That’s One Expensive Bus

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That’s One Expensive Bus

June 30, 2011 by Drunk Engineer

The whole point of BRT is the lower cost, right? Hartford, CT just received FTA New Starts funding for a BRT system.

The capital cost is $572 million for all of 9.4 miles.

Oh, did I mention it is to run on an abandoned rail ROW?

5 Responses

on June 30, 2011 at 6:38 am | Reply Newt

Mexico City just started construction on an 18 mile extension to its BRT system for a total contract cost of $28 million. It will run through 700 year old streets where extensive historic preservation work will be needed before pavement reinforcement and station construction.

Labor is cheaper in Mexico than in comparable US cities but materials are not. Even labor might not be cheaper than in Hartford, but for Davis-Bacon.

The Mexico line will be used by tens of thousands of riders daily.

Looks like a difference in waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption about 30x higher in Connecticut than in Mexico. That sounds about right.
on June 30, 2011 at 8:49 am | Reply Stephen Smith

Damn, do the union workers building this thing have some sort of full-time paid prostitute clause in their CBA? For that kinda money, it damn well better have climate-controlled shelters with turnstiles, countdown clocks, contactless payment, and architecture/design as nice as Curitiba’s!

Any clue as to why this project is costing so damn much? Wikipedia says the average per-mile BRT cost in the US is $13.5 million, with light rail at $34.8 million. Looks like either some supremely incompetent management, outright corruption, or epic featherbedding.
on June 30, 2011 at 12:53 pm | Reply TLP

I haven’t found the full capital cost estimate, but in 2003 the estimate was $175M, so something has driven up costs since then. (A little inflation, I’m sure, but I don’t think the effect would be that large).

Also, we could verify this if we could see the land purchase numbers in the estimate, but stories like this do not bode well: http://articles.courant.com/2011-05-27/news/hc-ed-busway-aetna-land-purchase-20110527_1_eminent-domain-aetna-market-value
on July 16, 2011 at 8:05 am | Reply Joseph E

They should have been able to build light rail at that price, even with some grade separations and large stations.

I don’t understand how BRT can cost that much. The right-of-way for BRT should only cost about $5 million per mile, and stations $10 million a piece at most. That’s $150 million at $15 million per mile.
on May 13, 2012 at 4:51 pm | Reply Alon Levy

Update: guess what they’re doing in Staten Island?

http://www.streetsblog.org/2012/05/11/mta-chooses-busway-for-possible-staten-island-north-shore-transit-line/

As a bonus, it’s $371 million for 5 miles. Nobody beats New York in high costs.