[emathias]

Originally Posted by Kngkyle

I am skeptical as well. But if one person can pull it off and prove his skeptics wrong, it'd be Elon Musk. The cheaper alternative you mention isn't really cheaper when you consider land acquisition costs and legal fees from having to fight every NIMBY in court. You largely avoid those issues when going underground. It's just too expensive to tunnel underground using today's methods which is what Musk is trying to address. Also, just being able to use non-union labor would probably cut the cost in half.

I used to think non-Union labor would save money, until I actually researched it. For many of the complex projects that government takes on, Union labor doesn't actually increase costs. The primary reason being that Union labor has better training and better skills. The vast majority of studies that looked at cost comparisons found that Union labor can result in fewer cost overruns, and reduced chance of having to redo work because they're more likely to get it done right the first time.