Why does transit infrastructure cost so much in the U.S.?

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Why does transit infrastructure cost so much in the U.S.?
Dylan Miettinen
Mar 28, 2022

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It costs a lot to build in the U.S.

“We do spend a lot more money here in this country, and it seems to be particularly acute in New York. But the kind of a cost per mile of building new transit, you know, is substantially higher than other developed countries with similar economies and democratic structures,” said Paul Lewis, policy director of the Eno Center for Transportation, a nonprofit think tank.

Take transit projects in Paris and Madrid, for example — they cost around $160 million to $320 million per mile, according to an analysis by the Eno Center. Similar investments in the U.S. cost far more.

Los Angeles’ Purple Line, for example, clocked in at $800 million per mile and San Francisco’s Central Subway cost around $920 million per mile. And the heavyweight? New York City’s Second Avenue Subway, at a per-mile cost of $2.6 billion. (Oh, and don’t forget New York’s East Side Access tunnel. That came in at a cost of $3.5 billion per mile of track.)

According to a 2021 Eno Center analysis, the U.S. spent an average of 50% more on a per-mile basis for both at-grade and tunnel transit systems than other peer countries. Highways and roads are costly, too. A 2019 paper from the Brookings Institution found that spending on interstate construction more than tripled from the 1960s to the 1980s. ... Meanwhile, a report card by the American Society of Civil Engineers gives U.S. infrastructure an overall grade of C-.

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