Can someone explain in plain numbers how one mile of railroad can cost £396 million unless the whole thing is cutting through the city center?
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.
Japan has totally different regulatory, employment and procurement systems than anywhere in Europe.
So why doesn't europe or britain adopt these different regulations and make their own system more efficient?
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.
A partial list: SCS JV: Skanska, Costain, Strabag. Align JV: Bouygues Travaux Publics, Sir Robert McAlpine and VolkerFitzpatrick. EKFB JV: Eiffage, Kier, Ferrovial, Bam Nuttall.
A fuller list: https://www.building.co.uk/focus/which-construction-firms-ha...
Soon it's going to need 3-4 incomes, and maybe relationships will have to move from couples/traditional families to 'polycules' sharing a home just to pay the bills.
* Government has an engineering corps that draft really detailed specs for all projects, and ensure compliance
* Laws that allow confiscating land in the name of public interest
The second item tends to be problematic in common law frameworks typical of the Anglosphere.
In the UK, those who know don't call the so-called 'DfT - Department for Transport', we call it Department for Roads, because that's what it is.
But those who actually know are not yet a majority. The majority think 'Dr Beeching' (an mere frontman), destroyed the railways, yet have never heard the name Ernest Marples. Since the Marples creature unleashed carnage decades ago, there hasn't been a single government in Westminster which has not been anti-railways.
Nobody wants 'HS2'. The railway industry does not want it. The PR for it is ridiculous even by Unicorn-chaining HM Gov standards (see: Gareth Dennis), even the contractors admit its a farce.
Not only does 'HS2' reflect the bigotry of UKpolitik against real civilised transport, but it reflects a much greater stagnation and overall decline in the 'yu-kay' formerly Great Britain.