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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (387571)	6/1/2008 11:43:07 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1575916

"And btw, given the cost of land acquisition, a $100 billion cost estimate may not be that far off. " The estimates I saw put that at the largest costs. All of the area in question is prime farm land. Dallas to Houston is hardly West Texas. And the time period in question was the peak of farming in Texas. I know, I have several cousins who took up farming during those years. Then if there is no existing right of way, then land acquisitions cost would be huge. Even if there is a rail right of way, it would have to be widen considerably to add more track and for safety reasons in order to accommodate a 'fast' train. Things have changed. I know my cousins would get out, pennies on the dollar. Why? I thought most farmers are doing fairly well now. I do grant that I might not remember the dollar figure all that well. It was a long time ago and the impact of multi-billion dollar projects is different now. These days, if it doesn't approach a trillion, who cares? Its common knowledge in the construction industry that costs for light and heavy rail projects are very difficult to estimate. They are worse than say stadiums and airports because we build rail projects even less frequently.....although that's starting to change as we build more lines. In any case, that's why rail lines are notorious for cost overruns. In other words, the Dallas/Houston line, if it ever gets built, will be expensive if not $100 billion.

To: combjelly who wrote (387571)	6/1/2008 11:54:10 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575916

>>> I know my cousins would get out, pennies on the dollar. Most everyone would. Small farmers lose money. It is a given. For the time I practiced as a CPA in rural Arkansas, the practice I took over had a large number of farmers. Most were very deeply in debt, were consistently losing money, and had no real hope of digging out. The one I can recall that really stood out was a superb example of how a small farm should be run, consistently made money, and five years later he walked away from it. I asked him why, he said, "I can make more money doing something else." (And I saw him recently, and he does). The small farm is just at such a disadvantage I don't know how any of them make it.