Columnist: Bryce Kaw-uh

Bringing passenger rail service to Manchester would cost less than the recently completed I-93 widening project. Widening I-93 between Manchester and Salem cost a total of $751 million in 2020 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that would be about $870 million today. Passenger rail would cost $597 million to build which is significantly less. You may remember the Union Leader article that claimed rail would cost $782 million, but that’s because the newspaper failed to mention that the figure was in Year-of-Expenditure (YOE) dollars, which basically takes decades of future inflation into account.

The passage of this misguided bill would effectively kill any chance of Manchester achieving regional passenger rail service. That would throw an enormous wrench in our community’s 2019 Regional Economic Development Plan, our 2020 Transit Oriented Development Plan, and also our award-winning 2021 Master Plan.