Stations Picked, Huge Automated Transit Project for Paris is Closer to Realization

[phantom power]

The "eye-popping" price == equivalent to 3 months of our splendid adventure in Afghanistan

In the Western World, the most significant rapid transit project currently being contemplated is Paris’ 96-mile Grand Paris network that would extend brand-new automated rapid transit lines across and around the region at the eye-popping price of more than twenty billion euros. If adequately financed, it would be a huge undertaking designed to speed travel between locales now at the periphery of the region’s fast transit network, spurring housing and population growth in the metropolitan area’s suburbs.

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/09/02/stations-picked-huge-automated-transit-project-for-paris-is-closer-to-realization/

[Iterate]

1. The method of financing

is similar to the original Interstate plan proposed by Eisenhower -a mixture of bonds and the sale of suddenly valuable land near the stations/interchanges. Of course we didn't do that in the end, as we preferred to have the developers and speculators make their Republican fortunes.

Even at a cost of 20 billion euros, either this plan or the closer ring the Socialist's propose would be quite the bargain, especially considering the alternative of more automobile-derived sprawl. I can't imagine how ungodly awful that would be.