3 Comments

I'm not sure if extrapolating from PSD retrofit costs will be that accurate, even though you removed the many parts that won't apply to the IBX. Have you compared to the JFK Airtrain costs (in NYC, but older), or REM (in North America and very recent)? Or any other recent airport people mover with PSDs in the US?

Expand full comment
author

I believe the extrapolation is accurate on an order of magnitude basis. Indeed, the estimates for the MTA that I found were identified as order of magnitude. As yet, I have not received the actual bid costs for the pilot program.

The material costs in the estimates probably are pretty accurate. Some items I question, particularly the $1,000,000 product warranty for each station. And there is the usual bloat in the markups.

On the other hand, the data I used was in 2018 dollars and there has been significant inflation since then.

Expand full comment

I think it'd be very helpful to look at REM PSD costs. The PSD retrofit costs as you said are older, while REM's first phase just finished and the next phases are under construction. And the REM costs are actual finalized costs, not costs from a preliminary study, so there can be great variability in that. I'm also gonna try to see if Transit Costs Project has any info about new-build PSD costs.

Expand full comment