The Most Expensive Construction Projects Known to Mankind

3. Shanghai-Beijing High-Speed Rail

Place: China Complete Expense: $34.7 billion* 2011 is the finished year. The Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, at 15,534 miles, dwarfs the Spain high-speed rail system, which is more than seven times shorter. It is the longest high-speed rail system globally. It took slightly less than three years to finish the project's first line, and it took another ten years to build the rest of the system. More than a hundred times more steel and twice as much concrete were used to complete Beijing National Stadium and the Three Gorges dam, respectively, than was required to build China's high-speed railway.

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Shanghai-Beijing High-Speed Rail ©Shutterstock/ZZhang Sheng The system that can presently transport passengers over a network of two hundred and forty bridges and through twenty-two tunnels at speeds exceeding two hundred and fifty miles per hour was built at a cost estimated at the height of construction to be slightly less than 100,000 workers and engineers. The Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway is a marvel of high-speed transit technology as well as construction.

4. Shinkansen Chuo

Place: Japan All in all, about $90 billion Year Completed: 2027 The Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central) announced in 2007 that they would fund the Chuo Shinkansen's construction and take on the project's challenges on their own. A sixteen-mile tunnel under the Japanese Alps is presently under construction, with completion anticipated in 2025. The tunnel will descend to a maximum depth of four thousand six hundred feet.

Shinkansen Chuo ©YMZK-Image via Shutterstock The Japanese government proposes to loan JR Central the money required to finish the high-speed rail extension of Japan by 2037 in an effort to forward the completion date by three years. Up to 310 miles per hour of frictionless travel will be possible thanks to the levitating force produced by the superconducting magnets on the trains and the coils on the rails. Eventually, with no wheel friction, passengers will be able to travel the three hundred miles from Tokyo to Osaka in just sixty-seven minutes, all the while enjoying a pleasant, smooth trip.