this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
339 points (98.8% liked)
Bikini Bottom Twitter
3567 readers
524 users here now
Are ya ready kids?!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Well it's really not about specific numbers, the joke is they'll act like this even when it's a fraction of the cost compared to a stadium or something
The specific numbers matter a lot though. If a comprehensive transit system is only 15% of the cost of a stadium, the transit system is a no brainer. In reality, that $150M needs to be more like $100B to be remotely realistic (for context, the 11 station Silver Line extension of the DC Metro deep in the Virginia suburbs cost roughly $7B). Doing some super quick back-of-the-napkin math to extrapolate that cost for 11 stations to the total system size of 98 stations, we arrive at $62B for the whole thing if built from scratch today. That $62B is an understatement though because it ignores that construction costs in DC proper will be higher than for the Silver Line extension that ran in the median of a highway in the suburbs.
With a realistic estimate for the cost of the transit system, the decision making changes completely. It's certainly not a no-brainer anymore.