MEC407 wrote: ↑Thu Aug 08, 2019 3:01 pm
The distance from the Portland Transportation Center to Rock Row (the development that has been mentioned) is only 4 miles by car or bus, and probably about 3 miles by rail, which is why I'm still so shocked by the $100 million price tag.
A quarter of that is everything that would go into the Commercial St. extension. The construction breakdown is:
Main St. Westbrook to Rock Row: $13.9M
Rock Row to relocated PTC (vaguely assumed to be near Mercy Hospital): $30.1M
Relocated PTC to <strike>a van down by the river</strike> Commercial St.: $26.9M
The rest of the $100M startup is mainly rolling stock acquisition IIRC. But, if we take out the station relocation and extension to Commercial St. that saves us over $30M and, IMHO, doesn't impact the utility of the service as much as they want to believe. Would having the station closer to the Old Port be beneficial, particularly since the reasons for staying on Thompson's Point never came to fruition? Sure. But "under the Casco Bay Bridge down by the container port" isn't really a useful version of "closer to the Old Port".
"...And then I thought, every time some company creates a more powerful locomotive does Superman become more powerful as well or is he stuck at 1938 locomotive power levels?" - A friend of mine elsewhere
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