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Originally Posted by GGG
Remaining costs only should be considered here.
The city essentially was saying they had spent over a billion and had a billion in wrap up costs to cancel the project. A bunch of that is rail cars but a lot of the remainder was being spent on things like utility relocates
So do I think that under ground stup is about the same as elevated to Shepard? That seems reasonable and seems what the government is claiming the redacted report says.
Would I be surprised if the consultant didn’t have access to current sunk costs in the first option or wind down costs and that makes up the difference? Not really.
I also don’t think the city is saying Shepard -Eau Claire is cheaper. I think they are saying Eau Claire to nowhere is cheaper
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I believe city said EC-Shepard would have cost $7.2B with the tunnel, and 7th-Shepard would be $7.5B with elevated. I'm struggling with which sunk costs are apparently useful to the tunnel but not elevated. The city claims they have to go back to market on this, but more informed folks tell me that they really don't (the selected vendors all do above ground work...including various other sections of this line), so maybe that's part of it.
It took us 9.5 years to get to 60% design, so I suppose I can almost understand their hesitancy to take any steps backwards...but its really just sunk cost fallacy compounding over and over these last 5 years.
I agree go-forward costs are what should be considered from a decision making perspective, but I see why the city views it differently from an overall accounting perspective.
At this point the cost to benefit ratio seems like #### either way. It's kinda hard to discern what a $1B difference really means at this point...but it really means a #### ton of money coming 100% from the city. Other levels are giving us $3.06B period full stop right now. The city is on the hook for everything else. To create a project totally dependent on future extensions to be useful/efficient, with other levels of funding feeling less reliable by the day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Bumface
Are you including the lost tax revenue for the entire lifetime of this project? An elevated track that causes shading, harbours social disorder and rips out a bunch of high use +15s is going to drop building values and create a significant hole in the downtown tax base.
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Tax revenue isn't lost; the distribution may be very slightly altered, but its all pretty dubious. At this point you'd have to weigh the various property value uplifts from the project actually happening vs. not.
The report calls for one +30 to go (though there are some errors on that page so its a little unclear). The other points aren't totally irrelevant, but in the context of 10th Ave and 2nd St, they are tremendously overstated.
I'm not a fan of the project as designed before even considering grade through the core, but if I have to pick I would take elevated for sure. It's not as scary as people think.