I was an operations director in a prior role and oversaw the design and construction of several buildings. The last building was about $70 million, and we spent around $6 million on the design and programming.

What most folks don't understand is the scale of minutiae. I've spent an entire day of meetings hashing out floor box standards between all parties (IT, facilities, design, construction). The amount of preliminary site studies, permit planning, etc, that goes into hundreds of miles of rail, plus stations, interesting into existing infrastructure etc... It's significant.

I've also overwhelmed fiber builds, and have seen costs range upwards of $500k-$1m per mile of new fiber depending on if poles exist, or of trenching, right of way, permits, etc.

And all of this is just the tip of the iceberg for what goes into these plans.

Just for context the Seattle regional area is spending over $50 billion on expanding light rail with st3. I'm not sure what goes into planning but this whole endeavor isn't gonna be cheap.

This might help contextualize the project:

A previous state report speculated that construction may cost $42 billion in 2017 dollars. That sum should be considered low until proven otherwise, in light of the 0% engineering; the soaring costs for California’s high-speed rail program, whose ultimate San Francisco-Los Angeles network could reach $128 billion; and process delays in Seattle’s own Sound Transit 3, whose $11 billion Ballard-Sodo light-rail segment won’t complete preliminary engineering until 2026, a full decade after voters approved higher taxes.

If planning could help prevent mistakes and delays costing something on the order of years and billions of dollars, half a billion to plan (1% of a lower-end estimated cost) doesn't seem so bad to me at all.

Coming from someone who very much endorses amtrak and passenger rail, I think someone is abusing our tax dollars to make six figure jobs for their friends or family. Just look how much money is going into repeatedly studying if the stampede pass would be a viable passenger rail line.

2023-2024 $150,000

2020 $250,000

Geotech analysis (this is an earthquake zone), multiple route options with associated costs (read: lots of math), the required community info sessions and feedback (repeat that a few times), route alterations from the politics, eventual route selection, then actual detailed design can begin on structures, electrical systems, etc (read: lots of math).

Once you factor in the best fit route, including through both major cities, seismic and land surveys, figuring out and plotting of new bridges, figuring out who owns what and how to best double existing track with a new high speed track, getting land for a new yard.

I can see planning hitting that much, yeah.

Hell, if we're using the Amtrack stations it has to tunnel under modern Seattle, as well as figure out how its getting through to downtown Vancouver across at least one river crossing in a busy and populated area.

Also, consider how much the conservatives under Christy Clark spent to get the evergreen line built and the pre-build surveys cost well above the 10 million dollar range and were completely wrong and lead to massive cost overruns. Edit: The underground area in question was roughly 6 blocks long.

It's mostly palm-greasing, I'm sure.