Building a bridge in France versus US

Recently I read an article about the newest bridge in Millau, France. Everything about this bridge is out of scale. The highest point is 1,125ft (343m). That's right - its pillars are taller than the Eiffel tower! And the highway is suspended at max 885ft (270m) above the ground. The total bridge length is around 1.6 miles (2.5 Km). And, keep in mind that this is one of France's busiest roads.

The images are, needless to say, breathtaking:

     

But the most surprising thing was the actual cost of this amazing project. It appears to be only 394m euros. 

Now let's take a quick look to the latest proposal to improve our local SR-520 bridge. Microsofties know that I'm talking about - is that very long and useless parking lane that supposedly links Seattle with Redmond/Bellevue. Note that we are not talking about building a new bridge here - just increasing the number of lanes from existing 2 to 4 or 6. Drumroll... according to the latest proposal to the King County the cost is somewhere between 2.0 - 2.9 billion dollars.

Ouch!