The Eno Center for Transportation recently launched a project to explore questions about why transit investments cost so much more in the United States than they do around the world, first convening a high-level advisory panel to start to frame the assumptions and questions that will determine the direction on the project. Eno will soon begin several detailed case studies of emblematic projects in the United States and abroad.

Robert Puentes writes to explain the goals of the project:

In the end, this research and resulting policy recommendations will change the current national conversation about systemic problems to opportunities for better mass transit project delivery. It will raise the level of discourse by shifting from idiosyncratic anecdotes to comprehensive national and international data. And it will directly inform federal policymakers as they pursue a reform-minded reauthorization, as well as helping state and local actors invest in transit networks to grow local their economies, reduce greenhouse gases from transportation, and connect people to opportunity.

The new project seems to finally respond to a recent wave of questions about the lack of scientific and academic inquiry into the country's exorbitantly high transit construction costs. The conversation owes its existence to the work of Alon Levy, specifically with reference to the Second Avenue Subway in New York City.