. However, 2.3 million passengers for a subway stop does not rate an honorable mention in NYC.
East Side Access cost too much and took too long. It gets Long Islanders out of Penn Station and out of the subway. There will be enough capacity in Penn Station for New Haven and someday Hudson line passengers to not be in Grand Central. And out of the subway. And minor things like making transferring between Metro North and the LIRR faster. And grade separating the LIRR Main Line to Hicksville.
“Community groups were also concerned about the impact on property values in the neighborhoods near La Guardia in northern Queens.”
Never mind that new subway stations on a line with direct service to Manhattan should increase property values.
“increase property values”
AKA gentrification!
Really the only constant with NIMBYs is “any change is bad”
My experience of UK projects is that sometimes there is even opposition from people living in places who will unambiguously benefit from the project.
I agree with Alon and others here that community meetings are flaw and are unrepresentative. However one of the advantages of the status quo is that you can target your message at a relatively narrow subset of society. That means that you can make it clear to existing residents that their house prices will increase due to the project.
My experience in the UK is that they probably wouldn’t be prepared to do that – however they should. The house price increases can be really rather favourable – I’ve seen stories of house prices doubling in areas particularly advantaged by urban transport.
Looking at the report, it seemed that for the extension via 20th ave, they estimated $5.4 billion for normal cost plus additional $1-3 billion for dealing with FAA regulations regarding tunneling on airport grounds and relocating a large 90 year old sewer that runs under the Grand Central Parkway.
**19th ave** not 20th ave
They were also assuming no stations other than the ones at the airport, so serving the neighborhood would make the costs even more astronomical.
They’re also assuming only the section under the runways is tunneled rather than the entire airport section, so it’s 10% underground, not 35%. And somehow they’ve produced costs not much lower than SAS’s. Yeah, it’s a sandbag.
The report claims that the MTA needs 35,000 sqft of back of house space at intermediate stations and 70,000 sqft at terminus stations. This is less than was built in SAS, though it still sounds like a lot
FYI, for a recent transit construction cost estimate for New York:
The Second Avenue Subway Phase 2 will be 1.76 miles and cost $7.7 billion.
https://www.enr.com/articles/56116-nyc-advances-plan-for-77b-east-harlem-subway-extension
Re. bus costs (and the anglosphere’s cost disease), Cambridgeshire just approved a busway project from Cambridge to Cambourne, a distance of 14km — https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/cambourne-cambridge-busway-takes-step-26525197
They expect it to cost £200 million. For 14km of basically two lane road on flat land (~£14m/km). In comparison, the Heysham-M6 link road, built a decade ago, cost ~£20m/km of *dual carriageway with a new bridge over the Lune and a remodelled motorway junction*. Also had to go over the busiest mainline railway in the country but that’s not too difficult.
Alton Towers has a short monorail that cost about the same as the busway is expected, in inflation adjusted money — https://towersstreet.com/theme-park/ride/monorail/#factfile. (You should look at rollercoaster construction costs. I can’t imagine they’re somehow a lot easier to engineer than suspension or elevated railways. Yet the costs per km are far lower…).
I just don’t get the costs here.