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Comment by noobermin | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this extremely risky of a thing to do? Give rights to a company that has developed nothing for a design that has not been implemented anywhere else? Every major city outside of the US in the world has solutions to this, mostly being direct express trains. Why do something different like this?

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One possibility: because when those projects are awarded in U.S. to the usual suspects, the projects start with exorbitant costs and decade-long timelines and then the price goes up and timeline slips by years.

See for example California High-Speed Rail: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/12/californias-77-billion-high-...

Or "The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth" (in New York): https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

Apparently we do need to give it to someone who can control the cost and deliver things within our lifetime.

3.5B$/mile is absolutely insane. London crossrail was built perfectly on time and supposedly only with a small increase of the budget (a couple hundred millions). And it costs around 15B£ for more than 100km and something like 50 stations.

That's somewhat unfair comparison - most of the length of track already existed above ground and didn't need a lot of work

There's 10 new stations and about 40km of tunnel (20km each way)

That said the tunneling cost alone came out about £30m per km, so about $65m per mile.

Crossrail isn't built yet, and it's definitely not on time (e.g. [1]) (but for some reason I keep people saying this!).

[1] https://1londonblog.uk/2018/01/04/bond-streets-crossrail-sta...

It’s on time, they postponed it by one year to save 1B£. And the part that is opening this year is built, they are just undergoing testing and finishing the stations and the lines that will open next year. Everything seems on track for the December opening.

Edit: link that proves that in 2010 they decided to delay it by 1 year to save 1B£

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crossrail-opening-is-delayed...

Chicago already has a subway train from O'Hare to the loop. It takes ~40 minutes to get downtown and is often crowded (and at night may have homeless people sleeping in it), but a normal express train would usually not beat it in time (an express train might be twice as fast, but won't come as often), so something like this becomes attractive. Also, the previous Mayor built a massive hole in the ground downtown for an express train, and it makes it look less bad if it's used.

The Blue Line train to the airport is also 30%-50% than taking the freeway. Esp during rush hour, the train takes a constant time where one has no idea how long it would take by car.

At least at this stage, Chicago isn't paying for it. So... why not?

Yeah. IMO the stakes aren't super-high because, as the journalist mentions, Chicago already has decently fast and consistent service via the Blue Line from downtown to ORD. Given that, it would be odd for CTA, Cook County, or the feds to throw money at getting marginal gains on an airport express line when there are much bigger wins to be had at lower cost by, eg, improving reliability of bus service in the South Side (https://southsideweekly.com/beyond-the-l-proposal-south-side...). The express line is (imo) a silly issue for Rahm et al to be giving as much attention to as they are, but as long as we're just at the stage where Elon Musk is spitballing how to build a whiz-bang tunnel of the future and Illinois tax money isn't going to it ... sure, go for it

Rahm's audience isn't city residents (most of whom won't use this train) but companies that might choose their HQ's partially based on such considerations.

That's useful to foreground and I agree that's his target. There is a reasonable argument to be made that a constellation of policies targeted at courting big businesses will bring more of the likes of McDonald's, Caterpillar, Boeing, etc to downtown Chicago, and this will help lift all boats. Meanwhile, it's unclear how much finite political capital and staffer attention this project burns that could have been, eg, directed towards tracking down funding for the Red Line expansion. Maybe they can walk and chew gum. More likely they can only chew like three sticks of gum and I wish this weren't one of those sticks. (Not that you were making a claim either way. I'm just riffing on your post.)

The Blue Line isn't a train to the airport, it's a commuter line that just happens to have an airport at one end of it.

Airport-bound passengers have luggage that takes up space, blocks aisles and seats, etc. Moving them to a dedicated airport train frees up a lot of capacity that city residents will happily accept and appreciate.

I suppose the same could've been said about SpaceX in the early days. Those huge Tesla battery banks too, come to think of it.

Saffy: ‘I’m sorry, Mum, but I’ve never seen what you actually do’

Eddy: ‘PR!’

Saffy: ‘Yes, but…’

Eddy: ‘PR! I PR things! People. Places. Concepts.’

No love for Absolutely Fabulous here!

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