As someone who has worked on a few commuter rail, intercity, and transit rail projects, I find this discussion to be very interesting.

I tend to agree somewhat with OPB that there have been some noticiable excesses with certain agencies and contractors. But, this is also like the blind man trying to describe the elephant, which part are you describing, and how does that part work? If you don't see the whole picture, you can tend to get parts of it wrong.

I also agree with mook and track work, too. The biggest cost factors and differentials I;ve faced are based on very real design needs and factors, like working in built out environments and rights of way, with lots of existing utility relocation, and secondary engineering to create a "fully usable" right of way. That is often not the condition in rural Arizona or Wyoming where 3 million a mile is fine for adding a track to an unobstructed right of way. This is not the highly built out and urbanized environment we are doing most commuter and/or transit track work or construction in.

To be fair OPB, your $2-3 million for track also doesn't include signaling, stations, electrification, grade crossings, grade separations, or condemnation of right of way, and realignment of streets and othe local subsystems. We spent a furtune on the Pasadena Gold Line on a small storm drain relocation, after the City of Pasadena staff "saved" nearly $40 million over LACMTA's orignial "bloated" consultant design for the reloctaion.

I have seen some firms blatently rip off public agencies with gold plated designs, with exhorbitant costs, complete with political kickbacks "recycled" as "legal" campaign contributions (aka "bribes"). But, it's not just track and construction costs that are sometimes out of control or subject to questionable costs and contracting. Lately, I've seen much more of that type of waste, fraud, and abuse, including political monies flowing freely, with many of the recent fare card contracts, and for a recent "sole source" light rail vehicle order.

I've also seen agencies that are relatively honest, well managed, and build very cost effective projects with good controls. These are often run by decent and focused elected officials, who want real outcomes, and leave less room for such costly and wasteful manipulations. Contract steering and fraud do occur in many areas of public contracting, and is often all too frightenly common these days. But, this is increasingly a problem of politicians with their hands out for more "legal" and often "secret" campaign bribes, which our Supreme Court seems to think is a special corporate "right"??? If you want that stopped, then just make it a felony for government contractors to give, and our elected leaders to accept, "any" corporate campaign contributions from such firms who inend to go after "government" contracts. Yes, simply ban any firm who has given money from recieving any governmetn contract. Just magine what that would do to Defense contract costs?

The studies I've seen do indicate that we pay more for transit and rail construction than is the case in Europe. This is despite very similar regulatory, built environment, and labor costs. Part of this difference is clearly with the volume and experience with handling the politics, the influence peddling, and the larger number of competing contractors. These nations competitively bid lots of well designed rail and transit work, with lots of competing comtractors. In the US, we do a lot less rail and transit work, with a lot fewer contractors, with less oversight, less experienced public agency staff oversight, and much more political influence peddling for this limited amount of work.

Of course, the mouse loves this, as it is perfectly consistent with what he wants to believe. But, is this really the case with SMART, or his other favorites? As usual, with these sort of complex things, the truth lies somewhere in between. We sometimes pay too much, there is sometimes corruption, and it costs taxpayers money. But, right now it is the increasing corruption of our whole political "system" that is the much bigger threat, due to the unregualted money and influence peddling in our political system.

That bigger problem may require some of that "eternal vigilance" that our forefathers said would be required to keep our national honor, integrity, and freedom. Remember, that in a democracy, if you don't pay attention to the people you elect, then you get the government that you deserve