I wonder how much of this can be explained by wealth. The US has more expensive labor than the rest of the world (by a surprising margin), which makes everythin

I wonder how much of this can be explained by wealth. The US has more expensive labor than the rest of the world (by a surprising margin), which makes everything in the supply chain more expensive. Infrastructure is pretty labor intensive in and of itself (and skilled labor at that -- of which there are shortages), and the materials that it requires are also relatively labor and energy intensive. We would then expect to spend much more per passenger and route-mile than other places just to break even. But politically this is maybe a harder sell -- it's easy to criticize giving the MTA an extra billion when it buys so much less (even before corruption &c).