so this article briefly mentions an interesting point in the second paragraph but doesn’t follow up on it:

These difficulties are not unique to Canada. The English-speaking world is rife with examples of hugely expensive and delayed transit projects

https://urbanists.social/@straphanger/113617757559814333

it’s because we don’t look outside of the anglosphere for inspiration and examples… and the anglosphere is nortoriously bad at building transit

“Every country with a transit project over $1 billion per kilometre speaks English as its primary language,” they report. The US, HK, Australia, UK also spend too much—because they fail to look at projects in the rest of the world, comparing only within the Anglosphere.

edit: actually, both the globe article and the mastodon thread link to the same report that discusses the problem in the anglosphere: https://archive.is/o/fX30B/https://stateofcitiessummit.ca/files/041224_Understanding-the-Drivers-of-Transit-Construction-Costs-in-Canada-A-Comparative-Study.pdf