WE are told that the reason the price of the Aberdeen bypass has gone up to £653m over nine years from £347 is inflation ("Bypass cost soars to £650m", The Herald, October 30).
If so inflation has been 7% annually. Worse is that this is a cost of £23.3 million a mile. According to a recent newspaper article, critical of high Russian roadbuilding costs caused by "post-Soviet bureaucracy and chaotic planning", their roads cost a whole £6.8m a mile, far more than the EU average of £2.7 million. I hope our "chaotic bureaucracy" which makes Scottish and British public projects normally at least eight times more expensive than they should be, comes under as critical an eye from the British media as foreigners do.
Neil Craig,
200 Woodlands Road, Glasgow.
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