You cannot compare D.C to Boston with SF to LAX. The east coast has much denser population so that you need more tunnels. LAX to SF HSR would not cost $151bn. Start and end are expensive but the part in the middle is "relatively" cheap.

Right, for comparison's sake I chopped off $51 billion bucks from the Northeast Corridor projection in the interest of balancing out the two.

Just because I felt like doing some more Google-fu, I found an article in the LA Times[0] that says a California HSR/bullet-train project is going to overshoot it's original budget (and deadline) of $68 billion. There's a lot of info out there about this project, and it's potential overruns, but let's forget all that and just stick to the original planned cost: $68 billion, so, about half of the cost of Amtrak's northeastern bullet. Let's use that number for our comparison.

If we are going to hold Elon to his "we can do it for 1/8th the cost" blurb, then we are giving him like $8.5 billion to use for his SF/LA Hyperloop. Still, that doesn't sound unreasonable, right? He'll get a good deal on tunnel boring with his other company, and fuselage manufacturing can be handled by SpaceX. When it comes to financing, I don't think it's a major issue compared to other infrastructure works out there.

Like I said, though, I'm just going off the top of my head. I don't know finance or economics or vacuums or magnets.

There's a new LIRR train being dug in NYC called East Side Access. This is a commuter rail line, and is going to cost ~$10 billion or so[1]. Logistically these aren't the same, obviously, but if adding to the LIRR is worth ~$10b then surely the Hyperloop experiment is as well, right?

EDIT: Also, just for disclosure, I don't live in California and I'd probably never end up using the Hyperloop myself so I'm neither for nor against it versus any HSR. I just want to entertain the idea that cost shouldn't be the main focus of discussion IMO.

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0. http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-c... 1. http://web.mta.info/capital/esa_alt.html

> If we are going to hold Elon to his "we can do it for 1/8th the cost" blurb, then we are giving him like $8.5 billion to use for his SF/LA Hyperloop. Still, that doesn't sound unreasonable, right

I think boring company claimed it can bring down costs to 100 million dollars per mile (how? Just reduce tunnel size! SMH. Plus 100 million dollar a mile isn't too far from prices of current tunnels). Sf to la is 380 miles. That's 38 billion dollars just for the tunnel?

I think hyperloop is certainly feasible, if you spend hundreds of billions in it, the problems can be dealt with costly engineering.

If you think hsr will cost 150 billion, a maglev will be costlier, tunnels are extremely costly to build, but building a maglev in a vacuum tunnel will cost only 6 billion? How will cost savings of an order of magnitude happen?

> Okay, we'll bookmark this for the future. Amtrak estimated a HSR/"bullet train" from D.C. to Boston would cost ~$151 billion. Since LA to SF will only be two stops, and we can assume Amtrak estimated at least 4 (Philly and NYC) let's bring the number down closer to $100 billion to make it even.

You're starting with the wrong number. The $151B number is Amtrak's estimated cost for it's "shoot for the stars" plan. Its basic NEC stretch plan is effectively 4-track corridor (shared with commuter rail) from DC to Boston, with new stations and new inner city track being laid in Philly and Baltimore, two new Hudson River tubes and a new station annex in NYC, among other less notable improvements. I don't recall if the "abandon current Connecticut track and instead go from NYC along Long Island and tunnel under the sound" plan is in that tier or the next one. The stretch tier is somewhere in the region of $70B.

The reach for the stars tier is "do all that, and then build a parallel 2-track dedicated HSR track from DC to Boston." That's $150B. Which means building dedicated track from DC to Boston is only $80B. The estimated full buildout for CAHSR (including San Diego and Sacremento) is around $80B, as I recall.

Meanwhile Switzerland, one of the top most expensive countries in the world, has tunnelled at the base below the alps (one of the most difficult terrains to tunnel due to vertical sediment layers) for ~20B. Workers died on that project too, but that risk is simply being managed rather than grinding everything to a halt.

I'd argue it's absolutely possible to improve the cost on American public transit infrastructure by one to two orders of magnitude if you can simply get a way around government capture.

While American construction costs do seem to run higher than comparative costs in Europe and Asia, the multiplier is closer to something around 2-3×, not 10-100×.

The cost of the Gotthard Base Tunnel comes out to around $300-400 million / km. By comparison, the Second Avenue Subway comes out to around $800-1000 million / km (I'm subtracting a bit because the subway has three stops--which tend to be really expensive money pits--and the base tunnel does not).

How much was there in land take for the Gotthard Base Tunnel? How much land take would there be for Amtrak's $80B line from DC to Boston?

My guess would be that the cost of land in the north-east, combined with AFAIK pretty strong ownership rights, makes it that expensive.

Honestly, 12.5B look like a ridiculously small amount to me for an infrastructure project stretching along 550Km and involving an unproven, technically very challenging technology.