Sydney Metro

[Gazza]

A lot of the cost escalation has come from a couple of things

-A desire to transfer risk. You see all these big consortiums handling projects on behalf of government because the government is terrified of doing big projects, so they make it someone else's problem and they charge through the nose to carry this risk.

-Too many white collar staff on projects. Related to the above, eg you have several big consortia bidding on projects. These projects are highly complex, so you are paying to have designs done separately 3 or 4 times.

Previously governments would have more inhouse expertise in their department of public works. They would do the design, and then just farm it out to a builder, and act as a simple construction manager.

[timh]

In the case of Rosehill I expect some of the extra cost is also to do with the soil decontamination works, which I understand is no simple task.

Regardless seeing the high cost of projects like Sydney Metro and, to a lesser extent, GCLR Stage 4 has made me pretty pessimistic about the prospects of us getting Brisbane Subway anytime soon

These huge toll motorway tunnels that have been floated around recently (Gympie Road, Centenary) I can only imagine the government expects to be largely privately funded by TransUrban because they are surely going to cost in excess of $1bn per kilometre as well, as car tunnels have to be built much larger than rail, and include all the added safety stuff (additional ventilation, escape tunnels etc)

[ozbob]

https://x.com/ozbob13/status/1833530802422132961

[ozbob]

https://x.com/ozbob13/status/1838232373986800024