The world is full of massive ground-breaking construction projects. Such as California's $130 Billion High-Speed rail or Saudi Arabia’s Line, which we have been talking about for years. But there are many more megaprojects around the world.
Such as the $95 billion dollar Xiong'an Smart City. In just 7 years, they have built 3000 buildings from the ground up. And their so-called digital roads collect traffic data to calculate the fastest routes for firefighters and the police.
These megaprojects are literally shaping our planet, so today we uncover the biggest of them all. Hi, I'm Regis and here are the most expensive megaprojects currently being built. We start with our number 15 at an estimated cost of $11 billion.
This is Germany’s massive transport upgrade known as Stuttgart 21. The idea here is to completely redesign Stuttgart’s existing rail system… by rotating the whole train station 90 degrees! Oh yeah, and they’re moving it underground too.
Until now, trains could only enter and exit on one side. But by turning the station, trains will be able to pass through as they continue their journey. Instead of being the end of the line, Stuttgart will become part of a direct Paris-Budapest train link that the EU are working on to improve connectivity across the continent.
The new station will be covered by 10 acres of public park and supported by 28 of these enormous, chalice-shaped pillars. Each one needed 350 metric tons of steel and 685 cubic meters of concrete to build. That’s maybe why no-one has ever attempted a design like this before.
Light will come from 23 enormous glass domes that open onto the park, making the station bright and open despite being underground. As well as the station, 56 km of tunnels have been dug under the city. That might not seem particularly impressive but Stuttgart actually sits on soluble rock like limestone meaning that water erosion has created huge underground caverns and sinkholes.
Tunneling through that took precision engineering and advanced techniques to avoid destabilizing the city above. But the planning of the project is not going well. Only recently, another delay was announced.
It is now scheduled to go into operation in December 2026. This makes it 7 years later than originally planned and twice as expensive as originally planned. Next up, we take a look at the United States.
This one’s in California and is known as BART, which stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit District. It comes in just above Stuttgart 21 with a budget of $12. 2 billion.
Phase II of the project is currently under construction and will extend the BART’s Silicon Valley network under downtown San Jose, all the way to Santa Clara. It’s only 10km but the new route will connect Santa Clara to the rest of the BART network and boost economic development across the region. The line is expected to carry over 54,000 passengers per day once it’s finished… in 2036.
Why so long? Well, the tunnel needs to be dug under densely packed urban areas, avoiding existing infrastructure like sewage and electrical systems and causing minimal disruption to the local population. The Bay Area is also prone to earthquakes, so specialized construction techniques and strict regulations are also slowing things down.
Traditionally, the subway would involve two tunnels, each with a single track, but, in an attempt to minimize disruption, one larger tunnel will be used with space for both lines. It’s called a single bore tunnel and it’s the first time a system like this has ever been used for a US subway. Tunneling is expected to run 24 hours a day to try and limit delays!
Next up, we take a look at India. This is the Mumbai to Ahmedabad High-Speed Line. This project is set to be India’s first ever high-speed railway, and at $15 billion, it’s one of their biggest rail investments ever.
The Line will link the major economic hubs of Mumbai and Ahmedabad and reduce travel time from 8 hours, to just 2. The line will stretch over 500 km, and run mostly on viaducts to avoid the roads, railways, rivers and farms in its way. In densely populated Mumbai, it will dip down and run in underground tunnels, with a 2km stretch even going under the sea.
Despite it being one of Prime Minister Modi’s flagship infrastructure projects, progress has been slow due to problems in land acquisition and construction only began in 2020. Nevertheless, the first stage of the line is due to open in 2026. That might seem pretty fast for a country’s first high-speed railway but India has some help.
They’ve partnered with Japan to design, build and even fund the project with a $12 bn loan. Back over to the USA for number 12, this time on the East Coast, with the Gateway Program. We released a pretty extensive video on this project in April, so we’ll keep it short.
The Gateway Program is a $16 billion investment project designed to completely overhaul, repair and futureproof rail transport between Newark, New Jersey and New York. This is arguably the most important section of the Northeast Corridor, America’s busiest rail line, but much of its crumbling infrastructure is over 100 years old! The Gateway Program will redesign bridges, stations, tunnels and tracks to modernize the whole railway system.
And all with minimal disruption to the hundreds of thousands of daily passengers. This is one of America’s biggest rail investments ever, so definitely check out our deep dive for all the details. At $19 billion, next up is a redevelopment program to completely modernize the biggest airport in the New York area - JFK.
In 2023, the airport serviced 62 million passengers, a 12% rise from the previous year. But despite its popularity, JFK is old, overcrowded and poorly organized. The current renovation aims to turn it into a state-of-the-art facility and increase capacity to 75 million people by 2030.
Terminals 1 and 2 are being replaced by the brand new, 260,000m2 “Terminal One”. With 23 gates, it’ll deal exclusively with international flights and takes up half of the entire budget! There are huge extensions planned for the other terminals, as well as a complete redesign of the surrounding road network.
If that all goes well, JFK will seamlessly integrate international travelers into the New York metropolitan area. Construction was due to start in 2020 but had to be delayed. Nevertheless, the project is scheduled for completion by 2030!
The deadline on this one seems a little tight, but we’ll keep you updated on how it goes! At $25 billion, our number 10 is what many are calling the most complicated machine in human history. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.
ITER, for short, is a massive international collaboration to recreate the nuclear fusion that happens inside the Sun. The reactor is being designed as a proof of concept, meaning it won’t actually be used to generate electricity. If it works, the technology could eventually be rolled out across the world to produce huge amounts of energy with very little waste.
It’s a big if though. Fusion on this scale has never been done before and the technical challenge is enormous. To pull it off, temperatures inside the reactor need to reach between 150 and 300 million degrees celsius, ten times hotter than the sun.
This is one of the most advanced projects ever undertaken and with so much money going into it, it’s also being called the most expensive experiment in the world. At number 9, we have Australia’s biggest ever investment in urban rail. The $25 billion Sydney Metro.
Work is currently underway to build Sydney a brand new subway system, made up of 4 lines, 46 stations and 116 km of track. The network will bring the city together, changing the way that residents travel and integrating the central business district with the suburbs. High-speed driverless trains will run every 4 minutes during peak times, making it super efficient for commuters.
But building all of this underneath Australia’s biggest city isn’t easy. Especially under the world famous Sydney Harbour. Digging underneath the bay required state-of-the-art technology including this - Tunnel Boring Machine Kathleen, named after Kathleen Butler, the “Godmother of Sydney Harbour Bridge” Kathleen dug two 900m tunnels under the bay, at depths of up to 40 m below sea level !
Each tunnel will have one subway line running through it, in what’s called a twin-bore system. All of the tunneling finished in 2020, and the first line actually opened the year before. Phase 2 of the build, the City and Southwest Project, is due to open this year, with the remaining two phases scheduled for completion by 2030.
If you’re watching from Sydney, we’d love to know how the new line has affected the city so far! Number 8 is one of the biggest private-sector investments in Canadian history. LNG Canada.
This is a gigantic, $31 billion project in Kitimat, British Columbia that will transform natural gas into liquid form and prepare it for export. The project includes a marine terminal and a rail yard, as well as two enormous storage tanks, measuring 225,000 cubic meters each. Once it’s operational, the facility will be able to process 14 million tonnes of liquified natural gas, or LNG, every year.
This could result in over a billion dollars of revenue, if you look at the average market prices. The gas will be transported from northeast BC in a 670 km pipe, before being liquified and exported from Kitimat. Sales will mostly be to Asia, as its coal-heavy economies transition to greener alternatives.
But several European countries have also expressed their interest. Suffice it to say, the potential profits are huge! Commercial operations are expected to start in 2025, with recent reports saying that tests will start this year.
Overall, LNG Canada could spell a new chapter for the gas industry in Canada, making them a vital player in the international market and shoring up domestic energy security. The effects could potentially be seen for decades to come. We’re in France for number 7, with the Grand Paris Express.
At a cost of $35 billion, this is one of the biggest infrastructure projects currently underway in Europe and involves an enormous extension to Paris’s metro network. 4 new lines, 200 km of track and 68 new stations are being added to adapt the public transport system to the demands of the 21st century. The new lines will fully integrate the Charles de Gaule and Orly airports, as well as Paris’s vast suburbs, with the city center.
Construction here comes with all the usual challenges of building in a densely packed urban area. Things like utility relocation, heritage preservation and complicated stakeholder management. But the Grand Paris Express has the added challenge of the 2024 Summer Olympics.
The arrival of the summer games has forced construction to accelerate, particularly on the extension to Line 14 which will link Orly Airport with the city center. This line will also link to the Athletes’ Village, as well as the Olympic Swimming Pool and the main stadium, le Stade de France. Originally due to open in 2027, the extended Line 14 will now officially open one month before the start of the Olympics, marking a massive success for the project.
As the CEO of public transport operator RATP says: “Line 14 will serve the Olympics, but the Olympics have served Line 14 well. ” Number 6, is the first nuclear power plant to be built in the United Kingdom in 30 years. Projections are putting the cost at around $57 billion for this massive piece of energy infrastructure.
Hinkley Point C, as it is known, has been under construction since 2016 and once it’s operational, will provide power to 6 million homes. Unfortunately, the project has been delayed by COVID, Brexit and cost increases, as well as the long process of adapting a European Reactor Design to comply with British regulations. As a result, the original $22 billion price tag has long since been abandoned.
As things stand, Hinkley Point C is running four years behind schedule, with a tentative finish date set for 2031. Coming in at number 5 is the UK’s long troubled high-speed rail line, HS2. Costs have continued to rise here too and are currently estimated at $84 billion.
The new railway was originally designed to link London with the cities of Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, integrating economic hubs across the country. But things haven’t really gone according to plan and the lines to Manchester and Leeds have been cut due to spiraling costs and huge delays. Construction was originally due to be finished in 2026 but, as things stand, the scaled back London to Birmingham line won’t be ready until sometime between 2029 and 2033.
Upgrading British rail with state-of-the-art high speed lines is a great idea, and would likely boost economic development, but sadly this project just hasn’t gone well so far. The original $47 billion estimate has since ballooned to well over $100 billion. So that’s why the project had to be scaled down.
Removing the northern sections of the line has brought this down to more like $84 billion but that’s still almost twice what was first planned. It’s not all bad though. The line will half travel time between the UK’s two biggest cities to just 49 minutes and the brand new Curzon Street station in Birmingham will operate with zero-emissions and even capture rainwater.
Progress is painstakingly slow but proponents emphasize that high-speed rail will boost development outside London, which currently makes up almost a quarter of the UK’s GDP. Next on the list is a Chinese megaproject to build a city of the future! It’s known as the Xiong’an New Area and takes the number 4 spot with an estimated budget of $95 billion.
Despite it being one of the most expensive and ambitious projects underway anywhere in the world, it hasn’t received much attention yet. Xiong’an will be a smart, green city designed to ease the pressure on an overpopulated Beijing and equipped with advanced systems like digital roads and smart city planning. If there’s a fire, for example, the city-operations platform will immediately calculate the coverage area and how many people are affected.
Then it’ll choose a route for the fire service based on current traffic conditions. In true Chinese fashion, the city has been built at record pace. In just seven years, 3000 buildings have shot up.
They’re not all finished yet but it’s still insane how fast they’re moving. Drne footage shows an industrial park, technology centre, schools and high-speed railways lines all underway, not to mention countless apartment and office blocks Over 1,000,000 people are already living there but that’s set to increase to 5 million by 2035. Things are moving so fast on this project, so if you want to see more about it, we would appreciate it a lot if you subscribe to Megabuilds!
Thanks for your support. Number 3 is Japan’s $100 billion dollar Chuo Shinkansen. The bullet train.
The new line from Tokyo to Osaka will use maglev technology to reach speeds of up to 500 km per hour! The trains will hover slightly above the track, giving passengers a super smooth ride, despite the insane speeds. This train in China uses the same technology and the coin barely moves at all!
The construction is made up of two phases. Tokyo to Nagoya, and Nagoya to Osaka. The first was due to be ready by 2027 but environmental concerns have recently changed the whole trajectory of the project.
86% of the Tokyo to Nagoya line will run in tunnels and one of the prefectures along the route, Shizuoka, is concerned that the Oi River will leak into them. As a result, they haven’t given their permission for the project to go ahead, so construction has been pushed back, possibly until 2034. That being said, Shizuoka governor Heita Kawakatsu resigned last month and it’s not impossible that his successor sees another way forward.
The second phase extends from Nagoya to Osaka, which is planned for completion by 2037. It promises to cut travel time between Nagoya and Osaka to just 40 minutes. However, as with the first phase, this section will involve extensive tunneling, and similar challenges as well.
So it remains to be seen how they can solve these issues. At a projected total cost of up to $128 billion, the second biggest megaproject currently under construction is California’s high-speed railway. The 1200 km network will connect major urban hubs across California with state-of-the-art trains running at 350 km/h.
Once it’s operational, the journey from San Francisco to Los Angeles will take just 2 hours 40 minutes, providing a better alternative than flying or driving. If the targets are met, it should reduce air travel journeys by a third and reduce carbon emissions by three million tonnes. The project was first discussed all the way back in 1996, but it wasn’t until 2008 that state voters were finally given the chance to approve a proposal.
At that stage, the entire LA to San Francisco line was meant to cost $33 billion and be ready by 2020. Unfortunately, legal challenges, environmental reviews and mismanagement have extended the project considerably. The first section of the line is now scheduled to be open in 2030, but the total cost has spiraled to more than triple the original proposal!
And that’s not the only issue. Lawsuits, land acquisition and political and public opposition have all slowed things down. But the people in charge of construction, the High-Speed Rail Authority, still believe the project to be worthwhile.
High-speed links across California will integrate cities like never before, bringing together businesses, cultures and people. The network will make it much easier for Californians to live in the more affordable inland areas and still commute to work in the expensive coastal cities. In fact, the network is projected to carry over 28 million passengers a year by 2040 - more than double the Northeast corridor, America’s busiest railway today.
Progress might be slow, but this megaproject is moving ahead. So that brings us to number one. If you already watched some of our videos, you probably already know what’s coming.
At an eye-watering $1. 5 trillion… it can only be Saudi Arabia’s NEOM. This insane collection of futuristic projects is supposed to transform their desert and coastline.
The flagship project is the Line, which I’m sure you’ve already heard about. But recent news report that The Line is being scaled back massively. The crazy desert city is ultimately supposed to be 170 km long, but a Bloomberg report, citing an anonymous source, says there’ll only be 2.
4 km of it by 2030. On the initial schedule, The Line was meant to have 1. 5 million residents by then, but now there may only be 300,000.
The Bloomberg report has been cited all over the internet but the Saudi finance minister recently contradicted it, saying all NEOM projects will go ahead as planned. Time will tell, but the controversy speaks to underlying issues. NEOM’s 2024 budget has had difficulty getting approval, suggesting the harsh financial realities of such an enormous project may be setting in.
On top of that, a high staff turnover points to internal difficulties and one contractor recently admitted to canceling a $100 million contract with the petrostate. Malcolm Aw, the CEO of Solar Water said that he had initially come onboard to help realize The Line’s renewable goals but left when he realized that local villages were being bulldozed to make way for the megaproject. And that’s not the first time human rights abuses have been raised against NEOM.
Last year the UN spoke out over the planned execution of three men who had been arrested for resisting forced evictions. As far as we know, the sentences have not been carried out yet and hopefully never will… Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 is a programme to diversify the country and its economy. Construction is underway on the Line, and on NEOM’s other projects.
Some of them have even tighter deadlines. The mountain resort of Trojena is actually scheduled to host the Asian Winter Games in 2029. And the most recent footage that NEOM released, shows that construction is in full swing.
However it looks like there is still a lot to be done. And further south, the luxury island resort of Sindalah is meant to open later this year. And this is also where the most progress has already been made.
NEOM is by far the biggest megaproject under construction today. The scale of it all is just mind-blowing and news is coming out all the time. But what is your opinion about these projects?
Do you think the money is being spent wisely? Let us know in the comments below. And for now, as always, thanks a lot for watching and we’ll see you in the next video.
