To never understand how it costs so much to build a road

[maddening]

The below link is for a news story announcing the opening of a new link Road, not a new concept and have seen many in the news previously, but the one thing that I can not get my head around is the cost of these things, this one is a 5.5km stretch, at the cost of £90 million, so over £16 million per km, I just don't get how it comes to that much, aibu (probably, I am sure that the costs have had to be justified) as a layperson to never cease to be shocked by the cost if these projects!
www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/19245573.cheshire-long-awaited-90m-link-road-opens-traffic/

I wonder these things although the one that gets me is just how much that press conference room cost.

Well you have:
Bunch of architects
Brown envelope
Bunch of engineers
Brown envelope
Planning application
Brown envelope
Land cost
Brown envelope
Machinery and qualified staff
Mate with imaginary company
Staff
Costs for damage
Brown envelope

It all adds up

Apart from the physical materials of a road I can think of:

Compensation for land
Engineering
Permits
Management services
Environmental costs
Heavy equipment rental
Profit for subcontractors
in/direct labour costs
Weather delays

Do you realise how much work goes into building one road though? It's not even just the design, there's a whole heap of work that gets done before the design stage. Something that looks simple just isn't, and all the work is needed to make sure the road is safe, people are protected and the environment is protected.

Blasted utilities, it's the cost of either moving them or strengthening them to build over the stupid things

There are several stages of assessment and design to draw down funding before planning can be applied for. You may need several different consents as well as planning such as environmental permit, protected species license and scheduled monument consent. Land purchase and mitigation/compensation costs are also included and all that before you get to construction. It all adds up.

@HerRoyalNotness

Apart from the physical materials of a road I can think of:

Compensation for land
Engineering
Permits
Management services
Environmental costs
Heavy equipment rental
Profit for subcontractors
in/direct labour costs
Weather delays

They need to get down wilko for their brown envelopes

The £90m includes the cost of buying the land which will be a very significant chunk.

Yanbu
And railways. Ridiculous.

But if boris Johnson can manage to spend 2.3 million on one room, that didn't even happen and 50 million on a bridge that also didn't even happen 90 million for SOMETHING is a bargain.

I can see how it adds up.. to a point. DH works on the office side of a large construction company that builds a lot of the roads. There's a lot of red tape to cut through in large public roads and a huge amount of people behind the scenes from construction, local government, utility companies etc. One of the most recent bits of red tape that comes to mind is a huge delay because they found some newts... That being said, the costs shouldn't be that huge.

He used to live on a new build estate where they dug up the same road to install utilities 3 times in just 5 years. Apparently the developers thought it was more economical to do it in stages as the estate was built rather than planning ahead

Any time the government is involved, things cost more than they should, imho.

Some of those ‘blasted utilities’ require enormous hoovers to suck out the dirt because you can’t put a digger anywhere near them.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds to rent.. a day.

The machinery cost alone will be staggering.

They don’t just flatten the grass and tip concrete on top.

The short-sighted nature of it is tragic. Near us there’s a motorway junction that’s been mucked about with almost continuously during my life. If they had invested properly in the first place instead of doing sticking plaster after sticking plaster changes it would have needed 2-3 changes maximum rather than the 10+ it has had with all the attendant disruption, delays and extra costs.

Have you never watched a road being resurfaced, let alone built? You need a man to spread the asphalt, a man to drive the asphalt lorry, a man to help it reverse, a man to sit in the works van, a man to watch the traffic cones, a man to prop up the spare broom, a man to shout down the phone to Keith, a foreman to keep all of the above running smoothly .....

@BeastOfBODMAS

Have you never watched a road being resurfaced, let alone built? You need a man to spread the asphalt, a man to drive the asphalt lorry, a man to help it reverse, a man to sit in the works van, a man to watch the traffic cones, a man to prop up the spare broom, a man to shout down the phone to Keith, a foreman to keep all of the above running smoothly .....

Or a woman...... .

The endless back and forth on design.
By far moving or building around utilities is the biggest cost, running into millions! And its never just one utility there will be several.
Buying land, environmental surveys, getting all the permits in place.

You have costs for almost a yr or 2 just on design, feasibility, paying all the various teams before you even construct!

If any buses are on that route then you have to pay money for diversions.

Then digging up road comes with unknown problems that hike up the cost.

Contractors don't do the job properly and pages of defects to fix after.

Of during construction you hit a utility, yes it happens, more costs!

£16,000 per metre for a road and pedestrian footways sounds OK. Land purchase, planning, environmental impact blah blah, hiring and managing equipment and trades, insurance, relocating utilities etc. I mean think about the actual amount of road surface and complexity is involved in just a metre stretch and then think of how much house extension you'd get for the same sum

I believe we have the most expensive road and rail build costs per mile in Europe.

Cutting and filling. Your road is a straight line, nature isn't. So you need to remove hills, and then put the dirt somewhere else. Which can only be done 10 tonnes at a time. So lots of lorries moving, all need fuel, maintenance and trained drivers. The asphalt needs to be bought and transported, drainage sorted, there's hundreds of little costs that all add up.

On a serious note, the surfacing is incredible job if you look at layers.

I just checked and in one central European country 1km of motorway cost £6mil in 2005 (found an article). That's on normal terrain not in mountains😱

Thanks all, it is mind boggling, I would hate to be the person watching the costs mount up!

@maddening that’s literally my job . Weirdly it just becomes a number on a page rather than actual money.

Boyfriend works for a utilities company and has been working on a pipeline in the Lakes. His bit is dealing with landowners, so, National Park, National Trust, farmers, home owners, church land, parish councils, civic councils, county councils, Department for Transport, Department for the Environment. They’ve also had to work with civil engineers, water specialists, risk specialists, environmental specialists. People have to be paid for services, compensated for land use, road closures and diversions need to be organised and permissions acquired, and that’s all before the cost of actually laying the pipeline. The number of parties involved has blown my mind.

It is mind blowing! We just see a bit of it I guess, you just don't appreciate everything involved!

One lorry load of tarmac is £40k. So even resurfacing roads adds up quick.