The Overlooked Questions of Infrastructure Development

From the McKinsey Global Institute - paper entitled Infrastructure: Doing More With Less (link).  From the paper:

Whether creating new systems or upgrading existing capacity, urban leaders have considered

four fundamental questions often overlooked in infrastructure development planning:

* Are we building the right infrastructure?

* Are we using existing infrastructure most effectively?

* How can we deliver infrastructure more efficiently?

* How can we benefit from working with private partners?

Finding the right answers to these questions will help urban leaders meet their growing

infrastructure needs more effectively, more efficiently, and more quickly. Ignoring these

questions can lead to costly and wasteful mistakes. For example, during Japan’s "lost decade,"

the 1990s, the country overbuilt infrastructure with no clear strategy, squandering billions of

dollars with little impact. In one instance, 17 bridges were built for three expressways to connect

the main island of Japan to Shikoku, an island with about 3 percent of the country’s population.

The costs reached $29 billion.