| Comment | Because we invented such a large proportion of post-industrial engineering, so everything we have doesn't conform to any standards (as the standards came after we built infrastructure) so is an absolute nightmare to upgrade - everything has to be done bespoke. Telecoms, railways, gas network, you name it. Everywhere else in the world has the benefit of adopting things slightly later and all being roughly the same, so metros and undergrounds across Europe can all be built to the same specification and make use of each other's manufacturing and design. Whereas almost every civil engineering project in the UK has to be done completely from scratch and is the first of its kind, constrained by the random whims of some Victorian industrialist who decided that this particular core element should be 5 and 3 fifths grommets in diameter. |
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