- station sizes (causing spend on stations to increase by a factor of 2)
- nonstandard systems (elevators, escalators, etc) (causing an increase over nominal best practices of approximately 1.35)
- inefficient procurement (how contracting works) (increase by a factor of 1.85, although this is a squishy)
- soft costs (design, planning, construction management, contingencies) (factor of 1.2, again fairly squishy)
- labor costs (factor of 1.5 over a well run transit system baseline)
so it's both the case that the labor costs are outrageous and that they're insufficient to explain the outrageous project costs.
Which is what I said, the difference in labor costs "helps", not that it's the sole explanation.
- station sizes (causing spend on stations to increase by a factor of 2)
- nonstandard systems (elevators, escalators, etc) (causing an increase over nominal best practices of approximately 1.35)
- inefficient procurement (how contracting works) (increase by a factor of 1.85, although this is a squishy)
- soft costs (design, planning, construction management, contingencies) (factor of 1.2, again fairly squishy)
- labor costs (factor of 1.5 over a well run transit system baseline)
so it's both the case that the labor costs are outrageous and that they're insufficient to explain the outrageous project costs.