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For a while there, the construction costs were rising at 10% to 15% annually. This was making infrastructure projects incredibly expensive. Competition for cement and construction workers were among the factors driving these cost increases. Sound Transit got one lousy bidder for SeaTac station, and the bid was double their budget! Construction companies had too much work on their hands to bother.

But with the bursting of the housing bubble and the overall slowing of the economy, infrastructure projects should become less expensive. Also, the cost of acquiring land will likely go down. California is set to spend $3 to $4 Billion just buying land for their high speed rail link. How much would that land have cost if it were purchased two years ago, at the height of the California housing bubble?

Point being, these costs should subside in the coming years. Of course, they’re subsiding because the economy is cooling overall, meaning that tax revenues are going to go down. Will Sound Transit suffer a revenue shortfall because of this? Will the decrease in construction costs be more than enough to cancel it out? Hard to say. If anyone has answers to these questions, feel free to drop a line.

There’s a great article in the New York Times about the second Hudson River tunnel connecting New Jersey to Manhattan, and contrasting the technology being used (our beloved Tunnel Boring Machines) with the way the first tunnels were constructed 100 years ago.

The article also touches on the complicated intermodal interplay involved in making such changes. Terminating a few dozen more trains per day on Manhattan’s West Side means more pressure on city streets and subway systems, which in turn leads to calls for building out the rest of the system. And then you have the whole congestion pricing scheme changing people’s incentives:

Keeping up means raising tolls and fares at New Jersey Transit, Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road as well as at the Port Authority and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In addition, Gov. Jon S. Corzine wants to raise highway tolls by as much as 800 percent. New York State is mulling a plan to charge drivers $8 to enter a zone south of 60th Street in Manhattan. Drivers entering the city from New Jersey would pay an extra $3 or $4, something Mr. Corzine opposes.

Also check out the interactive feature if you really want to get your infrastructure geek on.

British Columbia knows how to make investments in infrastructure:

[T]he plan will likely see significant investment in rapid transit and dedicated bus lanes, such as the ones proposed for the centre of Douglas Street. On the Lower Mainland, it will likely see funding and a final route plan for the Evergreen SkyTrain Line to the northeast suburbs, rapid transit to the Fraser Valley, and the Millennium Line extension in Vancouver to the University of B.C., according to Global BC. It’s not known if the rapid transit plans will include the Island – transit advocates have long been pulling for light rail to connect downtown Victoria with the rapidly growing West Shore.

In December, Finance Minister Carole Taylor predicted B.C. will have a surplus of $2.1 billion for the 2007-08 fiscal year. She has remained quiet on what will be in her budget due out Feb. 19, though last week spoke about the possibility of a provincial carbon tax or a levy at the gas pumps.

It sure is nice that the province is willing to fund Vancouver’s SkyTrain. Meanwhile, here in Washington, The legislature is convening today to… hide the budget surplus in a sock drawer or something.