Transit Cost Project Mentioned by Ezra Klein

One answer—the typical Republican answer—is that government can’t do the job and shouldn’t try. But the data doesn’t bear that out. The Transit Costs Project tracks the price tags on rail projects in different countries. It’s hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison here, because different projects are, well, different, and it matters whether they include, say, a tunnel, which is expensive for all the obvious reasons. Even so, the United States is notable for how much we spend and how little we get.