>Maurie Daly (mauried@commslab.gov.au) wrote:
>>No doubt most readers would have heard the cost of this project is approx $900
>>M or for the distance involved $1 million per km.
>Which is about on par with building a road over the same distance.
>Cheers
>David
The cost of a road (1 million per km) is based on a 4 lane freeway not a
single dual lane road like the Stuart Highway is.
As a simple comparison, the total project cost of building the Tarcoola to
Alice Springs Railway in 1980 was only $145 million total.
This is a line of 47 kg rail on concrete sleepers.
This works out to $171K per km in 1980 dollar terms which in todays terms
would be approx double , allowing for inflation , labor costs
etc, although the current project ie Alice S to Darwin would cost less because
the route has already been surveyed and some of the old alignment could be
used.So a worst case scenerio would be $350000 per km for a route distance of
950 km which the distance from Alice S to Darwin = $332 million tops .
NO way in the world can you get $900 million for this project no matter how
you juggle the numbers.
Where has this $900 million figure come from?????
cheers
MD