ML-Implode News - Why The U.S. Pays More, Gets Less Infrastructure

U.S. construction costs are among the world's highest... last year, Tracy Gordon of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and David Schleicher of Yale Law SchoolÂ examined 144 planned and finished rail projects in 44 countries and found that the four most expensive on a per-kilometer basis (and six of the top 12) were in the U.S.
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In a 2012 Bloomberg View piece, New York land-use and transit writer Stephen Smith blamed over-reliance on outside consultants, overly ambitious station architecture and a legal system that favors contractors over the agencies paying them to build things. Gordon and Schleicher agreed that the legal system may be an issue... "it might be that common-law systems provide legal protections for property owners -- allowing more lawsuits over noise, smoke, and other nuisances, as well as limits on eminent domain -- that increase costs by forcing the government to pay off opponents or to locate projects inefficiently to avoid angering property owners."
... Others have argued that labor laws governing infrastructure projects drive up costs Because the focus of U.S. unions is now often so narrow, it appears that they are also able to negotiate more generous (or at least more expensive) benefits for their members than the ones provided at a national level in the U.K. and France.

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Why The U.S. Pays More, Gets Less Infrastructure