Basically all of them, and at 1/2 to 1/10 of the cost. Spain, Italy, the Nordic countries, and Turkey are all much more efficient at building infrastructure than the US.
Wow it takes effort to be slower than Italy. :) There are some infamous cases here of highways taking decades to complete (and also some positive experiences such as an awesome high speed rail network).
I think it depends heavily on which infrastructure you're talking about though and what parts of the project you're considering. Some countries may be faster at obtaining permits and/or finding the money, and others may be faster at actually building the thing; my impression is that Italy absolutely sucks at the former, but some projects are also slowed down by the sheer amount of archaeological finds that you stumble upon when digging under Rome or Naples.
Yeah, we are much worse than Italy. There is basically no example of a major transit project in the US being done fast and on budget in the last couple of decades. Here in Maryland we are almost 5 years behind schedule building a light rail line through some suburbs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/01/19/pur.... For the same money, and in far less time, Copenhagen built an entire fully automated subway under the city.
Copenhagen is in Denmark how does that say anything about Italy?
Anyway, European countries have plenty of boondoggles. Germany’s Berlin Brandenburg Airport was a 30 year project requiring multiple legal battles etc. construction took 11 years where the initial €2.83 billion budget over ran to €6.5 billion due to massive design flaws, construction issues, poor management, multiple lawsuits etc.
Asia has similar issues, China for example does plenty of big infrastructure projects because its infrastructure is so behind, but it’s projects have massive issues. The Three Gorges Dam for example ballooned from $8.35 billion to $37 billion.
I’m pretty sure he’s aware of which country Copenhagen is in but was simply pointing out as an example a much harder large, complex project in a dense urban environment built in far less time.
The key thing to understand is that while other countries have some boondoggles, the United States does almost nothing else despite spending massive amounts of money. The Purple Line mentioned was ostensibly going to be cheaper due to a public-private partnership but that ended in delays and greater costs as those almost always do, and the same was true of a highway expansion Maryland was trying to do with an Australian partner, and just about every other major American road, rail, bridge, bus station, etc. project is similar. Even our bike lanes take ages to build for the relatively small amount of work.
I agree with the theory that much of this is due to hollowing out the civil service as a “cost savings” measure – these projects sound like what I’ve seen at large organizations where they want a software project without hiring developers so they bring in one consulting company to do the work, and after the first round of failures, a second to oversee the first. Even if everyone is actually acting in good faith it’s just inefficient when you have multiple parties and difficulties sharing or acting on institutional knowledge.
US does plenty of large construction projects without major issue.
One World Trade Center a public/private partnership started construction April 27, 2006 and opened on November 3, 2014 at the cost of 3.9 billion. Which is easily in line with similar projects around the world, even though it was much slower than such projects back in the 1920’s.
It’s a more complicated building than those 1920’s designs booth from modern standards + features like AC, but also because it was designed to survive an attack.
PS: The Copenhagen Metro has been a 28+ year project that’s gone well but it’s hardly that amazing on its own. Planning began in 1992, the first construction started in 1996, first line opened in 2002 and the project is still continuing with only 12.7 miles in operation. By comparison the DC metro system is currently 129 miles long of which about 50 miles are underground with construction starting in December 9, 1969 and the first 4.6 mile segment opening in March 27, 1976.
Italy had a corruption problem a few decades ago. They have done some major reform and things are better, but the reputation remains.
Note that Italy is not perfect. And like all cases of corruption it is worse in some areas than others. The construction costs project is about mass transit where Italy does fairly well, but they don't look at highways so we cannot say anything about how they do highways from the data here. (I'm sure someone reading this knows more than I do about Itally's highways and can comment)
Spain is the outlier for fast/cheap/good, but I hear that even Italy has gotten its act together, and the recent Rome subway was done quickly and cheaply. The Nordic countries also have a good reputation. England is pretty bad/comparable to the US in speed and cost.
Yeah, but Americans built a bridge that fell on people. American rails can't keep their trains on them (a crucial functionality of trains and Rails) and American pipes have poisoned thousands.
Fast, cheap, good. Pick none. The American construction mantra.
So far it's worked because of the reserve currency and technological progress. But the time of the American monopolar world is coming to an end. In twenty years, the bill will come due and instead of acting to liberate themselves, Americans will fall over themselves to justify their status quo - unable to reconcile the existential shame they feel at the thought that they inherited power the likes of which the world had never seen before and transformed it to impotence.
"The billionaires", "we do it to be safer", "the X are ruining it". All the while they drift into irrelevance, raging hopelessly at shadows while their own choices drive them to destruction
Spain is the second most mointanous country in the European Union after Austria. And not a desert. It also seems to be particularly efficient at building infrastructure.
Probably helps that wages are lower in Spain. Americans want cheap infrastructure but also want high wages and that's probably an impossible combination.
Sure, but wages + census makes a difference. The NY Times did a comparison of the construction of the 2nd avenue subway project after the governor took the 5th or 6th victory lap.
As I recall, the TBM used in NYC was “mannned” by 5x more workers than an identical machine in Paris. We’re talking like 50 people. France isn’t known for labor efficiency, but between the various labor agreements, minority/women owned employee and subcontractor requirements, etc that many extra hands were being paid. Whether they did anything is another story.
France does a vastly better job than America at things like HSR and one could hardly call the highly unionised and regulated labour environment 'cheap' over there.
I'll bite. He is probably talking about Hongkong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, China. They all build infra much faster than the US. If we move south, then Malaysia and Singapore also build very fast. For Europe, France builds much faster than the US, but it is more centralised.
Part of it is the fact that they do it so much so they’re very good at it. China has laid more concrete since 2000 than the rest of the world combined prior to 2000. So the Chinese have a lot of expertise and a lot of the supply chain, and for example in Singapore the Chinese have built a lot.
By the way, much of the same can be said about manufacturing.
In the US a lack of construction has caused the industry to atrophy.
It's a bit like the baby boom. The US built a lot in the 50s and 60s. Especially road construction, most of the road infrastructure was built over a short period around the 50s-60s.
There was a long period where very little maintenance or construction was required.
Now we are seeing the structures all start to deteriorate at the same time.
Singapore has relatively efficient bureaucracy and few private landowners with few rights to challenge projects, but it also has low wage migrant workers from India working all night on them.
Alon Levy is the most accessible source for this kind of cross-national comparision. https://transitcosts.com/ and https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/03/03/we-gave-a-talk... is a good place to start.