Friday, 22 October 2010

Putting stuff into perspective

Neil Craig compares what it costs to build bridges and tunnels in the UK and elsewhere (right at the end of the post), and concludes that 12/13 of what we pay must be for red tape.

My latest blogpost: Putting stuff into perspectiveTweet this! Posted by Mark Wadsworth at 14:27

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10 comments:

James Higham said...

Nice argument for small government.

22 October 2010 at 14:56
Lola said...

Erm - I was a highway design engineer in a previous life. So the answer is 'yes' - it's bureaucracy. Hence the problems with Defence procurement.

The only conclusion to solve all this stupidity is that you have to sack the bastards. Reform after reform has failed. So sack them.

This of course makes HS2 utterly risible. Just for a DBFO bid from a range of contractors and see if anyone wnats to do it. If not. Don't.

22 October 2010 at 15:08
Mark Wadsworth said...

JH, that's his point.

But he mentions the Millau Viaduct in France, which is hardly a 'small government'. I think the big difference is that they don't have NIMBYs. PS, that viaduct is not particularly long but it is stupendously high. I saw a telly programme about its construction on Quest (Freeview Channel 38), it is absolutely incredible. Either way, it cost about the same as the Millennium Dome, which is basically a big tent.

L, for the benefit of people like me, DBFO stands for Design, Build, Finance and Operate. But our government even manages to mess up the whole PFI stuff, it's all jobs for the boys, isn't it? See also cost of Olympics park rising from £3 billion to £13 billion.

22 October 2010 at 15:20
Chuckles said...

Applying Occam's Chainsaw, should we not conclude that it is simply that the British are totally shit at anything that they do?

Unlike the Canadians, who when they decide not to do something, don't do it very well.

22 October 2010 at 16:50
Tim Almond said...

Mark,

Three differences with France...

1. They have a lot more land in general.

More importantly, though:-

2. The peasants live in the countryside, the middle classes live in towns. France doesn't have the same romanticised view of the countryside that we have. The only times they get excitable is when the countryside is genuinely deserving of getting excited about (like around the Camargue, the Marais Poitevin and so forth.

3. The French don't own their houses as much. Far more private renting, so there's a lot less vocal activity about their house prices, I mean, newts and bats.
3.

22 October 2010 at 17:48
Mark Wadsworth said...

Ch, Brits are incredibly good at lots of things. That's how we earn the money to fund all the other crap - like welfare state, house price bubble, bank bail outs, EU membership, millions of jobsworths and so on.

JT,
1. Yeah but British NIMBYs will complain about anything being built within a miles of them. You can't tell me that France is so sparsely populated that none of these new roads, power stations etc doesn't come within a mile of anybody?

2. and 3. Probably true.

22 October 2010 at 19:41
Robin Smith said...

That's right. When we at planning ask for a bridge to be built to avoid screwing the entire road network, before 2000 new homes are built, the developer creates a huge red tape nightmare trying to make the community pick up the cost.

Bang on there!

23 October 2010 at 00:56
Bayard said...

This is just another way that Labour "invested in public services" i.e. increased the number of bureaucrats, except in this case they could fund those jobs from the capital expenditure budget, so not only jobs for the boys, but increased spending on infrastructure to boast about - nice!

23 October 2010 at 09:44
John B said...

One obvious problem with NC's figures is that he's adjusting historical projects for general inflation. This is a daft thing to do for construction projects, where the main inputs are skilled and semi-skilled labour (the cost of which rises faster than GDP, never mind CPI/RPI).

Interesting thing: the levels of cost you see in the UK for this kind of project also tend to apply in Australia, NZ, the US and Canada. I suspect that as Mark says, this reflects the relative levels of NIMBYism versus accepting the government's Grand Plans in Anglosphere countries...

25 October 2010 at 08:46
Mark Wadsworth said...

JB, you can adjust the cost of the Millennium Dome as much as you like, it cost more than the Millau Viaduct, which was completed about five years later.

PS, the Dome is very impressive and I Iike it, but it's not that impressive.

25 October 2010 at 08:52

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