Thanks for clearing up the costs of the northern NEC electrification. The central recommendation of the Transit Costs Project is that we need more public information.
Maybe of note, RM cites Alan Fisher as a big authority. Others would know more than me. I'm heartened that young people are so interested in public planning and transit. Pretty much any college town can fill up new train service. But when young or old commenters get too caught up in a Roblox-like (or what is the transit game software people really like?) design for an ideal system, I get a bit wizened. It's all for the good, but sometimes there's a confusion of what's on the other side of the dialog. One point RM makes is true for sure, lower costs helps everyone. Or is it true? He dismisses a pundit who argued that we can afford higher CAHSR costs, and benefit from the social and environmental standards in the U.S. and California.
As an extreme point, we could just send sub-sub-contracted non-union labor out from Texas construction firms to dig holes for catenary, and see what happens. Or on the other extreme, we could insist that computer models match exactly field results from seismic testing of railbed on the NEC before digging any holes, and have lawyers write lengthy contracts on liability for future results. The reality is we don't know much about what is happening at the business and engineering level. Or at least I don't.
(I worked on a shopping mall job in New Jersey where unions were getting replaced by Texas-type firms, and the comment around the site - NJ people like to comment - was they'd hire five people who said they were electricians, and count on two actually being qualified. Nevertheless, I must say everything was by the book, wanding every connection, etc. The union that was really on its heels was the one that represented unskilled labor. Very nice guy, told me it was the last big job they'd have in NJ. This was almost twenty years ago.)