why do infrastructure projects in the United States take so long and so much money to build when Europe seems to get high speed rail and better infrastructure for faster and cheaper?

Question

why do infrastructure projects in the United States take so long and so much money to build when Europe seems to get high speed rail and better infrastructure for faster and cheaper?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

It’s all about political will. It’s more difficult to build infrastructure when you dedicate 800 billions a year to destroy other countries’s infrastuctures. On a more serious note, the US rely more on planes for mass transportation. High speed rail aren’t cheap at all : a TGV (french high speed train) line costs about 2 millions € per km, and a tgv costs about 25 millions per unit (typical tgv unit consists of 8 or 10 cars + two engines).