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It still baffles me how the United States is unable to do anything similar. Our projects are half the size and double the cost. http://www.latimes.com/local/cal

It still baffles me how the United States is unable to do anything similar. Our projects are half the size and double the cost. http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-cost-final-20151025-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-c...

JoelBennett 10y ago
The more fingers in the pie, the higher the cost. At least that's my guess. I imagine more expensive labour and tighter regulations also greatly increase costs.
- laurentoget 10y ago
  France and Germany both have expensive labour and regulations, yet they have working trains.
  - privong 10y ago
    It's not just the cost of labor and associated regulatory costs. I think a lot of the overhead in the US has to do with such projects often being funded by the federal government, yet implemented by state/county/city governments. Each of those wants to get involved and get a slice of the pie, so to speak...
    - DasIch 10y ago
      You can't seriously think cities in Europe are all rich enough to be able to afford large infrastructure projects? In Germany at least such projects also involve funding from the state, federal government and possibly the EU, usually those funds make up the majority of the money. Without such funds nothing would get done at all.
      - privong 10y ago
        > You can't seriously think cities in Europe are all rich enough to be able to afford large infrastructure projects? No, I don't think that. But I do think it's likely that the various levels of US government like to stake their claim to more autonomy compared to the various levels of government in Europe (particularly at the local level -- I'm sure the EU and national governments love to "get involved").
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
narrator 10y ago
How about San Francisco spending 1.6 Billion dollars for 1.7 miles of Subway? (http://www.enr.com/blogs/14-gold-rush/post/38027-san-franciscos-16-billion-central-subway-stays-on-course http://www.enr.com/blogs/14-gold-rush/post/38027-san-francis...)
- khuey 10y ago
  Most of the cost of the Central Subway is the stations, not the tunnel. Distance is perhaps not the best measure in that case.
mikeash 10y ago
Our country is of similar size, yet we have only 1/4th the population, and it's much more spread out. We don't have any megalopolises with 110 million people to connect. Much of the cost difference is because we refuse to be efficient with our large government projects, but a lot of it is also due to the fact that we care at least a bit about stuff like poor people, endangered species, historical preservation, etc. Big infrastructure projects are a lot cheaper if you can just bulldoze whatever is in the way and not care about it.
- gxs 10y ago
  Yeah - I recently had a conversation with a biologist - a profession that I don't normally have the opportunity to interact with. She used to work for Caltrans and once I learned what she did it really shed a little light on why these big infrastructure projects can rack up such high bills. As you said, if all we did was bulldoze and build we could probably build even faster than some of our foreign counterparts, but what we do is far from just bull doze and build. This biologist, for example, explained to me that before new roads are built, an environmental impact assessment was done. I had heard of these but not how detailed they are. They actually send biologists out in the field to tag and catalogue different species - all sorts of things from grizzly bears to salamanders. And not just tag and catalogue, but track them for long periods of time, often manually, to see how that particular species lives and moves about the environment. These are highly skilled and trained people who hike deep into remote areas and do this for weeks at a time. It's a tough job to balance being competitive with the world while at the same time adhering to our principles. I'm as enraged as the next guy when public projects take forever, but it made me genuinely happy to know someone is out there doing this kind of work. I can only imagine what other types of work are done during infrastructure projects that I can't even think of.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    An interesting example of the differences is line 2 of the Beijing subway. The route was intended to roughly follow the old city wall around the city. The country couldn't afford expensive tunnel boring at the time (this was in the 60s, long before the economic reforms), but cheaper cut-and-cover techniques would have destroyed a ton of houses. Easy solution! That historic city wall is pointless in this age of nuclear warfare and jet airplanes, so just tear it down and build the subway there. I think in the US, if we were faced with a similar choice (not that we have any city walls here, but imagine something of similar historical significance) we'd either put up with the much more expensive boring approach, or just decide we couldn't do the project at all.

JoelBennett 10y ago

The more fingers in the pie, the higher the cost. At least that's my guess. I imagine more expensive labour and tighter regulations also greatly increase costs.

laurentoget 10y ago
France and Germany both have expensive labour and regulations, yet they have working trains.
- privong 10y ago
  It's not just the cost of labor and associated regulatory costs. I think a lot of the overhead in the US has to do with such projects often being funded by the federal government, yet implemented by state/county/city governments. Each of those wants to get involved and get a slice of the pie, so to speak...
  - DasIch 10y ago
    You can't seriously think cities in Europe are all rich enough to be able to afford large infrastructure projects? In Germany at least such projects also involve funding from the state, federal government and possibly the EU, usually those funds make up the majority of the money. Without such funds nothing would get done at all.
    - privong 10y ago
      > You can't seriously think cities in Europe are all rich enough to be able to afford large infrastructure projects? No, I don't think that. But I do think it's likely that the various levels of US government like to stake their claim to more autonomy compared to the various levels of government in Europe (particularly at the local level -- I'm sure the EU and national governments love to "get involved").

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

narrator 10y ago

How about San Francisco spending 1.6 Billion dollars for 1.7 miles of Subway? (http://www.enr.com/blogs/14-gold-rush/post/38027-san-franciscos-16-billion-central-subway-stays-on-course http://www.enr.com/blogs/14-gold-rush/post/38027-san-francis...)

khuey 10y ago
Most of the cost of the Central Subway is the stations, not the tunnel. Distance is perhaps not the best measure in that case.

mikeash 10y ago

Our country is of similar size, yet we have only 1/4th the population, and it's much more spread out. We don't have any megalopolises with 110 million people to connect. Much of the cost difference is because we refuse to be efficient with our large government projects, but a lot of it is also due to the fact that we care at least a bit about stuff like poor people, endangered species, historical preservation, etc. Big infrastructure projects are a lot cheaper if you can just bulldoze whatever is in the way and not care about it.

gxs 10y ago
Yeah - I recently had a conversation with a biologist - a profession that I don't normally have the opportunity to interact with. She used to work for Caltrans and once I learned what she did it really shed a little light on why these big infrastructure projects can rack up such high bills. As you said, if all we did was bulldoze and build we could probably build even faster than some of our foreign counterparts, but what we do is far from just bull doze and build. This biologist, for example, explained to me that before new roads are built, an environmental impact assessment was done. I had heard of these but not how detailed they are. They actually send biologists out in the field to tag and catalogue different species - all sorts of things from grizzly bears to salamanders. And not just tag and catalogue, but track them for long periods of time, often manually, to see how that particular species lives and moves about the environment. These are highly skilled and trained people who hike deep into remote areas and do this for weeks at a time. It's a tough job to balance being competitive with the world while at the same time adhering to our principles. I'm as enraged as the next guy when public projects take forever, but it made me genuinely happy to know someone is out there doing this kind of work. I can only imagine what other types of work are done during infrastructure projects that I can't even think of.
- mikeash 10y ago
  An interesting example of the differences is line 2 of the Beijing subway. The route was intended to roughly follow the old city wall around the city. The country couldn't afford expensive tunnel boring at the time (this was in the 60s, long before the economic reforms), but cheaper cut-and-cover techniques would have destroyed a ton of houses. Easy solution! That historic city wall is pointless in this age of nuclear warfare and jet airplanes, so just tear it down and build the subway there. I think in the US, if we were faced with a similar choice (not that we have any city walls here, but imagine something of similar historical significance) we'd either put up with the much more expensive boring approach, or just decide we couldn't do the project at all.