Quote:
Originally Posted by Colin May
Cost of about $1.5 billion. No thanks. The delays are brief and are at rush hour/s.
We can't afford to waste that amount of money, and the same goes for the expansion of Burnside Drive. We aren't London, New York, Tokyo.
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$1.5 billion is not a large long-term project for a city like London. This project is expected to cost about $25B:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail
You are talking about $1.5 billion that can be partially paid for by the users and that will be used to build a piece of infrastructure useful for 50 years or longer.
Over 30 million trips take place over the bridges each year. Imagine 15 million for the new bridge (probably conservative in the long run). Over 50 years that works out to 750,000,000 trips. $1.5 billion works out to a $2 cost per trip. It is easily worth spending $2 to save 10 minutes on a commute. Many people would spend much more than that.
These expenses always need to be put into context. All too frequently people get caught up on large cost numbers without accounting for the fact that the value they provide affects a large number of people for a large period of time.