Private Land: How far down under a house or building do private landowners own? And, can digging subways or underground infrastructure, be cheaper and be an end run around eminent domain?

Trump's infrastructure plan will likely include an underground high-speed rail

New York to Chicago by train in under five hours. It's not science fiction, but old-school tunneling-a critical, yet oddly ignored, part of President Donald Trump's forthcoming infrastructure plan that supporters say will cost the federal government virtually nothing, but experts say the proposal's deregulation approach amounts to a handout to Big Business.

Me, "While I am not a big fan of eminent domain. The idea of just how far underground a person can own the land their house sits on is an interesting concept. In cities like NYC, Subways are commonly constructed under buildings and streets. These building owners do not have a say as to what can be placed under their building, and streets are for the public. So, digging transportation projects, like subways would be cheaper and less time consuming to dig then to wait and try and get the land above ground by eminent domain.

However, you need to supervise. You have to get out of your office everyday and go and inspect the project. Managed effectively, and having some kind of competition would bring down construction costs to make sure you don't get cost overruns. The idea at the MTA has long been to higher one company to do the whole construction project. Why not higher multiple companies and put them into competition with rewards for how much they have done in how short a time.

The only problem where you might need to use eminent domain is where will you create subway station exits and entrances for passenger egress. And, where do you dig the shafts to put in the digging machines. In NYC this is done in the middle of streets since the city owns the land. But for longer tunnels into the country side you'd need the approval of either a public land holder or private land owner."  

From article, (The government can take privately held land under its power of eminent domain—as long as the land is used for a public benefit, like a road, hospital or even an economic development project. But eminent domain is controversial; many on the right consider it a government overreach, and many on the left say it benefits private corporations at the expense of the public.

It’s also not free, as Cohn suggested. Private landowners must be reimbursed at a fair market value—though the value of property rights deep underground is unclear. That would be a matter for the courts.

“The question is where are you going to put the ports to get the tunneling machine and other utilities underground. Where you locate the ports may have to be on private land, you’re going to have to get owner permission. If it’s on government land, you’re going to have to apply for permits. Access is always a problem during tunneling work.”

A large part of Trump’s infrastructure plan calls for deregulation that Republicans believe will get rid of government “red tape.”

“The biggest single thing we can do for infrastructure in this country is we can shorten and improve the approval process,” said Cohn. “We can streamline the approval process from years to weeks and months.”

It’s worth nothing that Trump has a long history of using eminent domain to develop his own properties. He got officials in New Jersey to boot small businesses and families from land he wished to use to develop his Atlantic City hotels and casinos in the late 1990s.

“Cities have the right to condemn for the good of the city,” he said at the time.“Everybody coming into Atlantic City sees this terrible house instead of staring at beautiful fountains and beautiful other things that would be good.”

In April, Cohn spoke of tunneling in relation to Elon Musk’s Hyperloop and Boring company, saying during a town hall meeting that he was soliciting Musk for information and ideas on how to bring high-speed rail to America. There Cohn told the crowd that Musk said he could “solve the problem” of fast railroads by “tunneling the whole way.”

Musk believes that these tunnels will eventually used for Hyperloop, his high-speed travel concept that transits people and cargo in pods through an system of giant vacuum tubes.

Still, by taking care of permitting and eminent domain issues, the federal government could make the building process faster and cheaper for Musk or any other company.

But the government won’t be able to earmark money just for Musk, says Puentes.

“It’s a lot more complex than the president thinks it is,” he said. “It doesn’t help so much to have these wild proclamations, it’s time to stop focusing on moonshots and instead focus on what needs to be done to save our country’s infrastructure.”

 Still, high-speed rail has been available for years in Europe and Asia and is built there at relatively low cost. President Barack Obama wanted the same, but encountered opposition from local officials and did not resort to the use of eminent domain.

Barring that kind of land appropriation, there is little federal officials can do in the United States, which lacks the kind of central political authority of small European nations or China.

Other countries are also able to build their railroads in a more cost-efficient manner, while the average unit price of high-speed rail in Europe is between $17 and $24 million per mile, the estimated cost for high-speed rail in California is about $35 million per mile. The cost difference is due to lower ridership as well as the far wider suburban sprawl on the landscape itself.

But Trump apparently thinks he can tunnel under all those problems.)