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Comment by tmh79 | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me like the biggest things that have changed are the safety regulations on the construction process itself and the finished product. The golden gate bridge was built in a few years, but with a few worker deaths. Building a new bridge like the golden gate today would likely be illegal, and take ~25 years.

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That doesn't explain the difference in time/cost between current-day USA and current-day France or Japan. All three have modern safety and environmental regulations, yet two can complete jobs faster and for less money.

Maybe you don't understand the real incentives at work? In the US, it is jobs, jobs, jobs. Long, drawn out projects keep hardhats working for years. It's not about outcomes, which is a big part of the problem.

Possibly true, but the parent to my comment suggested the problem was safety/environmental regulation, which is unlikely to be the main contributor to the problem.

Sort of. That other developed countries do it cheaper suggests that having sufficient safety/environmental regulation is not the problem, but our particular implementation of such could still be the problem (if it was particularly redundant or cumbersome).

I can't explain the difference, but I bet that infrastructure costs have gone up drastically there as well.

The Port Mann bridge outside of vancouver was replaced in 6 years from the first twinkle in a politician's eye to the completion of the project

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Mann_Bridge

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