According to the project page, Tempe’s streetcar line will have a capital cost of 160 million dollars.
- For all of 2.6 miles of track.
- Along a wide ROW with minimal impacts.
- Running in mixed traffic.
- With bus-stop style stations.
How the fuck does a simple streetcar project wind up costing $60 million/mile!? For that kind of money, they are getting into the price range of a full-blown metro.
And one way? That works well for Detroit’s People Mover and Sydney’s monorail, right?
Two expenses not mentioned would be rolling stock and a new garage. It would be a challenge to get it that high with rolling stock, even with a hypothetical high of $5m per vehicle. Maybe the bulk of it is for new garage/carhouse land acquisition and construction?
There’s only a small-ish one-way loop at the north end in the Mill Ave “Downtown” area near the main Light Rail line, the rest is two-way. I think it could be a pretty good alignment if Tempe upzones the area around it, and (by the standards of Phoenix) they did a good job with the Light Rail upzone.
Seattle’s First Hill streetcar is about 2.2 miles and $140 million, although that’s soup to nuts including buying cars and completely repaving Jackson St, which is currently falling apart. I don’t know how the numbers got so big for Tempe.
(1) This includes rolling stock and a new maintenance base, meaning that cost per mile is meaningless. Cost per mile is USUALLY meaningless, actually.
(2) Utility relocation.