Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much
This is a serious issue, and I think the author does a disservice to it by focusing on unions as the problem. At their very worst, they are only a problem for operations costs, which rarely explain why infrastructure doesn&#x27;t get built. It is true that public service unions do have disproportionate political power, but they are also rarely the ones building the infrastructure, because construction is always up for bid by private contractors. And even if public unions <i>were</i> building these things, labor typically only accounts for 20-30% of construction costs, so they couldn&#x27;t possibly account for much of the 2-5x increase in costs compared to Spain or France.<p>The real issues at hand are bad planning, extravagant station designs, nominally-environmental NIMBY blockades, and plain old backwards procurement rules that affect all levels of US government. Alon Levy might claim that he doesn&#x27;t know the answers, but I&#x27;ve been following his blog since he started it and it makes it pretty clear how those things contribute. Hell, the extravagance of the stations alone probably account for 30% of the difference in costs. Nobody seems to blink an eye at massive underground stations with huge art installations and expensive tile facades...yet they end up costing 10-20x more than basic stations that serve their purpose just fine.<p>This is a severe problem for how much we build too. Those on the left like to blame blame conservatives for not wanting to build transit infrastructure, but one of the most conservative regions in the country serves as a counter-example: the Salt Lake Valley. Sure, SLC itself is slightly blue, but step outside the city itself by a mile and you&#x27;re in some of the reddest land you&#x27;ll find in the US. And yet those outlying conservative areas have been throwing their votes and money at UTA to build more and more. And if you look at what they&#x27;re voting on, it starts to make sense. They are building a very low cost, utilitarian, at-grade light rail line. They are optimizing signal priority and grade protection so they can get about 90% of the speed that a subway would give. Their stations are nothing more than simple concrete platforms. Simply put, they are getting a ton of transit for their money.<p>Compare that with Seattle, one of the most liberal cities in the US. We&#x27;re likely going to see a new transit initiative soon, and it is going to be voted down just like every other transit initiative in Seattle since the 50s. It&#x27;s gotten so bad than transit activists are worried that they won&#x27;t even have majority support within Seattle city limits. Gee, maybe the fact that it is going to cost $50B and take 40 years to build has something to do with it. I&#x27;m fairly liberal and inclined to vote for transit in general, but I just can&#x27;t justify paying hugely increased taxes for 40 years so I can finally have a subway stop in my neighborhood once I retire.