Quote:
Originally Posted by bodaggin
Completely fake news. Quantify that number. I don't think most people understand the difference between a million and a billion on a government level. In real context.
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The St Mary's interchange is estimated at 135m, and both the McGillivray project and St Anne's road+rail overpass project are looking around the same price tag.
Benefit of the doubt, let's say every new rail bridge or overpass needed comes in at 75 million. It's absolutely a low number, but hear me out.
CN Running south of the city now needs bridges/overpasses at: 59, Red River, 75, PTH 3, Assiniboine. 375 million
CP running north of the city: Floodway, 59, Red River, 9, 8, 7, 6. 525 million
Then you have to consider the spur lines that will have to lead back into the city, with at least an overpass at Perimeter. Let's say we can do everything super efficiently and CP and CN only need one bridge each. 150 million
So
1.050 billion on a low-ball for the required bridges. '
Next, land expropriation. A lot of farmland, yes, but ESP and WSP, Grande Pointe, the houses along the Red south of the city are all sizeable clusters of homes that will cost an arm and a leg. I'm not a land assessor so I can't price this out too accurately but Centre Port cost about 35 million for expropriation for 10 km of highway that was entirely fields. So 3.5 million per km. I'll keep that number the same, since that was in 2015 and inflation exists, but the land probably costs less outside the city.
I ballparked your proposed CP and CN routes at roughly 45km each, let's round down to 40 just to keep the low ball theme going.
80km*3.5 million =
280 million
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/br...ved-with-money
Then the rail lines will need to be built, and the CN line running south of the city will need to be floodproofed (aka elevated above flood levels). Let's assume no floodproofing. 2017 costs per km for double track rail is 1.44 million per km.
80 * 1.44 = ~
115 million
https://compassinternational.net/rai...st-benchmarks/
Then each rail line needs to pack up and rebuild their entire operations outside the city from scratch. Land acquisition, permits, construction. There's no way it's not less than 500 million per company.
1 Billion.
So my absolute low-ball running total is 2.445 billion before we even moved the rail lines out of the city, before we even fought the lawsuits from people and municipalities facing expropriation or having their community cut by a new mainline, before land remediation. And this type of project has cost overruns written all over it.
This also doesn't include any LRT infrastructure which would be a couple billion.
To date, Manitoba's most expensive public work project was the Floodway projects, with a combined estimate of 1.316 billion when adjusted for inflation, and has a proven track record of saving billions of dollars repeatedly. The economics of this project are questionable at best, scary at worst. Freeing up land in the most undesirable spot in the city will not become a cash cow.