3 ms·

As with most southern European countries, the answer is corruption.

ithkuil 5y ago
Geierlay suspension bridge in Germany is 360 meters, costed 1.2 million euros. I guess germany is in southern europe too.
- stkdump 5y ago
  Pretty sure Germany has more corruption than Switzerland. It is just better hidden than in southern europe. In this case I think Switzerland is the outlier though. The country is extremely efficient with alpine infrastructure.
  - ithkuil 5y ago
    Or could it perhaps just be that the requirements of the bridges are different? Things like oscillation tolerance, minimum width etc. Perhaps dictated by local laws and/or the kind of target public they want to attract, the average number of days a year the weather would permit transit etc etc ?
    - stkdump 5y ago
      You are pretty much exactly describing how corruption works in a well regulated country. Since officials can't just pick the contractor but have to take the cheapest bid for the given requirements, they have to doctor the requirements until the contractor they want to hire has the best chance of making the best bid (or be the only contractor that effectively make a bid at all). This is exactly how it works from the lowest up to the highest level of government. Since actual corruption is so hard to measure, we rank countries along a line of "corruption perception", i.e. how confident are people. Germany has an extremely good reputation. I believe you have to look at individual projects though and use a first principles approach: how much should it cost? What level of incompetence is believable vs plain corruption? Does the project make sense given larger government policy in the first place? Airport Berlin-Brandenburg, Wirecard, Nordstream are just the larger known cases, where corruption is the only possible explanation, there are tons of smaller projects as well, on which nobody bothers to put the spotlight.
      - ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
        It sounds like you are describing monopolies or regulatory capture. And sure enough, the US and Germany have some of the least competitive infrastructure construction markets.
RobertoG 5y ago
The answer is corruption? Was that comment necessary? Do you have information that we don't have? Also, it's not like corruption doesn't happen everywhere. For instance, not so long ago the Estonian government (that would be Northern Europe, I think) resigned because a corruption scandal (1). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/13/estonian-government-collapses-over-corruption-investigation https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/13/estonian-gover...
throwmeaway321 5y ago
Is it tho? Or could it be the massive building boom in Portugal right now raising the prices? Or the fact that kind of "alpine" construction is very rare in Portugal and probably required a lot of foreign expertise? Or perhaps because there weren't many contractors biding on it, leading to a less competitive price? Or maybe because they're totally different designs? Or maybe there's a ton of factors you have no idea about and did no research on? Corruption is really not as common in southern Europe as the media would make it out to be. Incompetence is a far bigger problem and also far harder to persecute, sadly.
- touisteur 5y ago
  Heh not really rare. They've been building loads and loads of crazy infra up in the mountainous North.
willyt 5y ago
To quote myself from a comment on high speed trains the other day “[The French] build high speed lines for between 1/5th and 1/20th of the cost of the one the UK is building. Just to prempt the France is flat and land is cheap arguments. 1/5th is the cost of the section of line between Lyon and Marseille that crosses the Massif Central with 50 tunnels and bridges and plenty of earthworks. The cost of land acquisition is only £8bn of the £100bn+ cost of HS2.” So if we conclude this kind of cost difference is corruption, we clearly have a much bigger problem in Britain.

Geierlay suspension bridge in Germany is 360 meters, costed 1.2 million euros. I guess germany is in southern europe too.

stkdump 5y ago
Pretty sure Germany has more corruption than Switzerland. It is just better hidden than in southern europe. In this case I think Switzerland is the outlier though. The country is extremely efficient with alpine infrastructure.
- ithkuil 5y ago
  Or could it perhaps just be that the requirements of the bridges are different? Things like oscillation tolerance, minimum width etc. Perhaps dictated by local laws and/or the kind of target public they want to attract, the average number of days a year the weather would permit transit etc etc ?
  - stkdump 5y ago
    You are pretty much exactly describing how corruption works in a well regulated country. Since officials can't just pick the contractor but have to take the cheapest bid for the given requirements, they have to doctor the requirements until the contractor they want to hire has the best chance of making the best bid (or be the only contractor that effectively make a bid at all). This is exactly how it works from the lowest up to the highest level of government. Since actual corruption is so hard to measure, we rank countries along a line of "corruption perception", i.e. how confident are people. Germany has an extremely good reputation. I believe you have to look at individual projects though and use a first principles approach: how much should it cost? What level of incompetence is believable vs plain corruption? Does the project make sense given larger government policy in the first place? Airport Berlin-Brandenburg, Wirecard, Nordstream are just the larger known cases, where corruption is the only possible explanation, there are tons of smaller projects as well, on which nobody bothers to put the spotlight.
    - ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
      It sounds like you are describing monopolies or regulatory capture. And sure enough, the US and Germany have some of the least competitive infrastructure construction markets.

RobertoG 5y ago

The answer is corruption? Was that comment necessary? Do you have information that we don't have? Also, it's not like corruption doesn't happen everywhere. For instance, not so long ago the Estonian government (that would be Northern Europe, I think) resigned because a corruption scandal (1). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/13/estonian-government-collapses-over-corruption-investigation https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/13/estonian-gover...

throwmeaway321 5y ago

Is it tho? Or could it be the massive building boom in Portugal right now raising the prices? Or the fact that kind of "alpine" construction is very rare in Portugal and probably required a lot of foreign expertise? Or perhaps because there weren't many contractors biding on it, leading to a less competitive price? Or maybe because they're totally different designs? Or maybe there's a ton of factors you have no idea about and did no research on? Corruption is really not as common in southern Europe as the media would make it out to be. Incompetence is a far bigger problem and also far harder to persecute, sadly.

touisteur 5y ago
Heh not really rare. They've been building loads and loads of crazy infra up in the mountainous North.

willyt 5y ago

To quote myself from a comment on high speed trains the other day “[The French] build high speed lines for between 1/5th and 1/20th of the cost of the one the UK is building. Just to prempt the France is flat and land is cheap arguments. 1/5th is the cost of the section of line between Lyon and Marseille that crosses the Massif Central with 50 tunnels and bridges and plenty of earthworks. The cost of land acquisition is only £8bn of the £100bn+ cost of HS2.” So if we conclude this kind of cost difference is corruption, we clearly have a much bigger problem in Britain.