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Comment by zmix | Hacker News Reader

Better 16 billion... 18 billion... 22 billion... 34 billion... etc. We all know, how that goes, especially the city of Berlin, which built a cool new airport...

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The Berlin airport, in fairness, is a bit of an edge-case; cost/time overruns on that scale aren't normal.

I beg to differ. Stuttgart 21 underground train station [1]: Estimated cost 2009: €4.5 billion. Estimated cost 2022: Over €9 billion. Estimated start of operation: Six years later than anticipated (2025, or 15 years after construction started).

Another, recent example: German Cyber Threat Reporting Center that is supposed to report cyber threats to NATO is still not operational after five years and €60 million. Admittedly, not on a billion dollar scale, but the example shows how even a relatively simple task like creating reports is plagued by overruns.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 [2] https://www.bundesrechnungshof.de/de/veroeffentlichungen/pro...

These are three German projects, two of which are unrelated to rail, tunnelling or transport in general. And they're meant to be an example of why a tunnel in Austria and Italy would overrun by a factor of up to 3x?

The first one, "Stuttgart 21" is very much related to rail. From the referenced Wikipedia article:

> Stuttgart 21 is a railway and urban development project in Stuttgart, Germany. It is a part of the Stuttgart–Augsburg new and upgraded railway and the Main Line for Europe (Paris—Vienna)

Regarding tunneling:

> The current 17-track station is to be replaced by an underground 8-track through station.

This project started in 2006 and from what I can find, cost estimates have not changed much. The initial range was 6 to 12 billion Euros at 2006 prices. Converted to $ and adjusted for inflation, $11B is right in the middle of that range.

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