Why is building transporation infrastructure so expensive?

[cityimrov]

Why $1 Billion Doesn't Buy Much Transit Infrastructure Anymore
It seems $1 billion doesn't go very far in subway construction these days. Look at New York, where the 8.5-mile Second Avenue subway line is expected to cost more than $17 billion.

Internationally, subway construction costs remain considerably lower. Sao Paulo's new 11-km Yellow Line, completed last year, cost $1.6 billion, with fully automated trains and free high-speed wireless Internet at each of 11 stations.

Singapore's new Circle Line runs 22 miles with 28 stations and cost $4.8 billion, or $130 million per kilometer. Upon completion next year, it will become the world's longest fully automatic underground transit line, and among its most advanced.

In Europe, too, subways cost less. Madrid's recently-opened Metrosur line is 41 km long, with 28 stations, yet was completed in four years at around $58m per km. Recent expansions in Paris and Berlin cost about $250 million per km.

New York, meanwhile, is building the most expensive subway line of all time, at $1.7b per km. This figure makes London's 16-km-long Jubilee line and Amsterdam's 10-km North-South line, which both faced delays and controversy and cost $350m and $400m per km, respectively, seem reasonable in comparison.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2011/11/1-billion-doesnt-buy-much-transit-infrastructure-anymore/456/

When Will the U.S. Build Another Subway?
Today, subways are as popular as ever. Across the globe, from Cuiaba (Brazil), Mecca (Saudi Arabia) and Mumbai (India) to just about every major city in China, subway projects are well underway, about to start or deep in the planning stage. China takes up the lions-share of activity, with the government announcing last year 25 new subway projects worth tens of billions of dollars, according to the Associated Press. Beijing, the capital, has surpassed London and New York as having the world’s largest subway system and has announced plans to expand it still further to 1,000 kilometers by 2020.

The rapid pace of subway construction, especially in developing countries, has driven the number of systems in the world to more than 190, according to the Economist. One reason for the boom has to do with government stimulus programs that followed the financial crisis, allowing investment in subway construction to soar.

One country that’s noticeably absent from the project lists that appear in trade publications is the U.S. Construction of subways here, which the American Public Transportation Association defines as rail systems capable of handling heavy volumes of traffic at high speeds on separate rights-of-way, has slowed to a crawl. Washington, D.C.’s Metro was the country’s last fully-built rapid transit system in the country, with the final line of the originally planned system completed in 2001.

http://www.governing.com/columns/urban-notebook/When-Will-the-US-Build-Another-Subway.html

Why do you think transportation cost so much to build in the US? 

[JFman00]

http://streetsblog.net/2012/08/29/why-are-american-infrastructure-projects-so-expensive/
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/04/should_it_take_decades_to_build_a_subway/
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-26/u-s-taxpayers-are-gouged-on-mass-transit-costs.html

My favorite is this paper by Spaniard Manuel Melis Maynar on the Madrid metro extension project from 1995-1999 whose conclusions of what not to do is a punch list of what America always does:

• Consulting or other companies were not needed as Project Managers for Madrid Metro Extensions, which ran on time and on budget without such assistance.
  
  
• It is wrong to contract tunnel construction on a fixed price lump-sum basis. It will not work.
  
  
• The designer of an important tunnel should never be allowed to interfere in its construction.
  
  
• Architecture of stations should not be confused with that for a museum or an emblematic building for the city.
  
  
• Several million people will move each day across the stations of the metro network, and the design must emphasize this fact, giving easy and simple movements to the users from the street to the trains, wide escalators and corridors, and shallow stations and platforms.
  
  
• Design should be focused on the needs of the users, rather than on architectural beauty or exotic materials, and never on the name of the architect. Errors of this type have been common lately in Spain, especially on the new high-speed railway lines/
  
  
• Time is extremely important in transportation projects. Every year after the first extension of Madrid Metro was commissioned, 170 million new users entered into the system, with an overall time saving of 23 million hours in the Madrid region.
  
  
• Transport infrastructure, be it railways, underground metros or highways, are lineal projects. They can be easily divided into manageable parts. All parts can then be designed simultaneously, taking around eight months for the entire process. All construction contracts can similarly be awarded simultaneously, and any manageable contract of, say, 150 million, can be built in 36 months. Even enormous tunnelling projects such as the Channel Tunnel have been excavated in 36 months, and the land facilities could have been finished simultaneously. Although this theory is probably not applicable to other types of civil engineering projects, such as a big dam, or a long and complex suspension bridge, the conclusion follows that any lineal project, such as a Metro, can be designed and built in 40 to 45 months, provided funds are available. Madrid Metro has demonstrated this twice in succession.

[Ocklawaha]

The simple answer is, you have a bunch of politicians ready to spend everybody's money and it goes from a transit project to...'Say those new benches would looks cool, how about these fancy streetlights? We need the $800 dollar trash cans. Lets plant shrubs imported from Bali! I've got an idea, while were at it we could (fill in the blank)'

[thelakelander]

^Pretty much. You can get a ton of things accomplished by sticking to the basics. The key is.....sticking to the basics.

[PeeJayEss]

Not that I disagree we waste far too much money, but this is a very unscientific comparison of projects. Also, its facts are dubious. The Circle Line in Singapore cost $10 billion. There were multiple tunnel collapses that occurred during its construction, with 4 workers killed. The construction companies involved were found criminally responsible, the construction has led to Singapore tightening its safety regulations, and the line has been unreliable.

The Sao Paulo Yellow Line isn't finished yet, its construction resulted in a collapse that killed seven and created a crater that swallowed homes and vehicles. Also, they started from two sides planning to meet in the middle and MISSSED! Everyone involved in the project is under investigation.

The Metrosur is in Madrid is an outer-beltway line. It connects smaller towns and villages, so most of it is through suburban/rural area.

The New York Line goes through one of the largest metros in the world, with some of the oldest infrastructure, and high-rises all around it. And it happens to be in the US, which, yes, has some protections for their workers (unlike the first two). So two lines that involve shoddy construction (and misquoted costs) and one that was built through the middle of nowhere, and these are compared to New York City? Comparing any kind of construction in NYC to anywhere else is pretty dubious, and asserting that costs in NYC are in any way indicative of the rest of the country is downright dishonest.

The first article is simply bs. The second article asserts that the US subway construction has slowed to a halt. Of course, there is one under construction in NYC, and when was this subway boom in the US recently? Maybe they confused subways with the restaurant because, last I checked, we weren't building subways at any breakneck pace.

[Traveller]

Although it doesn't apply to subways as much, how much does our 5th Amendment contribute to the cost of building infrastructure?  I doubt the Chinese government gives its citizens "just compensation" when it destroys their homes to build a new rail line.