Yeah, no, the US is definitely an outlier, building virtually any public infrastructure costs way more than it should. Tokyo can still build underground subway lines at 1/8th the cost:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-i...

The answer why is complex, but the two big factors seem to be red tape, specifically that standards are overengineered and it takes forever to get approvals, and lack of experience and existing construction infrastructure, so instead of having a well-greased machine like Singapore's that churns out line after line in rapid succession, you need to ramp up and ramp down for every single project.

What the article refers to is a cost estimate for the Koto Waterfront line, which hasn't been approved at this point, let alone started construction. Whether it will be built on budget is anyone's guess.

The route would also be in a relatively recently built area, so it's not hard to imagine why it would be cheaper to plan and execute that a route under Manhattan.

I don't know very much about NYC, but the comparison does not seem fair.

Tokyo's newest subway the Fukutoshin line, spanning some of Tokyo's most congested areas (Shibuya, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro), cost around $250m/km, so still around 1/4 of the NYC cost.

Where is this cost going? Manhattan has much harder soil and the new subway required an extensive dewatering and water proofing projects.

I have a very good friend who actually worked on this project. He was a supervisor level guy and would send me pictures from the tunnels. I believe his exact quote was "the MTA burns barrels of money like it's going out of style." The waste was unbelievably extreme. I kept telling him to write a book but he said if he did he'd never work in civil engineering again.

Ask him to do it anonymously? I'd love to read it!

Sadly true, but I wonder what that means because the layman in a democracy is called upon to be knowledgeable enough to identify whether their elected politicians are mismanaging projects, or if in fact this public transit project is doing well and on the way to success.

I know the ideal is that we can decide for ourselves, but the reality is that in most things in life, we lack the expertise.

I'm not a plumber, doctor, police officer, etc. Sometimes they are obviously right or wrong. Otherwise, I can try to second-guess them based on some limited or amateur knowledge here and there, but I know that when laypeople try that in regard to my profession, it very rarely helps them and can be a recipe for disaster. They don't even know what questions to ask.

In the end, IMHO we have to decide which experts to trust - this plumber or that one; this subterranean urban transport engineer or the other one. Thanks to the open societies in modern democracies, plus modern communication, we have a plethora of experts and voices to choose from, but it ain't perfect.

The layman is only called to be knowledgeable enough to identify whether their elected politicians are mismanaging projects after hearing expert testimony.

Which is the exact same way politicians can know whether projects are not mismanaged or over-budgeted by the construction companies, etc.

that's why good and fair journalism is so important. It should connect the dots and try to explain to the layman what's going on, while ideally being honest about the opinions of the paper and not having an explicit agenda (i am not really sure if i used that word right, for me it feels kinda extreme).

I see your point, but I my feeling is that the "unknown unknowns" of the New York situation might make up a 50% difference? But we're looking at a >200% difference.

As far as I'm aware, the biggest issues with building deep tunnels like this is everything that gets in the way - other tunnels, utilities, old buildings that might fall down, and rivers. The Crossrail project in the UK has a high pice tag (£15bn) but is also much larger, and given how old London and its infrastructure is, I would imagine has had to cope with a similar number of obstacles, if not more. I imagine Paris is in a similar place given its age.

> my feeling is that the "unknown unknowns" of the New York situation might make up a 50% difference? But we're looking at a >200% difference.

On what basis do you have any idea?

Your LOC analogy is totally ridiculous. The length of a subway line is a feature, not a meaningless statistic like LOC.

>Sometimes, there is no way for the layperson to analyze the situation on their own.

and that's precisely why oversight might fail and let corruption sneak in.

That's an extremely stupid analogy. Do you seriously think that the cost variability of civil infrastructure and software are comparable?