“Do you remember that scene in The Dark Knight with the Joker and the piles of cash? Yeah, it is essentially that.”

—Alon Levy, researcher at NYU’s Transit Costs Project, describing American infrastructure spending (Vice, 2024)

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America once built at an epic scale. The Empire State Building rose in 410 days. The Hoover Dam in five years. New York City’s original subway system — just over nine miles with 28 stations — was completed in four years at the dawn of the previous century.

Today, a fourth of our way through the current century, we spend decades discussing how to build a single mile of subway tunnel, then billions more actually building it. The Second Avenue Subway’s first phase, just 1.8 miles with three stations, cost $4.45 billion, making it the most expensive subway project per mile in world history at $2.5 billion per mile. Generations of New Yorkers were promised this line in 1929. Many who were children when the project was proposed died years before a single station would open.

American transit projects routinely cost five to ten times more than our international counterparts’ while taking years longer to complete. Madrid, for example, laid 35 miles (56 km) of new subway in just four years (1995-1999) at roughly $50 million per mile. Seoul’s Line 9, 16.8 miles of almost entirely underground track, broke ground in April 2002 and opened in July 2009 (~7 years) and cost about $69 million per mile.

How did the country that built the Hoover Dam, the Interstate Highway System, and the world’s first great subway network become so incapable of basic infrastructure development?

A Century of Bureaucracy

The New York City subway’s birth in 1904 marked a triumph of American ambition and capability. By the 1920s, the city had expanded this network exponentially through the Dual Contracts, agreements signed in 1913 between the city and two private transit companies that laid the groundwork for what would become the largest subway system in the world.

For generations, the subway represented the best of American infrastructure: fast, efficient, and constantly expanding. Through the 1940s, New York added new lines and stations with remarkable speed. It took the city only a few decades to build an entirely new network of subway lines, complete with over 100 stations — The Independent Subway System (IND) — which extended service into previously unreachable neighborhoods, democratizing mobility for millions.

In the 1970s, a fiscal crisis forced the newly formed Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to prioritize basic maintenance over expansion. Planned extensions — like the long-promised Second Avenue Subway — were delayed or canceled. Construction finally began in 1972 as part of the ironically titled “Program for Action” (an ambitious transit expansion plan that was never fully realized) but was halted in April 1975 due to the crisis, with only a few short, isolated segments of tunnel completed.

When the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway finally opened 42 years later, in 2017 — nearly a century after its conception — it was a pyrrhic victory. Yes, they’d (finally) gotten it done… but it cost more than any project in the subway’s history and added just three stations to a system that once expanded by dozens within similar timeframes.

It’s easy to dunk on a century-long gap between proposal and completion of about half a 5K of track for about half the net worth of Steven Spielberg, but I want to offer the city planners some good faith. If we only count years when construction was underway, how long did the Second Avenue Subway take?

The Program for Action dropped in 1968. The first phase of construction began in 1972 and ended in 1975. Modern construction officially began in April 2007, when the MTA awarded a tunneling contract to a consortium of Schiavone Construction, Skanska USA Civil, and J.F. Shea Construction. After approximately 10 years of construction, the line opened on January 1, 2017: three new stations (96th Street, 86th Street, and 72nd Street) and 1.8 miles of tunnel at a cost of $4.45 billion.

Combined, we get about 13 years of actual construction. The first effort cost around $63 million (~$320 million in today’s fiat). The second effort cost $4.45 billion. Thirteen years and $4.77 billion to complete 1.8 miles of track.

Why American Subway Projects Cost So Much

The Featherbedding Problem

The Second Avenue Subway used four times more labor per meter than similar projects in Madrid or Paris. Why? Union work rules prevent efficiency.

European tunnel boring machines run with 15-20 workers per shift.

New York City? Up to thirty people, many of them standing around watching others work.

The difference stems from how trades are organized. Spanish projects often use workers trained across multiple disciplines. American construction, by contrast, relies on rigid job categories. For example, American electricians can’t touch plumbing issues and vice versa, creating cascading delays when simple problems arise.

Inefficiency infects the entire organizational structure. While Madrid Metro operates with small, specialized in-house teams focused on execution, American transit projects drown in layers of oversight. The East Side Access project, an infrastructure initiative that connected the Long Island Rail Road to Manhattan’s East Side, exemplifies this: the initiative employed over 100 “phantom employees” (likely managers) who didn’t contribute meaningfully to the project.

The Consultant-Industrial Complex

American transit agencies have outsourced their brains to consultants who get paid by the hour. The MTA recently approved a $186.6 million consultant contract for Phase 2 of the Second Avenue Subway alone; the project’s consultants have already collected checks to the tune of $665 million dollars for three redesigns over 31 years.

The damage extends beyond inflated budgets. As agencies hollow out their in-house expertise, they squander institutional knowledge. By 2011, the MTA had slashed its capital projects management team from 1,600 employees to just 124 overseeing $20 billion in investments. One agency staffer admitted, “it was the consultants who knew everything about past projects rather than agency staff” — creating a vicious cycle that ensures agencies remain dependent on the very consultants driving up costs.

Regulatory Hell

Try to build anything in America and you’ll drown in paperwork. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) adds 3-5 years to transit projects through environmental reviews that nobody reads. The Second Avenue Subway’s environmental review (for Phases 1 and 2 combined) was 11,000 pages and required 147 permits. That stack of paper cost hundreds of millions and delayed construction for years.

Then there’s the Buy America Act, which forces agencies to pay premium prices for domestic equipment. The MTA paid $75 million for tunnel boring machines that European projects get for about €50 million.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Spain, far from a deregulated capitalist utopia, needed just a 19-page environmental assessment for a four-mile subway extension. And based on my amateur opinion, the environment seems fine over there.

The Politics of Disruption

Americans’ aversion to construction disruption adds even more to project costs, particularly when agencies prioritize minimizing traffic impacts over efficiency.

For example, Los Angeles’ Purple Line extension (currently under construction) costs $930 million per mile partly because The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority limits tunneling to night shifts. It doesn’t have to be like this. Berlin built its U55 line for approximately $286 million per mile while maintaining continuous construction in its busy downtown government district. Its approach to construction prioritized efficiency and speed, accepting temporary disruptions to complete projects faster and cheaper.

Then there’s the community board circus empowered by America’s vetocracy and NIMBYism. In New York, local advisory groups can effectively veto major infrastructure. The Second Avenue Subway’s 86th Street station relocated twice to appease complaints from local residents.

The U.S.’s bespoke stations and infrastructure designs exacerbate these problems, extending timelines and requiring too much community input. Madrid, by contrast, used the same designs across multiple infrastructure projects, ruthlessly avoiding architectural novelty and hyper-localized design decisions. Madrid also paid workers based on results, not hours. And, when residents complained about 24/7 construction noise, engineer Manuel Melis Maynar asked a simple question: “Do you want three years of moderate disruption or eight years of mild disruption?” They chose three.

The Fix

We don’t need more money for transit. We need to stop burning what we already spend. Here’s how:

Labor Reform

Kill the byzantine work rules. Adopt Spain’s “multi-activity worker” approach and empower workers to handle multiple trades.

Pay for results, not time spent. Milan’s Metro Line 5, built for $175 million/mile, pays its workers bonuses for hitting milestones, not for showing up.

Lastly, design regulations with the goal of building. Maynar, the engineer behind Madrid’s efficient metro expansion, shares a few recommendations:

• Public authorities should maintain small in-house teams rather than outsourcing to consultants.

• Build as fast as possible, even if it’s disruptive. Fast construction is cheaper than slow construction. If given a choice, residents prefer a few years of moderate disruption over a decade of inconvenience.

• Award contracts based on technical merit, speed, and cost — as opposed to only cost.

• Separate design from construction to allow flexibility when you hit unexpected challenges underground.

• Specify unit costs in contracts to prevent extortionate pricing during inevitable change orders.

Standardization

Standardization is crucial for controlling costs. While New York designs “bespoke” subway stations, each requiring its own contractors and custom components, cities like Barcelona use standardized, mass-produced designs.¹ A standardized approach may sacrifice architectural uniqueness, but it dramatically reduces engineering costs, simplifies maintenance, and accelerates construction teams as they gain experience with repetitive designs.

When every station is a unique snowflake, costs multiply at every stage — from initial blueprints to specialized construction techniques to custom replacement parts decades later.

Slash Red Tape

America’s environmental review process and Buy America requirements have led to a regulatory quagmire that adds years of delays and billions in costs to transit projects. The solution is threefold:

1. Create a unified federal fast-track for transit approvals that consolidates the current patchwork of 16+ separate approval processes into a single, comprehensive review.

1. Reform the Buy American Act to include total lifecycle costs in procurement decisions rather than just upfront costs, allowing agencies to rapidly purchase alternatives when domestic products aren’t competitive or available.

1. Establish regulatory sandboxes where innovative transit projects can test streamlined approval processes, demonstrating which reforms actually deliver faster, cheaper infrastructure without compromising safety or environmental standards.

Centralize Authority

America’s infrastructure approval system has evolved into a fatal mess of competing veto points. Studies show the average transit project can face over 16 separate approval processes across federal, state, and local agencies, with a typical environmental review taking seven years. When every stakeholder has veto power, nothing gets built.

Successful transit-building nations centralize authority. London’s Crossrail was authorized through Parliament’s hybrid bill process, which consolidated dozens of approvals into a single legislative decision. This allowed construction to begin within three years of formal proposal — a timeline inconceivable in America.

A Crossroads for American Infrastructure

Rather than merely copying European models, we should leverage our unparalleled strengths in venture capital, technological innovation, and entrepreneurship to fundamentally reimagine infrastructure delivery. By creating regulatory sandboxes for infrastructure experimentation and establishing outcome-based — rather than process-based — approvals, America can develop a new generation of fast, cheap building techniques that combine the decisive authority of Madrid with the disruptive innovation of Silicon Valley.

We used to lead the world in building things. New York’s original subway, built with remarkable speed in the early 20th century, shows what we’re capable of when we get out of our own way. We now face a choice: continue burning money on process, or get serious about building again.

—Brian Nuckols

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FOOTNOTES

¹ Madrid went even further, implementing what engineers call “ruthless standardization” — i.e., using identical components across their entire network. As documented in a Works in Progress analysis, this dramatically simplified engineering work and allowed construction crews to gain efficiency with each new station.