[aa-jv]

Austria tends to have pretty rigorous bean-counters overseeing budgets like this, especially when it comes to public-good services such as railway.

It is one of the things that makes living here so .. infuriating at times .. but also .. rewarding.

[zzbn00]

Interesting. In UK, I think the big construction companies would hire these bean-counters then use them to out-manoeuvre the ones that are hired to replace them. Quickly nobody knows what a reasonable price is, and the govmnt has to go with choice of one out of two overpriced bids. (I have no direct experience, this is just what it looks like from an observers perspective)

[aa-jv]

Chalk it up to the differences between socialist-adjacent and capitalist-adjacent societies, I guess ...