One additional possible thing to address would be the very high US labor costs. Quoting from the excellent Transit Costs Project, but I recommend reading the whole thing:
High-cost, low-productivity labor can substantially raise construction costs. In our American cases, we found that labor costs consumed a greater percentage of construction budgets than in our non-American cases because of strict overtime rules, local union agreements that limit the available labor pools geographically, and an unwillingness to address staffing and labor agreements. In contrast, in our interviews with experts outside of the United States, none mentioned labor as a factor, even in high-cost countries like Britain and the Netherlands.
When we examined the data on labor costs, we found that in New York labor costs reportedly accounted for 40- 60% of the overall construction costs. In contrast, labor amounted to 20-30% of the overall cost of construction in Italy, Sweden, and Turkey. Reducing American labor costs to their Italian, Swedish, or Turkish share would cut labor costs by a factor of about 3, and overall project costs by a factor of about 1.5.
The report makes it clear that the problem isn’t that American workers are highly paid—American software engineers are also highly paid, yet US software firms are very profitable—its that the rules make them very unproductive. It suggests that if you could get rid of these rules—e.g. by using non-union labor—you could pay the workers just as much yet reduce costs dramatically.
Interesting idea!
One additional possible thing to address would be the very high US labor costs. Quoting from the excellent Transit Costs Project, but I recommend reading the whole thing:
The report makes it clear that the problem isn’t that American workers are highly paid—American software engineers are also highly paid, yet US software firms are very profitable—its that the rules make them very unproductive. It suggests that if you could get rid of these rules—e.g. by using non-union labor—you could pay the workers just as much yet reduce costs dramatically.