Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Not just for our minister, we pay a high price to build our roads as well

It takes more than S$4 Billion to build a 5-kilometer road. I'm referring to the Marina Coastal Expressway (MCE). This means that we can build another North East Line (NEL) which according to this website, it costs the government S$4.6 Billion to build the NEL and the line length is 20-kilometer. That's 4 times longer than MCE. What about KPE? According to Wiki, the approximate cost for building the KPE is about S$1.8 billion and the distance is 10 kilometers underground. I always have the perception that it is apparently more difficult to build roads underground right? But it seems to be the other way round in Singapore?

OK. Let's not talk about Singapore. Let's talk about Michigan, one of the more populated states in America. According to their official-state website, it was indicated that a mile of freeway through an urban area costs approximately US$39 million. 5km is about 3.107 miles. You do the math. It's not even half of what it takes to build our KPE.


You might say there are certain challenges in building the road due to difficult soil conditions and what have you. How about building a tunnel that is 4,000 meters above mean sea level? In Tibet, this tunnel is 3.3km long and the whole connected highway is 117km in distance. It cost the Chinese government US$139 million to construct the highway according to
Tibetan Review.


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