Infrastructure security

China is 100x faster than the US in advanced infrastructure construction: Elon Musk

SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk on Wednesday gave his thumbs up for Chinese infrastructure construction, calling the nation 100 times faster than the US.

“China’s progress in advanced infrastructure is more than 100 times faster than the US,” Musk wrote on his personal Twitter account in a quote tweet of a news report about how a railway station in eastern China’s Fujian province was completed within 9 hours.

The construction took place at Longyan Station on January 19, 2018. A total of 1,500 laborers worked together with 23 excavators.

Many followed the thread and echoed Musk. A user named Brandon, who said he works for a light rail system in the US city of San Diego, commented that they have been working on a new station for more than six months.

Musk said in comments that the system of incentives in the US is messed up. “Higher safety & environmental requirements & labor costs explain only a small part of the difference. True root cause imo is an exponential growth in bureaucracy & a self-serving private sector consultant industry earning a % on project cost, incenting them to maximize cost,” he said.