$484M (initial estimate) for a bus route

last night BART voted to spend $484M for a rail spur from one of their main lines into the Oakland, CA airport.

right now this function is served by an airport shuttle bus route, but the poor darlings trying to get to the airport are underserved by a lack of buses (one lady complained it takes an hour, i guess she means 1 bus per hour).

so instead of quadrupling the number of buses on this ONE route, BART thinks it'd be a good idea to spend a half-bil for a new single-purpose spur (optimistically a half-bil; remember this is the initial estimate).

Originally posted by zeeblebot
last night BART voted to spend $484M for a rail spur from one of their main lines into the Oakland, CA airport.

right now this function is served by an airport shuttle bus route, but the poor darlings trying to get to the airport are underserved by a lack of buses (one lady complained it takes an hour, i guess she means 1 bus per hour).

so instead of ...[text shortened]... r a new single-purpose spur (optimistically a half-bil; remember this is the initial estimate).

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/09/BAVK1FAQT0.DTL#ixzz0z617hhbH

BART's plan to build a controversial 3.1-mile-long elevated railway to the Oakland International Airport took a small, tentative step forward Wednesday when a regional transit agency approved spending $20 million in state funds on the project.

...

The project - which one commissioner said was "too big to fail" - has been in the works for decades and the final iteration was approved in 2009. Construction was supposed to start early this year but was delayed when the Federal Transit Administration said BART had not properly considered the railway's impact on low-income populations in Oakland and revoked $70 million in funding.

Since then, BART has had to patch together replacement funding using loans and money from one of the agency's reserve funds.

...