The largest PROPOSED infrastructure project in history would be the Transatlantic Tunnel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_tunnel
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-04/trans-atlantic...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_tunnel
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-04/trans-atlantic...
Cost: $88 billion to $175 billion
Seriously, what is going on? Why is our country like this?? When is it going to change? Is it going to change?
Should I just move to china? Seriously. I've considered it. Or India. Or even south america. I continue to ask myself, why do I choose to live in the U.S.? Because I was born here? Is that a good enough reason?
A transatlantic tunnel would be 3500 miles, that's 350 times longer. Its completely unknown technology - no-one has ever submerged a vacuum tunnel, and no-one has build a mag-lev that actually goes 4000mph. And they're telling us it can be done for $50 mio/mile, less than a tenth of a regular bridge? I know it doesn't scale linearly, but I'd expect such a tunnel to be more, not less, expensive pr. mile. At the same mile-cost as a bridge, it'd cost $1942 bln.
I did a back-of-an-envelope calculation when this came out a while ago, that if all plane passengers from London to New York (can't remember the number now) were to switch to such a train, tickets would have to cost an average $10.000, one way, to cover 5% maintenance, interest and ROI.