Americans pay five times as much for infrastructure as Paris or Tokyo

So says this Bloomberg column.

American taxpayers will shell out many times what their counterparts in developed cities in Europe and Asia would pay. In the case of the Second Avenue line and other new rail infrastructure in New York City, they may have to pay five times as much.

Amtrak is just as bad. Its $151 billion master plan for basic high-speed rail service in the Northeast corridor is more expensive than Japan’s planned magnetic levitating train line between Tokyo and Osaka, most of which is to be buried deep underground, with tunnels through the Japan Alps and beneath its densest cities.

And then people wonder why Americans are more skeptical of government. In fairness, part of it is a parasitic legal system. We looked at skepticism about Amtrak's costs before here.