Infrastructure Costs

The data contained in this table has been sourced from the book Transportation and the Belt and Road Initiative, in which more data is available. We define herewith 7 modes of transportation:

1. Sea transportation

2. Rail transportation

3. Road transportation

4. Air transportation

5. Pipeline transportation

6. Electric grid transportation

7. Digital transportation

These costs are average estimates only for standard Tiers 1 transportation infrastructure. They do not include land buying and expropriation. Moreover, no two infrastructure projects are alike, and each one strongly depends on many variable, including natural geography, soil composition, machines required, technology levels deployed, workforce available, workforce expertise, country standard of living, working conditions, local sustainability and ESG requirements…etc. These estimates cannot compare in anyway to a quantity surveyor’s work, which takes all those variables into account and many more.

They do not take into account savings that can be made, when the construction process uses forced labor (prisons), military forces (security reasons), or developing world labor with a very favorable exchange rate. They also do not take into account all costs that may incur, when using developed-world’s construction and engineering firms abiding by Tiers 1 global standards, which usually require the help of a strong expatriate force of expert engineers and architects, as well as possible more expensive materials.

The data contained in this table has been sourced from the book Transportation and the Belt and Road Initiative, in which more data is available.