It's bollocks. Manhole covers and the connection to the pipe and concrete costs a couple of hundred in material, tops. Add a very generous amount of labour and it's a grand at most.

Some of those figures are realistic, some are total crap.

Not really octavious, the municipality has all sorts of questionable contracts with various construction companies, they like to waste money all the time. Also as TMOF said, the infographic probably took into account other factors.

Yeah, it all depends what they include. What I meant to say with the manhole cover: maybe they calculated the cost of the entire sewage system, then divided them per manhole cover as a symbolic visual part of the sewage system. Or maybe they did something else completely. But who the fuck knows by looking at the pretty picture?

@ ILN

That would be akin to someone asking how much a set of tyres was and getting a quote that includes the rest of the car. It would make the whole thing a nonsense. "An unknown amount of an unknown type of infrastructure costs 80k" is an entirely useless statement.

As far as questionable contracts go, there's skimming and there's skimming, and not even the Albanian mafia could pull off that sort of swindle.

ILN: What's your point here exactly?

You say "the cost to build a street", but the example in your picture isn't just a minor country lane, it's obviously a major town centre location incorporating a complex road and tramway intersection. Obviously things like street lights, traffic signs and tram rails cost money.

They obviously do Jamie, but did you know that they obviously spend 5000$ to draw a couple of lines on the floor indicating pedestrian traffic?. Or a simple metal plate with a black arrow costs 150+$?

Hmmm. I would like to know who produced this picture and where they got the information about the costs from. For context, I work in public sector procurement for a large local council in the UK.

For the record, some of the costs in your picture are nonsense.

For example the "Seperated Streetcar Shelter = $155,000"

Based on my actual procurement experience, in UK prices, I would expect to pay no more than £12,000 for the steel and glass shelter pictured (and I'd try to achieve a lower price than that). Factor in the metal railing next to it, perhaps another £1,000. The cost of installation I'd estimate at a maximum of £4,000.

That gives a *maximum* cost of £17,000, which in dollars is about $27,000.

I'm glad to see you have no answer to that. I think we can safely assume that a lot of the numbers in that picture are made-up bullshit.

How in the fuck does that graphic display those numbers without providing a reference to source material? I'm actually inclined to believe that outrageous costs get slipped into public works projects but there simply is no evidence presented here. This thing aligns with my preconceptions but I NEED MORE OF A REASON THAN THAT TO BELIEVE IT. Seriously, ILN, what the fuck? You're a store and forward point for propaganda whether any of the information in the graphic is true or not.

Man, this really rustled everyone's jimmies. If you wish to further investigate, googles ya friend. I just put this out there TO OPEN YOUR EYES AMERICA!
And plus, this is in my dear Toronto, maybe Torontonians get a hard on when they spend excessively.

What exactly are people supposed to open their eyes to? The figures quoted in the image are fictional, as I have explained. Made-up bullshit that proves nothing.

"What exactly are people supposed to open their eyes to?"
TO THE TRUTH, WAKE UP.
put your ponyland ideal cost fantasies away, and embrace the truth Jamie, only the truth can guide you into BELIEVING!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/smbc/smbc-infographic

The fact that you have retreated into trying to be funny, ILN, demonstrates that you can't defend your original claim. Go away.

Lol Jamie, please provide me with more psychological insight about my actions.

ILN decided to "go troll" having botched his originally sincere point. Anyway, I fished thegridto.com out of the URL and this graphic appears to originate in a local Toronto publication. The actual article is here: http://www.thegridto.com/city/places/how-much-does-a-street-cost/

Now, the article *still* doesn't cite it's sources, but it rules out my original hunch that this picture originated with an unemployed layout designer with an axe to grind who wanted to do something "viral".

And the fact that it's in a legitimate publication *should* count for something, but maybe it doesn't. That would be a good story. Or maybe the actual numbers are too obscured to be discovered. That would also be a good story. But this is still a bunch of "dig my meme" bullshit until the way that the results were produced is known.

I just have to comment on this:
"only the truth can guide you into BELIEVING!"

If I take the time I could probably come up with a million examples that prove this is bullshit. Think atheists and christians. They can't all be right, yet they all believe stuff works some way. According to you they can only do that if they're right. But they can't all be right... Presumably you get the point.

(Had to do that, carry on)

*failed troll mode: off ( I'm still learning D: )

Honestly, I would really look into this infographic,as i too believe its a bit weird. (perhaps thé truth is so shocking, is unbelievable), but my computer is broken, and browsing the web on my windows phone isn't the most comfortable thing, esp when you can only have 6 tabs and IE takes forever to load a webpage.

Anyways...taking up Jamie's point of a bus shelter,he's assuming the following things:

They only used the cheapest materials to construct it.
They didn't hire some sort of designer/architect.
Labour costs were bare minimum.

Although I too find the cost of the bus shelter unrealistic, its not that far off, I did some research and for those simple shelters, they pay $25000, around what you said, but the infographic did not feature such a shelter.
The shelter is longer, features a nice design (just the architect alone walked off with more than $20000 I'm guessing) automated ticket machine (couple thousand as well) as is common in Toronto.

Now you can factor in the shady deals that rake place. Toronto has featured many scandals regarding corruption in transit, tge biggest scandal about the extension of a subway line.

Also, the shelter being in the middle of the street made construction harder, more time consuming (you still got to let traffic flow) making it more costly as the rent for the equipment alone is huge.

Close(ish) to where I live, they are completely renovating highway 7 (a wide local avenue) including 11 new bus stops, dedicated bus lanes, cyclists lanes, new sidewalks, planters etc.the municipality did wayyy more than it had to do, and spent an astonishing 235 million CAD for it.

http://www.dailycommercialnews.com/article/id43441

this is an excerpt from the article above^
"Other features of the full wind enclosures include temperature and motion-activated heaters, arrival and departure screens that provide real-time scheduling information, and tactile pavers to enhance safety, says Carey. " do you really need motion-activated heaters? Lol, that's wasteful spending.

You can see where I'm getting at jamie

@ILN:

"Taking up Jamie's point of a bus shelter, he's assuming the following things:

They only used the cheapest materials to construct it.
They didn't hire some sort of designer/architect.
Labour costs were bare minimum."

I am not assuming those things at all. Learn to read. If you look at what I actually said, my estimated figure of £17,000 (or $27,000) was based on the UPPER end of the cost bracket, *not* what I would expect the cheapest cost to be.