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Comment by thom_nic | Hacker News Reader

TFA doesn't mention whether or how far the project is over budget or behind its original schedule. Does that mean it is on schedule and on budget? If so that's amazing.

I'm used to constantly hearing stories like the "Big Dig" here in the US, sometimes it seems like every non-trivial civil works project fails massively fail on both criteria.

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Originally, the cost of the complete AlpTransit project (of which the Gotthard is part of) was estimated to be about 14.5 billion Swiss Francs (CHF), in 1998. It ended up costing about 18.7 billion CHF, so quite a bit more. The whole project changed quite a bit in the mean time, though (e.g. added security and environmental measures).

source (in German): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Eisenbahn-Alpentransversa...

That's only 30% over budget. Coming from a country where civil projects are often used to "vanish" money, I am very impressed.

Also coming from software engineering. 30% over budget is just impressive. I would love to be capable of such accurate planning.

"The new Alpine railroad (NLFA) will cost 300M CHF less than planned, because the digging and concreting of the Gothard tunnel have cost less than expected.

The final bill is expected to be between 23 and 23.5 billions CHF instead of 24 millions CHF."

http://www.letemps.ch/suisse/2015/04/02/nouvelle-ligne-ferro...

The shocking thing to me is that they are completing the project AHEAD of schedule!

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