Yet the Pentagon is a model of efficiency compared to ...

• Author: Easterbrook, Gregg
• Position: TILTING at windmills - Bridge construction

Standing in the shadow of Georgetown's magnificent Key Bridge, completed in 1923, the president recently lamented that construction of highways, bridges, and mass transit is stagnant. Obama's explanation: "We are not spending enough" on infrastructure.

We're not getting enough for what we do spend. The Tappan Zee Bridge, north of New York City, was completed in 1955, at a cost of $650 million in today's money; a replacement under construction will cost at least $4 billion, six times as much. The John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge in Louisville, completed in 1963 for $80 million in today's money, is being replaced with a new bridge costing more than $1 billion, a dozen times as much. A generation ago, the final underground segments of Washington's Metro system cost $215 million a mile in today's money. New subway tunnels being dug in Seattle and San Francisco are costing a billion dollars a mile.

Not far from the White Flouse is a light-rail project--the Purple Line for Montgomery County, Maryland. It's insanely overpriced at $150 million per mile for aboveground construction on land the relevant government authorities already own. Also near the White House, Metro's Silver Line expansion is costing $245 million per mile for one very complicated flyover but otherwise routine aboveground work.

In addition to being insanely expensive, contemporary government infrastructure efforts are ridiculously slow. Repaving three miles of River Road, a commuter artery into the nation's capital, is scheduled to take about a year. A pedestrian underpass is being built to allow people to walk from a Metro stop to the Bethesda Naval Hospital without having to dodge traffic on a busy thoroughfare. Slated to cost $68 million and take four years--for a walkway!--the project is everything that's wrong with modern government-run...