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I’d agree with this except that France seems to be getting way better prices per mile, as mentioned in the article. What is France doing differently?

The NY Times did an expose on infrastructure expenses and found that France simply uses fewer people to build and doesn’t waste time asking for peoples opinions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

This tracks.

I live very close to several HS2 construction sites in London and frequently see dozens of people just stood around doing nothing.

France also has half the population density meaning that there are in fact fewer people to ask and fewer people negatively affected (per unit distance of rail for instance).

Counterpoint: Paris.

Paris Subway construction is much cheaper than anywhere in North America and yet they have a very high population density.

These metrics are almost meaningless when you use them this generically -- for the same reason Spain is on the lower end of EU countries ranked by population density yet contains some of the most densely populated regions in all of Europe (as mentioned in the article). Moreso than Paris.

Id also suggest that France is much less densely populated than the UK - less inhabitants to work around.

The population density of the UK (particularly England) feels staggering to this Swede.

Some examples (people/km^2):

    England:     434
    UK:          280
    Germany:     239
    France:      118
    EU:          109
    California:   98
    Texas:        43
    US:           37
    Sweden:       26
    All land:     16

Sweden has about half the population of London. I am probably within walking distance of more people than live in Sweden.

Sweden gets loads of tourists from e.g. Germany/The Netherlands just looking for peace/quietness.

Where do English people go for that? Scotland?

> Where do UK people go for that?

Brits don't want quietness. Instead they go to Germany and drink until they can't stand upright - and then continue to drink until they pass out.

Source: was a barkeeper many years ago in Munich. A group of half a dozen Manchester fans drank more in one night than what would last two days otherwise, it's absolutely insane. Australians also tend to drink a lot, but IME they tend to get rowdy when too drunk.

Does Germany not have laws restricting sale of alcohol to drunk people?

They have that in many countries but it doesn’t work. There is always someone who will sell booze to you, no matter the state you are in.

Maybe the brits who want quiet aren’t going to bars in Munich to seek it out? What a fucking ridiculous means to back up an equally ridiculous statement.

Yeah Scotland's very much up there, its known for having some incredibly remote regions.

Personally I go to Scotland, or sometimes Wales.

Though even within England, the population is highly concentrated in the South East, so the South West and North East have a lot of relatively sparsely populated areas.

Interestingly India is 435!

Yeah, UK by area is mostly Scotland, which is stunningly beautiful and quite empty. Also infrastructure there tends to be more basic; even main roads in the north of Scotland are often single lane with passing places.

Wales and Northern Ireland are smallish by land and not very densely populated (?) but not massive outliers I'd think.

One of my favorite things in Scotland was everyone waving at each other as one car stopped on the passing space as the other car drove past.

Even the SE has areas with surprisingly low population density. Outside of the urban areas much of the land is protected against development as national park/AONB/green belt.

Australia : 3

Paris and the surrounding area is densely populated. The rest of France is very rural overall it comes in at 105 per km^2. England, in contrast is almost as densely populated as India (434 per km^2). There are a lot more places to put things in France. As a consequence land in France goes for about €6k per h, while in England it's closer to €30k.

So - there's that.

but barcelona is more densely populated than london, yet it's metro didn't cost as much.

I've not seen a good reason to explain _why_ its so expensive.

Even if you do strict comparisons of only the capital, Parisian construction costs are lower than London's.

Consider that they are building the RER E extension for about 3.8B EUR for 28km, and Crossrail was 18.8B GBP (21.9B EUR) for 42km.

It feels that there are fundamental political and cultural issues with English speaking countries (common law?).

If you want to begin to understand this I recommend you read two books, in the following order: The Abolition of Britain - Peter Hitchens The Abolition of Liberty - Peter Hitchens

Synopsis: Two worldwide wars led the flower of Britain to be torn to shreds by shrapnel into rat food. The millions of broken homes, (furthered by the subsequent exodus of native Brits which continues somewhat to this day), and society which has never really recovered led to the spivs taking charge. Hence the phrase 'mediocre mafia'.

Things are changing for the better, and will continue to do so. But right now we are seeing the light of the past fade and the lunacy (PR1D3overPrinciples) of a nation only just coming to terms with this loss from 1914 onwards - hence 'special relationship' sucking up to 'USA'/'YU-ES-AY'.

> Things are changing for the better, and will continue to do so.

I'm curious as to what gives you cause for optimism. As an interested observer from Australia, it seems to me that the UK has a very bleak immediate to medium term future. But I'd be happy to hear why I'm wrong or what I'm missing.

> Isn't this an unavoidable curse of all maturing democratic/capitalistic countries and economies?

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.

There's a lot more context behind why we were better at building things in the 1940s and 50s than less regulation and bureaucracy.

For example we spent 7% of GDP every year on a government agency to build stuff - not because it was needed, just because it created jobs for people at the tail end of the Depression and first half of the War. Perhaps the entire industry that it fueled didn't die overnight and the millions of people they employed made building at scale during the largest economic expansion in American history helped.

Yes, in 1970s England, my junior school added a new swimming pool, largely paid for by community fundraising, and built by parents. My father was an architect and craftsman, who contributed design skills and labour.

In the 2000s, most old clubhouses and village halls had to be upgraded for disabled accessibility, or face closure. This usually meant rebuilding toilets, not just adding wheelchair ramps. Grants were available from local government. My father was retired by then, but did the designs and grant applications for several halls in his neighbourhood.

> Yes, in 1970s England, my junior school added a new swimming pool,

I attended an elementary school that had an olympic swimming pool, which was built just from parent donations because it didn't cost much at all to build. Dig a hole, pour some concrete, done.

Today I can't think of any elementary school around here that has any kind of swimming pool (let alone an olympic one) because it would take millions of dollars for permits and other BS fees.

No, it's a consequence of British rent-seeking culture, where all policy at the end of the day is evaluated by the question: does it make property prices go up or down, and if down we don't do it.

> Isn't this an unavoidable curse of all maturing democratic/capitalistic countries and economies? As the society matures, and people's incomes and standard of living rises, and the apparatus for doing such projects grows, it gets more costly to build the infrastructure that powered the very same improvements to get there?

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.

> reduce their own wealth extraction ... even if it's in the broader interest of the nation.

aka, they are being asked to make a sacrifice for the benefit of someone else. Of course they're not going to agree. No reasonable person will.

I don't see this as being wrong - it's in fact a feature of freedom and a high-rights country.

> I don't see this as being wrong - it's in fact a feature of freedom and a high-rights country.

That's precisely the point I'm making. The US in particular values this over common social good, so public services don't really come about.

> No reasonable person will.

Many societies operate differently and get stuff done, even highly capitalist economies like Singapore or Japan. I've even found China to be far more markets oriented than European societies.

Singapore and Japan (and to some degree China) are collectivist societies first and foremost, and capitalist only recently.

I wonder how "project cost expressed in terms of hours of labour at national median wage, per mile of track" compares to the Victorian times. That is, hours per mile.

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

It’s funny though, how productivity massively goes up per capita yet pay doesn’t really change much and despite each person today being the equivalent of many multiple people from yesterday, capitalists complain about how they can’t find enough affordable labor in a system known for its profit gouging and corruption. Something’s not right here…

Japan.