[atoav]

Without even looking into it I am going to say huge price differences between different rail projects are something I really would expect to see. Building, planning and permitting a meter of track in a dense urban center is going to cost magnitudes more than building the same track with the same people through a more rural route even if it was done by the same people in the same system and state.

That aside the trains might run through different terrain and might have to run at different speeds. Building a dirt path through a flat desert is surely more cheap per meter than building a tunnel through a mountain.

So to compare such projects to each other in way that you can draw meaningful insights from the comparison means you have to ganular data science and compare how much of each track is going through which type of environment.

I am not saying your point is not valid, but just comparing the final numbers is not going to cut it here.