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The English-world is TERRIBLE at building transit. This is why. (www.youtube.com)
submitted 1 month ago by rcbrk@lemmy.ml to c/australia@aussie.zone
5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A well researched and referenced video (see yt description for references and spreadsheets), from Sharath of Building Beautifully.

The cost of building transit in the Anglosphere has spiralled out of control. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Hong Kong are all terrible at managing transit costs. Meanwhile, nations like France, Spain, South Korea and Turkey are running laps around the Anglosphere, building world-class transit at unprecedented speeds for prices up to four times cheaper. There is no reason for building transit to cost this much. Follow me as we unpack the staggering reasons that costs have spiralled out of control, and what we can do about it. Thank you to Jedwin Mok for appearing in this video! Jedwin introduced me to the transit costs crisis in mid-2025, which led me to ultimately create this video and interview him for it.

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[-] Nath@aussie.zone 8 points 1 month ago

I must get around to watching this video. I will say that I take exception to the thumbnail though: The Perth Metronet project finished up earlier this year, it costing $12.4 billion to roll out 72km of track.

On the surface, that comes out at about $172 million per kilometre. But, that is only part of the story. That money also paid for the construction/renovation of 18-23 stations, 8km of tunnels under the river for the new airport line, elevation of 5.5 km of track, removal of several level crossings, and a whole program to locally manufacture trains.

Just reducing the project to 'dollars per kilometre' would be super inaccurate for the overall result. But even then, that would be less than a quarter the implied cost of building a rail line in Australia from that thumbnail.

[-] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 month ago

this was one project that seemed to be done well

it seems unique .... east coat rail thing is a complete and utter fuck up over costing by billions. just look at the now cancelled inland rail,

personally I think we just admit we're incompetent, and outsource the entire thing to Chinese companies. including where to build as we seem to fuck that up as well.

[-] notgold@aussie.zone 2 points 1 month ago

📺Insert Utopia video about trains and costs. 📺

While China has built an amazing cross country high speed rail and some of the cities metros are better than anything I've seen, their maintenance of these systems remains my fear. I guess the maintenance would be done locally and managed by local authorities so should be alright.

this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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