Something to ponder.  In March 2016, Japan Rail Corporation opened its Shinkansen (bullet train) line linking the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido.  The dual track line is 149 kilometers long (92.5 miles) and runs 23% on viaducts (21.2 miles), 4% on bridges (3.7 miles), and 65% in tunnels (62 miles) and it cost was 550.8 billion yen ($4.67 billion).  That is about $50.4 million per mile.  HART, if it ever gets finished, will be 20 miles long and at current estimates will cost $500 million per mile, or ten times more per mile than it cost the Japanese to build its new Hokkaido line.  New York’s East Side Access is 6 miles in a tunnel.   Current cost estimate is $10.2 billion or $1.7 billion per mile, or 34 times more than the Japanese rail project.  Yes, there are differences in labor and materials cost between the three locations, but 10 and 34 times more?  I do think so.  It seems to me HART and NYC hired the wrong people for their rail projects.