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According to the article it cost $4600 a day to build.

On a 8 hour work day on federal minimum wage that's only 52 workers being able to work on the entire project ignoring all machine and material costs.

Too right it couldn't be done today. Or there were a lot of costs accumulated by the project that were not assigned to the project.

I hope usd 4600 does not include labor costs of 10000 soldiers (salary, food, accommodation, etc.)

Classic government accounting problem. People look free to managers, so more stuff gets brought in-house than it should.

Oh balls, just realised I misread the comment about cost per meter as cost per mile so my calc is hilariously wrong!

Still the reported cost of the road at the tune excludes machinery and labour costs, it was purely material costs.