Why is it so expensive to build a bridge in America?

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People who have looked into the question have collected a range of fairly convincing explanations — though they come up short in a fundamental way. Let's quickly go through the major factors researchers have identified, in no particular order:

1. Expensive labor. From the top brass at New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority: "The MTA is required to overstaff projects so that the same [tunnel boring machine] work, for instance, that can be done in Spain with nine workers must be done in [New York City] with 25 workers."

2. Out-of-control private contractors. From Stephen Smith at Bloomberg: "Agencies can't keep their private contractors in check. Starved of funds and expertise for in-house planning, officials contract out the project management and early design concepts to private companies that have little incentive to keep costs down and quality up."

3. A crap procurement process. The classic American way to pay for a big project is to round up about half of the funding (or even less), start construction, and then use a sunk-cost-fallacy to get the rest. This, obviously, is not conducive to efficient or speedy projects. (Looking at you, California high-speed rail.)

There are probably a lot more, but as Alon Levy points out, it would be a mistake to focus too much on particular techniques or failures. The reality is that when it comes to cost and quality, America is doing basically everything wrong. Again, we're not just a bit behind the curve — we're ridiculously, embarrassingly behind the curve.

The fact that both left- and right-aligned institutions (public employee unions and private contractors, respectively) are implicated here is evidence that this isn't a typical left-right situation. And if we look internationally, both Singapore (very free-markety) and Sweden (unembarrassedly socialist) manage much cheaper building costs than America.

This is basically about our greedy and opaque political culture.

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