Regulations, unions, different jurisdictions blocking a project do happen in many other developed countries, but US price tags seem to be higher. Why does a NYC subway revamp cost so much more than doing the same thing in another global mega city like London?
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The US is **huge**. It’s bigger than India with a fraction the population. Much of infrastructure cost is distance, to go a long way you need a lot of track, and ties, and wires, and …
While the city limits of London are twice NYC, the subway goes out into Long Island and other places.
When you say “do the same thing”, I doubt that greatly. The US tends to put off inexpensive infrastructure projects in favor of big projects funded by the federal government. In the NYC case, it’s more desirable to wait and get the whole country to pay for subway projects than do cheap ones with NYC taxes.
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