The price tag is... a lot.
UTA's network study, back from 2013, estimated thus:
Quote:
Capital costs for double-tracking are about $10 million per mile and $12 million
per track mile for electrification.
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http://www.rideuta.com/uploads/Final...y_9Oct2013.pdf
I trust these numbers as much as I trust that changing the name from UTA to TDU would cost
$50 million.
Here is another source that puts the price of electrification at just under $5 million per track mile. To get the cost of a second track, I think we ought to use the cost of the previous two FrontRunner segments. Each was about 40-ish miles long and cost about $600 million to build. FrontRunner is currently 83 miles long from Provo to Ogden, and let's say that a quarter of that already has the second track in place. Three quarters of 83 is 62.25, which is definitely more than the 40-ish miles of the two FrontRunner segments, but remember that those two segments also included building the stations and buying the trains needed for those segments. Building the second track will involve building something like 20+ major bridges, and this time it will be done next to an active commuter line rather than a freight line with much lower traffic. So in the end let's just call it a wash and estimate $600 million to double-track.
For electrification, we would need to electrify 83*2= 166 miles, plus the Warm Springs yard, which has maybe another mile or two in it. Multiply this number by $5 million and we get $840 million dollars.
Now we also need to buy electric trains! FrontRunner currently uses 9 trains to handle 30-minute headways. To run at double that frequency, we need to double the number of trains to 18. UTA also keeps two complete trains on standby, so let's buy 20 high-speed EMU's from Stadler. Why Stadler? Because they're here in Utah, and they're
building 16 very similar trains for Caltrain in San Francisco. For this, Caltrain is paying $551 million.
(This deal is only for 16 trains, but each train will have 6 cars, for a total of 96 cars. If we have 20 trains with 5 cars each, that is a total of 100 cars, which is about the same, so I feel perfectly fine in quoting the Caltrain cost for Utah.)
So, let's add all this up: $600 million for double-tracking + $840 million for electrifying + $550 million for new trains = $1.99 Billion.
So yeah, there is no way UTA is going to be able to pay for that on its own. But that is not an impossible price for the state government to pay, especially if the alternative is double-decking I-15. Udot has spent this kind of money before and so far the world hasn't ended.
For this price, you will get a train that comes every 15 minutes (or perhaps as often as every 5-10 during rush hours!), travels up to 110 mph, is quiet and zero-emissions, and which is never delayed by needing to pull into sidings to allow other trains to pass. Ridership on FrontRunner is now about 18k per day; make these changes and I'd be surprised with anything less than 40k per day.