[akgerber]

America has gotten pretty bad at tunneling, and it's much more expensive here than in Spain or France.

Madrid buried its M30 high for far less money: http://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/projects/m30_madrid/ Note that the project included two contracts that included >4km highway tunnels, neither of which cost more than $1B USD.

There were differences, of course. But read up on American tunneling costs versus those in Asia or non-English-speaking Europe, if you want to better understand why we can't have nice things.

[mmanfrin]

  But read up on American tunneling costs

Where? I'm kind of interested as to why it's so much more expensive here (other than the obvious labor cost and probably-more-stringent safety regulation)?

[_delirium]

One difference (though I won't venture a guess for what % of the cost difference it account for) is that the U.S. has a much more drawn out and less final decision-making process. The national legislature passes very general laws, like the Clean Water Act, and charges an administrative agency with implementing them, and the courts with interpreting them and resolving disputes over what they mean. States do something similar. A city that wants to do something like build a metro line must therefore pass a series of these general requirements. They do things like prepare environmental impact statements, noise-abatement statements, seek EPA and other agencies' approval of plans, seek state approval of plans, etc. Various stakeholders or members of the general public can challenge these plans at each stage (sometimes up to a dozen or so agencies may be involved). If the plans make it through that stage, such people can then sue in state or federal court, using any of these dozens of laws, looking for an injunction to halt construction, modifications to the plans, etc. The end result of all this is a lot of delay and expense, even apart from any actual construction issues.

In many other countries the process is somewhat more legislative. A city proposes a metro line, and seeks the direct approval of higher levels of government: there are discussions, hearings, and then the plans are passed into law. Once the plan is law, then it's law: the legislature is presumed to have weighed the pros and cons and made the decision, so you can usually no longer challenge it on environmental grounds, noise-pollution grounds, or anything else, because that power is not delegated to agencies or courts.

In short: the U.S. both has a lot more layers of government (city, transit district, county, state, national), and delegates much more case-by-case decision-making power to administrative agencies and courts.

[toomuchtodo]

Corruption.

http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/06/06/study-corrupt-states-s...

"According to research published in the journal Public Administration Review, states with higher levels of public corruption spend more money on highways and construction. The study found highway and construction projects and police programs provide the most opportunities for lawmakers to enrich themselves, according to Governing Magazine, and are positively correlated with state levels of corruption. Meanwhile, highly corrupt states also spend relatively less on health, education, and welfare — categories that were less susceptible to graft and bribery, the report found."

[vonmoltke]

Interesting how Texas and North Carolina managed to avoid the corruption endemic in their neighbors. In the case of Texas, though, there is plenty of localized corruption. Dallas proper and its southern suburbs are dirty as shit. The northern suburbs, not so much. I get the impression Massachusetts has something similar, with Boston metro being far more corrupt than the rest of the state.

[rayiner]

And Spain isn't corrupt?

[toomuchtodo]

I didn't say it wasn't. The data from the link I posted only had US data.