ELABORATION:More on Tunnel-highway Costs

Current design and construction cost estimates from the concessionaire Cofiroute are $1.0b (E1041m) for the 10.1km (6.3mi) long first tunnel-highway, which includes three interchanges. We called that 60.6 lane-km since it is designed to carry three lanes of light vehicles on each deck. Initially however it will probably be operated as 2x2-lanes with the third lane on each deck kept as a breakdown lane, so arguably it is 40.4 lane-km.

The costs of construction of A86W are $16.5m/lane-km ($27m/lane-mi) as 6-lanes or $25m/lane-km ($40m/lane-mi) as a 4-lane facility.

The all-vehicles tunnel to be built after the light vehicles tunnel is 7.5km (4.7mi) and will cost $400m (E421m) and since it is 2-lanes (15 lane-km or 9.4 lane-mi) $27m/lane-km ($43m/lane-mi). The numbers exclude the $215m (E238m) value added tax (VAT) that Cofiroute will have to pay, and excludes the company’s financing costs.

So with several different ways of looking at the A86 we have a range of costs between $16.5m and $27m/lane-km ($26m to $43m/lane-mi). By comparison the Boston Central Artery Tunnel project is $47m/lane-km ($75m/lane-mi.)

Cofiroute, as an investor owned business is under strong commercial pressure to contain its costs to its budget – the exact opposite of the incentives at the Big Dig in Boston where cost over-runs are simply extra income.

All this we wrote in a criticism (TRnl46 Feb 00 p7) of the costs of Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel project, under the supervision of the state of Massachusetts. In Sydney and Melbourne Australia tunnel highway projects of similar difficulty have been costing about $14m to $15m/lane-km ($23m/lane-mi.) With investor funding.

In fairness to the guys in Boston we have found an even more expensive Big Dig – the western section of the Central Circular Expressway in Tokyo which puts them to shame as big-spenders. Only 4-lanes and 39km long of which 14.5km is tunnel the sections currently under construction are costing Y66b/km or $160m/lane-km. Project cost must be about twice that of Boston’s Big Dig or $25b (numbers from “Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway” Metropolitan Expressway Public Corporation.) Land costs are Y29b/km ($280m/km, $70m/lane-km) but that still leaves construction costs as about $350m/km or $90m/lane-km, twice those of Boston!

An even more expensive Japanese project is Tokyo’s 2x2-lane mid-bay bridge-tunnel what involves 10km of under-bay tunnel and 5km of bridge with an artificial island transition. $14b at present exchange rates it opened Dec 97 by a government backed toll agency. It’s 60.4 lane-km or $230m/lane-km!

Goebbelesque Cost Estimate

Also here in the US the federal govt thinks it could outspend the Big Dig on its own front door. An estimate of tunnel alternatives for the Wilson Bridge on the Washington Beltway suggests tunnel costs of $2.5b for 2.3km of 12-lanes with shoulders in cofferdam cut-&-cover for $91m/lane-km, or $1.9b for 1.7km of immersed tube of 12-lanes, no shoulders, for $93m/lane-km. Now it needs to be said that these estimates have about the credibility of an assessment of the Holocaust authored by Joseph Goebbels. They were prepared by Potomac Crossing Consultants which already has a huge vested interest in a bridge design, and would lose millions if the govt were to switch to a tunnel. They mainly manage to prove that if you set out to spend a lot of money, you can find ways of doing that. The Fort McHenry tunnel under Baltimore Harbor (8-lanes x 2.2km =17.6 lane-km), a far more difficult job than a lazy river, cost $750m or $43m/lane-km in 85$s, $60m/lane-km in current $s.

Norwegians the Champs

At the other extreme of economy are those Norwegians! The Laerdal Tunnel through mountains on the E16 between Oslo and Bergen is 2-lanes 25.4km long (51 lane-km) and is costing $150m or just $3m/lane-km. Another tunnel under a fjord south of Bergen, the Bomlafjord tunnel is 3-lanes and 7.9km long. At its deepest point it is 265m (870') below sea level. It is costing $61m for 23.7 lane-km, or $2.6m/lane-km.

We need some serious international technical aid in tunneling!

The Norwegians could help the Australians, the Australians the French, the French we Americans, and even those mugs sitting on their hands under Boston, while nearly drowning in US greenbacks, could help the world’s most indolent and high-cost tunnelers there in Tokyo. (Do they have saki and geishas down the hole?)

But, seriously, what seems to swamp the international differences is socialism vs capitalism. In Boston and Tokyo state owned entities pay the bills and the taxpayers take the risk. And so costs balloon to the range $50m to $230m/lane-km. By contrast where the risk is on investors the costs seem to be in the range $3m to $25m/lane-km. Investors, maybe, are more careful about what projects they take on. And maybe they will drawn a line, when costs are rising and say No, where governments plunge on, pouring good money after bad. And when it comes to containing costs, shareholders are able to get a better grip on corporate management than taxpayers ever can on those bureaucrats and politicians! On big projects the politicians come and go, their political life being shorter often than the time from project planning to opening.

The Central Artery project was funded by House speaker Tip O’Neill, long since dead, and who even remembers who was governor of MA or who managed the state DOT back then? There’s no accountability in these huge government owned projects.