UK's infrastructure is too expensive: Railways, Trams, and Roads all cost more

It seems to be, which is really ruining many aspects of society.

One hears all the stories back from the 40s and 50s where a group of neighbors or interested people just got together, bought some materials and built up a club house or community center or pool or any number of things in a few weeks. So towns had all these amenities because they were cheap and easy to build comunally.

Today to build even a small club house for the kids in the community for instance, you'll need to raise millions of dollars to pay off permits and inspections and lawyers and insurance and professional builders (since they won't let you build it yourself). So hardly anything can be done, nobody can afford it.

Arguably sure, the quality of the club house today, if it could be built, is better. But does it matter? How much do we lose by not being able to build hardly anything? That clubhouse from the 50s might be a bit rough around the edges but in most cases it is still standing 70+ years later and has brought joy to counless people.

Not really. Numerous examples world over of first world countries/ expensive cities managing to get infra done (Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore)

What's really happening in many western capitalist societies, both the rich landowning class as well as the unions dominate and capture the regulatory authorities and use the "system" to increase friction and costs for things that could reduce their own wealth extraction (land being taken away, more efficient construction) even if it's in the broader interest of the nation. Indeed this awesome flex of power of individual or small group wealth extraction over total system efficiency is seen as a highly positive ideology and is not all that far from third world countries where wealth extraction from corruption is seen as just a way of life.

As usual the key is how a society strikes a balance. The Western democracies of the 20th century did know how strike a balance pretty well - perhaps because of the existential threat of first the Great Depression, then the Nazi and then the Russian threat. Perhaps removal of existential threats that necessarily require a society to come together encourages private profiteering.

I bet, even digging by hand, the Victorians did it cheaper.

HS2 is too expensive, sure, but the LHC is built next to ~a century of research institutions and took a very long time, whereas trains can actually be on somewhat tight schedules in the places where it actually matters and requiring bulldozing a fuckload of expensive land, houses, and history etc.

I think you're vastly underestimating just how incompetent the large majority of people are (not just NHS/UK, the world, the dumber you are the more you breed etc) - we're being overrun

And in addition to queuing, we also seem to enjoy bureaucracy. There will have been a decade of planning employing dozens if not hundreds of people before a shovel is in the ground.

Then of course every new station has to be ‘special’ in some way. So we pay some architects firm absurd amounts to use Tibetan Yak hair insulated, Alaskan larch clad stations for some weird Green box ticking exercise.

This translates as, you need to dry boreholes along the place, take samples, send the samples to a laboratory, get the data, save the data, store the data, build a system that deals with the data (because different laboratories have different methods) standardise everything, and present the data. You need to do that every month or so.

You need to make sure that the watercourses are suitable for fishes and other animals. 40 years ago, you had a watercourse, you threw a 200mm pvc pipe, call it a culvert and carry on. Now if you really want to preserve the watercourse you need a super oversized culvert that can contain the whole watercourse. But such a culvert is dangerous (people can go inside), so you need to install a grill. Now you need to study the flood risk of the culvert with a blocked grill.

That is in addition to the multiple flood risk assessment that need to be done for a linear project, basically one for each watershed that it crosses. An what if the design changes for whatever reason, like not being compliant with the flood risk assessment? Oh you need to start again, and repeat everything.

Plus in engineering, every time you change something in any of the steps, you need at least 4 pair of eyes to check the change.

So the reason is bureaucracy. These rules are important, but in linear engineering projects, they do impose a high toll on the project price, because you need to make sure they comply on every mile of the project.

That is from my point of view, I am pretty sure there are other stuff that increases the price.

De rigueur for the UK ... even when peoples lives depend on the subject of those contracts.

We're a rotten/ing country.

I earn poor money relative to a comparative US citizen, but I wouldn't swap places if given the chance.

I walk my kids to school, and local schools are pretty good.

I cycle them a couple miles down the canal to the local sports centre for cheap swimming and recreation. I have many free high quality playgrounds nearby within walking and cycling distance, and streams and woods to play in. As a result my family can get away with a single medium sized car and use it infrequently.

I don't think there are many places in the - especially affluent areas - where this would be the case in the US, but I may be wrong.

I paid little for university and get free healthcare, which has been excellent quality whenever I've needed it (including for the birth of my two kids).

My employer gives me 30 days leave a year, with the option to buy more (and I do). There's no implicit pressure not to. I was able to take 6 months of after the birth of each of my kids on shared parental leave, which my employer had a legal duty to allow me if asked.

There are many beautiful historical places to visit for little money. The coast in any direction is within a day's drive and a varied holidays can be had without flying.

My country has in the pipeline 100GW of wind power, meaning that in a couple of decades energy is likely to be abundant and cheap if on a smart plan.

We do lots wrong as a country, and I haven't listed the negatives, but Britain is far from a failed state.

It can be cheaper of course but never cheap.