How the US can stop wasting billions of dollars on each transit project

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgym5j/heres-how-the-us-can-stop-wasting-billions-of-dollars-on-each-transit-project

by jseliger • 4 years ago

163 227 4 years ago

onphonenow2• 4 years ago

Watch McDonald’s put up a restaurant.

I went to school and they changed zoning along this big road where I lived. When I can back from winter break it was unrecognizable and the stores were open.

Now in CA - voted for high speed rail and was absolutely promised it would not go over budget. The first contractor quit in disgust SNCF and started doing projects in Africa saying they were less dysfunctional :)

Most recent audit committee reports are that everything is on track. We will see

One argument on ballot was 10 years of planning went into project before ballot - so starting 1998 or so - 24 years later now

Cyberdog3• 4 years ago

I voted against high speed rail because it it wouldn't be serving anywhere near my area - I get it, the majority of the population lives on the coast between the Bay Area and San Diego, but why increase the tax burden on the people who live in the other 90% of the state who will likely never ride it? - and because I knew it would go over-budget and over-schedule.

Unsurprisingly, I got outvoted. And unsurprisingly, however many years and billions of dollars later, there are still no high speed trains running.

bagels2• 4 years ago

I voted against it and lived where it would be useful because I didn't think it would be on time or on budget, because no infrastructure project is in the US.

renewiltord• 4 years ago

Personally, this is why I vote against schools. No child of mine goes to public school. Big waste of money. Wish I could do that with universities but that's mostly federal and state. Fortunately, can just vote against property tax and bonds to stop local schools.

vincnetas• 4 years ago

You would benefit by less traffic on roads because someone else would be using high speed trains.

CalRobert2• 4 years ago

Similarly, we should end services to low density areas that can't support themselves. It's very unfair on a per-person basis.

panick21_23• 4 years ago

This doesn't really make sense. The whole point of high speed rail is to reliably and effectively connect the northern and southern existing transit regions that are currently separated.

Its like saying the US should never have built rail across the US because most people don't use it.

Of course if you just do high speed rail, you don't have much, what you actually need is to extend and expand your regional rail and transit network. Then high speed rail benefits both regional transit networks.

Given how much money is invested in highways and how much it cost to build the absurd highway system, rail just makes way more sense.

Its pretty funny to me that what is supposed to be 4 largest economy in the world can't manage a half way decent train network. When there are multiple cities with 500k to millions people are between SF and LA.

There is easily enough population to have a really successful high speed rail if its correctly connected to a larger regional network.

stephen_g2• 4 years ago

It's a little bit different than building a McDonalds - they're building an underground rail line in my city, and just the acoustic sheds and site offices (before they could start even digging a shaft to drop in a tunnel boring machine) on one of the six or so major sites is like building a dozen McDonald restaurants in itself! Not to mention water treatment, spoil handling and treatment, ventilation systems, moving utilities etc. etc.

onphonenow2• 4 years ago

If you travel internationally you quickly realize all the excuses for why things take so long are just that. Be curious how long Tesla would take to build a huge full factory in China. In ca the permitting alone is on the order of years.

bluGill3• 4 years ago

They have a lot bigger budget than a single McDonald's as well.

What you say sounds good until you look around the world snd discover lots of other places have built similar in harder environments for much less and much faster. If all you know is McDonald's this might seem complex, but if you learn about other rail projects you discover this isn't that complex.

Zach_the_Lizard• 4 years ago

In the old days, the New York subway systems were mostly built by cut and cover, where they more or less dig up the street, build the tunnels and stations,throw dirt back on top, and pave the road again.

Is that always possible? No. But when it is, it's almost certainly going to be much cheaper and faster.

For bonus points, throw all the ancient utility lines in conduit so the next infrastructure project isn't a disaster.

Nowadays we get the DC Metro, where a mostly above ground extension in a highway median was delayed for years because....I'm not sure exactly.

Fiahil• 4 years ago

I think the US don't deserve high speed trains. This can be revisited in a few decades when the population becomes less hostile towards rails. (Cf this : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33502387)

Building a nerwork in Africa, however, is a great idea !

snovv_crash• 4 years ago

I saw protest graffiti against high speed trains in Spain as well.

panick21_23• 4 years ago

Thing is, because of property tax systems, these large companies build these box stores and fast food joints in the cheapest way possible so they can basically not pay property taxes and basically write it off after 10 years.

The tax system and the infrastructure fees insensitive totally the wrong way of development.

And this is why cities are mostly broke.

refurb4• 4 years ago

Singapore just put in a new MRT line (well, in phases, some haven't opened yet) - 43km, 32 stations, all underground for $25B or ~$0.8B per station.

San Francisco put the Chinatown line in - 3km, 4 stations, 3 underground for $2B or $0.7B per station (ignoring the above ground one).

Clearly Singapore can do it quicker because there is one level of government. And they import cheap labor to actually build the lines.

So other than the delays, the cost for SF doesn't seem ridiculous.

atdrummond• 4 years ago

One major difference is Singapore and Japan’s stops are profit centers and not cost centers - they rent massive amounts of property on them, meaning they’re not as dependent on debt or fare collection.

larsiusprime• 4 years ago

This is essentially "land value capture" policy, right?

https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/articles/2022-09-la...

tjpnz• 4 years ago

Either that or they put in their own retail. It's no coincidence that Tokyu, Keio and Hankyu all operate their own supermarkets and stores throughout Japan's rail network.

warning26• 4 years ago

Having rail operators also act as real estate companies is pure genius IMO -- it creates a profit motive for dense, transit oriented development, without any need for onerous top-down planning.

culturestate• 4 years ago

One major difference is Singapore and Japan’s stops are profit centers and not cost centers…meaning they’re not as dependent on debt or fare collection

Singapore is a bit different. SMRT is operated by a group of private transit operators that don’t really do real estate on the same scale that e.g. JR does in Tokyo, so fares are still their primary revenue source.

Hong Kong is a better corollary to Japan. The HK MTR is responsible for a bunch of large real estate projects in the city, including the ICC (the tallest skyscraper in town and one of the two iconic buildings that flank the entrance to the harbor).

Drunk_Engineer2• 4 years ago

The Singapore line is designed to handle 1 million daily riders. It is in not comparable to the rinky-dink Muni project.

Grimburger• 4 years ago

It's also automated driverless trains, something that probably be raised when comparing costs.

refurb4• 4 years ago

MUNI handles 157,000 daily riders. The TEL line is expected to hit 500,00 in some years, maxing out at 1M in the distant future.

It's not that big of a difference.

ur-whale• 4 years ago

Clearly Singapore can do it quicker because there is one level of government.

Singapore can do it quicker because there's far less corruption there.

Also no unions (which is kind of the same thing as the other point above).

refurb4• 4 years ago

And labor you can pay $800USD/month and have them live in dormitories and then send them home when the project is done.

rippercushions3• 4 years ago

Singapore is not a great comparison, because construction is largely done by armies of migrant workers paid starvation wages, who are sent back home at the slightest hint of complaint (example: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/nine-men-public-as...).

But Japan and Europe don't, and they still manage to deliver public transport for much less.

user39393822• 4 years ago

IMHO often the purpose of these projects isn’t to deliver transportation, it’s to keep people employed in the project.

That means draw it out, maximize the budget, spend every penny, etc., whereas the actual infrastructure is the excuse to keep it going.

Put another way, conflicts of interest tend to arise from the bureaucracy inherent in these projects. The researcher here identifies the symptoms of this but seems to see this more as an accident.

robomartin3• 4 years ago

IMHO often the purpose of these projects isn’t to deliver transportation, it’s to keep people employed in the project.

Bingo!

Another element of this is to use such projects to buy the votes of the large unions.

Just a couple of months ago these crews came through our street. They ripped-up the PERFECTLY GOOD sidewalks and rebuilt them. This street is 24 years old. In other words, it's new. Oh, yes, they repaved it once about a year ago.

The guys ripping-up the sidewalk told me they are going to rip-up the street and repave it next year.

This is criminal.

jimt12342• 4 years ago

Can you please tell them to come re-pave my street? It's pothole heaven.

pencilguin3• 4 years ago

The hell of it is, it isn't criminal. It has been made wholly legal!

dsfyu404ed2• 4 years ago

The part that irks me more than the self-serving "not technically graft" you are describing is the jerks who will find some reason to defend the actions as "necessary" as if there aren't plenty of 100yo original sidewalks in places.

Literally any other "big faceless organization" would not be cut slack to this extent.

user39393822• 4 years ago

They ripped-up the PERFECTLY GOOD sidewalks and rebuilt them.

If you haven't already, watch a movie called Falling Down. There's a scene about this.

airza• 4 years ago

That explanation doesn’t really seem to explain why there is such a huge difference between the US and other countries with an arguably larger administrative state and higher union participation.

pencilguin3• 4 years ago

The US is more corrupt than many other countries. Our innovation was to make corruption explicitly legal, so there is no risk of indictments.

akira2501• 4 years ago

The US is just that.. a union of states that enjoy a much higher level of independence than in other countries and at the same time have to deal with their own counties. The states all have differing levels of competence, enforcement and leadership. The federal government has limited oversight, except for cases of particular types of criminal corruption.

In my mind what screwed a lot of states up was the financial collapse of 2007, many did not adjust their spending forecasts and reconsider these projects appropriately in the face of the decade that came after. Finally, add in the pandemic and remote work, and it really undercut the rationale and scope of many of these projects that were never adjusted in the face of this.

bobthepanda2• 4 years ago

The exact shape of the bureaucracy is the problem. The US lacks in-house capacity and relies on outside consultants and contractors who are more than happy to overbill if not audited properly.

The California HSR project was at one point using a staff of less than a hundred full-time staff to monitor over a thousand consultants which led to a lot of cost blowouts.

gernb• 4 years ago

Because in the US (except NYC), all public transporation is seen as something for poor people where as in most other countries public transportation is for everyone.

pencilguin3• 4 years ago

Once the project is done, the money stops.

The bigger the project is, the more backers it needs. Many of these have to be bought. The people initiating the project don't have money to buy them, but the project budget does, or can. Adding that to the budget would make it a bigger project, needing more backing.

So, projects are under-budgeted, and overruns pay off backers. Nobody involved wants that money flow ever to end, so it goes over schedule.

Some projects avoid this fate. Solar and wind farms have transparent costs (N units x $M per unit), and start producing revenue almost immediately. Nukes suffer it most, because nobody knows how much any of it ought to cost, it takes forever, and it produces nothing until it is finished several changes of administration later.

8f2ab37a-ed6c• 4 years ago

It sounds like the taxpayer is forced to pay for someone else's basic income instead of people completing the project at its most efficient price.

joe_the_user2• 4 years ago

IMHO often the purpose of these projects isn’t to deliver transportation, it’s to keep people employed in the project.

Not even that, it's a corrupt racket. It's purpose is to make money for powerful people. Sometimes employing people helps but notice "Andrew Cuomo launched a “transformation plan” created by a consulting firm to “simplify a complex and inefficient organization,” the MTA (still) says on its website. The most noteworthy “accomplishment” was hiring six-figure executives who promptly left with golden parachutes; once Cuomo was gone the transformation team was shut down."

The researcher here identifies the symptoms of this but seems to see this more as an accident.

Yeah, that's kind of standard for reports like this. A sophisticated reader can easily discern a steam mass of corrupt interests involved with situations like this but the report writer doesn't like to burn their bridges so they don't connect the dots and X many other apologists merrily misapply Hanlon's razor to the situations as well.

robertlagrant2• 4 years ago

The most noteworthy “accomplishment” was hiring six-figure executives who promptly left with golden parachutes; once Cuomo was gone the transformation team was shut down."

This happens everywhere, all the time. People work their entire lives to pay taxes that fund these temporary, do-nothing, expensive exercises.

bluGill3• 4 years ago

The unions and little people working for them are also part of the corrupt racket. It is at all levels, don't focus on one, the others will find ways to protect that, or at least buy them off so they don't point at something else

treis• 4 years ago

It's the elephant in the room. City level government in pretty much every large U.S. city is a one party state. And like any monopoly it ends up as some combination of inefficient and corrupt.

A lot of it comes down to how we do elections. Ultimately, Adams became mayor of a 8.5 million city by getting 290k votes in the Democratic primary. Which is just crazy when you think about it.

sfpotter3• 4 years ago

The purpose of transit projects is to build transit.

rob74• 4 years ago

Ok, then the problem with such projects in the US is obviously the lack of plannability. New York has now (finally, after decades of planning) built 3 stations of the Second Avenue Subway. Wether it will ever be expanded is currently unsure. Compare that to Munich, where between 1965 and 2010 there was always a subway under construction. Even without the inherent interests of the companies and workers involved, it should be obvious that when you build more, the cost per mile will be much lower.

mschuster91• 4 years ago

Yeah, and now with the 2. Stammstrecke money sink, it's unlikely there will be funds for more than the U5 Pasing extensions.

afarrell• 4 years ago

It seems like the lesson is that if the company and its workers know that there’s always another project to work on next, then there’s no incentive to drag out this one.

the8472• 4 years ago

Maybe the incentives could be changed by not employing those people as long as it takes but by a fixed amount of time and instead making the project scope flexible. Once the main project is finished they can work towards some optional goals and get a bonus or something.

socialismisok9• 4 years ago

Seattle delivered rail infrastructure on time and under budget, and now it has a ridership in the millions. People want trains. People use trains. Build more goddamn trains.

sfpotter3• 4 years ago

It did? I’m from Seattle, and the plans for a light rail were perennially stalled since I was a kid. What they’ve built so far is nice, but they’re expanding it at a glacial pace. They could build more and faster.

AmpsterMan• 4 years ago

Point still stands though, as meager as it is. The link is the only major public works project in recent memory that largely succeeded AND under budget

resist_futility• 4 years ago

1-2+ million a month. I wonder how fast light rail will be when they have as many stops as are planned, will it be just as slow as a bus?

https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/system-performance...

https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/maps

socialismisok9• 4 years ago

Yep, we talked about it for a long time, but it did in fact complete on time and under budget. It's expanding slowly because there's a lot of pushback to adding more, which is a bummer.

We need like 8x the amount of rail here, at least.

jbay808• 4 years ago

I'll be taking the Shinkansen to Tokyo this week. Watching the bullet trains depart from Tokyo Station every seven and a half minutes on just the Tokaido line alone, carrying around a thousand people each... it's hard not to be a little envious. The productivity gains must be immense, and JR is practically printing money with the ticket revenue alone.

panick21_23• 4 years ago

I mean maybe for the US its a success. But reality is in Germany/Switzerland metro areas with 1/10 the city have rail networks 10x the size.

socialismisok9• 4 years ago

Do you think the first rail built in Germany was a failure because it wasn't 10x the size? We get to a big rail network by building more rail. Seattle went from 0 to 1 rail line, which now has millions of riders per month. We're about to complete our second line, and we've approved funding for more. These things take time.

bigbacaloa3• 4 years ago

Madrid has daily ridership around a million or two.

Seattle has monthly ridership in the millions.

That's actually still pretty terrible for a city of its size.

socialismisok9• 4 years ago

Did Madrid start their rail network within the past decade? Seattle has had rail for single digit years. It's expanding, and ridership is growing.

We went from 0 trips a year to tens of millions over the past couple years.

coryrc• 4 years ago

The light rail doesn't cover most of the population of Seattle, instead a slow train meanders far out into the suburbs. Pretend we all agreed to start taking public transit. We couldn't, even the population today couldn't use the system getting planned out to 2055, let alone account for growth.

kkfx5• 4 years ago

My unpopular opinion is simple: public transit works well for standard humans witch means meat-based self-reproducible robots, any dictatorship want, because they do not almost have "individual" needs, they are just tools to be moved around in batch, public transport for them is like containers for shipping industry.

Humans, Citizens instead tend to have effectively overlapping needs, but they essentially never overlap 100% so or public transports waste money in big under-used infra of make them moving nearly empty 24/7/365 to satisfy Citizens needs and desires.

In dense cities cars are a nightmare so public transport is the only remaining solution behind nuking the city itself. But that's not a cheap AND effective solution in essentially all cases, as a result or we admit that the real "future society" target is the one pictured by the WEF years ago https://youtu.be/Hx3DhoLFO4s with the meat-based robots stuffed in modern chicken coops named "smart cities" where the dumb is the human (well depicted by the facial mimic of the main actor of the aforementioned video) and the Humans/Citizens (or oppressors, cleptocrats, depending on your POV) remain outside or no country in the world can stop wasting billion on crappy public transit project if not deciding to de-urbanize creating a new distributed society where we do have aggregation centers (like schools, unis, etc) and some districts for some kind of manufacturing activities we can't do otherwise, create a hybrid far more remote and ALSO far more social IRL society or...

sanxiyn• 4 years ago

Note that public transports moving nearly empty doesn't waste much money: it's a common misconception.

Rail is mostly capex with little opex, and fare is set above opex anyway. Tracks are already built and trains are already bought. You need to pay back capex with fare, so every little ridership helps, and people's transportation choice is very sensitive to how often trains run (therefore how long they need to wait), so often the optimal choice is to run trains as much and as often as possible, even if they are nearly empty. Absolute ridership number is much more important than how full trains are.

rippercushions3• 4 years ago

Incidentally, running frequent services is something the US is really bad at. I doubt there's another country where a line with one (1) train in the morning and one (1) in the evening on weekdays, and none at all on weekends, would dare to call itself a commuter service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sounder_commuter_rail

On the upside, "additional trips on the S Line are scheduled to be implemented by 2046." Whoo!

kkfx5• 4 years ago

Note that public transports moving nearly empty doesn't waste much money: it's a common misconception.

Even if trains are VERY efficient they do not move at zero energy, nor they do not degrade while moving, nor their stations remains operational at no costs... Yes the capex is extreme BUT opex aren't better.

As a serious debate, not intended for sterile polemics, so please try to wipe all prejudice before skimming: https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... what do you think?

Personally I think:

- with climate change cast urbanized areas need to change, perhaps not that drastically in the short term, but more and more frequently flooded areas need to be relocated and doing so in dense cities (let's say just NY with it's anti-floods protections skyrocketing costs) it's next to impossible. Given that infra needs to change, that's why we start pushing wireless satellite networks, small modular nuclear reactors, air short-range mobilities etc they are NOT economically sound, they are NOT safer, better than anything else, but once they exists they can operate in a changing world;

- with the green new deal it's clear that all existing buildings need to be demolished and rebuilt or abandoned, again not tomorrow, but let's say in 25 years terms. Rebuild a single-family home it's reasonably quick, cheap and easy. Rebuild a skyscraper it's another story;

- one thing it's clear: there is no real room for air-mobility in cities. AT MAXIMUM I can imaging intermodal stations where people arrive from outside and descend into a city public transport network witch leave a question open: those who live inside how can own something to go outside with their own means?

Try just to see advertisements: for instance here I see many about heat-pumps for heating homes typically depicted in snowy natural place, or to be fresh in summer, again in natural places. Even cars ads are in nature, even for most city-cars. Again that's means: artist can't imaging something nice in a modern city environment.

These are just few small breadcrumbs of examples why I'm convinced that in the future worlds cities will be sold as https://youtu.be/p-9X8Z2kJt8 while really be like https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/19/why-greeces-ex... to be used as factories/work camps for modern slaves where the development is done not for the well-being but just for moving workforce as needed, meat-based robots.

As a result: public transport is the sole option in dense cities and it's not done because it's nice but just a way to keep humans there to employ them.

panick21_23• 4 years ago

Wow this is so incredibly wrong that its almost hurts.

As a Swiss person I find it so fucking funny when people in the US who drive over their totally broken streets, constantly stuck in this huge traffic jams, build ridicules 20-lane highways and add a single line to a highway for like 5 billion $ want to talk about how public transit is expensive and unpractical.

Partly this believes comes from the fact that the US is one of the few countries that has made highway building into directly government funded activity (not even a real gas tax) while transit project have no such luxury.

Roads and highways are supposed to be free, and government just pays for it. But somehow public transit has to pay for itself.

But here is the thing, true individualism and choice comes from great public transit. In Switerland, you can pay nothing (except some of your taxes) for the public transport and then just decide at any random morning decide, I'm going to go to the other side of the country, cross a lake, go up a mountain and then back home in the evening. You pike up your phones, walk out of your place of living and most likely within 5-10min walk you have some kind of public transit that will reliably bring you to the place you want to be and back.

Check out the network here: https://www.jokteur.com/integrated_timetable/switzerland_sto...

This is for 8 million people, that is less then in some US metro areas and it has to contend with mountains. The US mostly has much better geography.

So it turns out what almost all individuals want in terms of transit is about 5-10min walk away from a public transit station. Building such a system is far more cost effective then building a car network that achieves the same thing. And it also frees up the existing car network not to be totally overflowing and in constant need of expansion.

It also is about 100x better for the environment because almost all of that network runs on green electricity, its saves a huge amount of money because people don't breath tail pipe emissions, and it saves the population a huge amount of money because a car is 100% optional for a huge part of the population.

Not to mention its incredibly for the independence of kids and young adults. Kids in the mountains have reliable way to get to school and its very often the case that young people take the train to school as early as 14. I did international travel without parents when I was 16. This allows that the schools don't have to pay for inconvenient separate bus systems like they have to do in the US.

In cities this is even more important. Transit in cities is cheap and effective if you consider the per person cost, and it results in a comfortable quite likeable city if done correctly. You don't need 'smart cities', all you have to do is ban idiots in their dumb polluting load cars, and design the city for walking, cycling and transit.

And if you do that, the property values and property taxes will pay for the transit with much left over. In the US the few places that exists that are like that fetch absurdly high prices and make the cities huge amounts of money.

The idea that you advocate 'distributed society' is nonsense. Its incredibly harmful in terms of emissions, energy use, infrastructure cost. Its literally the opposite of how all human advancement has worked over the last 500 years.

And again, this is not theory, this can be backed up with data. Suburban sprawl car dependency is literally the worst and most costly way to live and that's why all the US cities are broke. I strongly suggest you go check out 'urban3' they collect real data from real cities and the universal patterns is that dense city centers with transit are supporting the urban sprawl these cities have built around. And even worse that even with the economically profitable core, they will never be able to maintain all the sprawl they have build. And that's why in so much of the US they can't fix the roads. That's why so many cities in the US have horrible problems with their water systems.

You are literally 100% wrong. And its not even up for debate. Data of real existing cities shows this in an incredibly clear way if you just look at it. Rather then come up with your own ideas like 'distributed society'. As if such a world didn't require huge road networks, huge water networks, huge amounts of cars, huge amount of truck driven logistic centers and so on and so on.

briantakita3• 4 years ago

As a Swiss person I find it so fucking funny when people in the US who drive over their totally broken streets, constantly stuck in this huge traffic jams, build ridicules 20-lane highways and add a single line to a highway for like 5 billion $ want to talk about how public transit is expensive and unpractical.

The outskirts of cities have better roads & less traffic. I regularly travel cross country & find traffic jams to be rare. There are slowdown in construction areas & traffic jams in the cities during rush hour, but for the most part, the highways more than match capacity. You might not be able to drive as fast as the autobahn, but given there are many traffic fatalities, that's not a good idea here.

So it turns out what almost all individuals want in terms of transit is about 5-10min walk away from a public transit station. Building such a system is far more cost effective then building a car network that achieves the same thing. And it also frees up the existing car network not to be totally overflowing and in constant need of expansion.

Many people here want to purchase land with few neighbors. Though prices are rising, there's still plenty of land available to buy at a reasonable price without needing a loan...if one is willing to build their home.

Not to mention its incredibly for the independence of kids and young adults. Kids in the mountains have reliable way to get to school and its very often the case that young people take the train to school as early as 14. I did international travel without parents when I was 16. This allows that the schools don't have to pay for inconvenient separate bus systems like they have to do in the US.

There's a rising home schooling network...spurned on by the spirit of independence, political conditions, technology, covid, work from home, etc.

And if you do that, the property values and property taxes will pay for the transit with much left over. In the US the few places that exists that are like that fetch absurdly high prices and make the cities huge amounts of money.

Many people do not want nor can afford rising property taxes. The property values are largely fueled by the now ending long cycle of inexpensive credit. There's plenty of land here, much of it is unavailable due to large institutions & government owning it. This also drives the prices & taxes up. As a result, many independent-minded people are fleeing densely populated areas to be able to own a home in a safe & friendly area.

The idea that you advocate 'distributed society' is nonsense. Its incredibly harmful in terms of emissions, energy use, infrastructure cost. Its literally the opposite of how all human advancement has worked over the last 500 years.

The US has been continuously reducing emissions for decades due to technological advancement. Centralization means long supply chain networks of finished goods, which increases emissions. Distributed production means less transport usage, costs, emissions, better local food with more variety (since food does not need to be selected for transportability), etc.

Suburban sprawl car dependency is literally the worst and most costly way to live and that's why all the US cities are broke

The US cities are broke for spending. Transportation is one line item & any improvement will help. However, there is also manipulated credit-heavy markets coupled with political grift which seems to account for the majority of the spending.

And that's why in so much of the US they can't fix the roads

Again, I have not experienced many bad roads...except in some secluded areas & in some inner cities that don't seem to function very well on a whole. Note that these inner cities learn toward a decades long trend of heavy centralization as a "solution" to the problems...yet the problems keep on getting worse...due to centralized corruption.

You are literally 100% wrong

That doesn't sound like an accurate statement. Given that you are not American & from your statements, I doubt you have the broad & nuanced context of the American experience. I invite you to learn more about the different aspects of this country before making a hard line stance. There's many foreign interests who want to influence & in cases degrade American life, largely through corporitization, closing of small & local businesses, credit markets, & buying up land that they don't live on.

kkfx5• 4 years ago

Actually I'm Italian, living in France, so while I have had experience in USA where yes, I found very lacking and poorly maintained infra, with also a bit of complicate design, I'm curious if:

- you have tried to see how much Swiss invest in it's rails and other transport means

- are you, in person, able to live WITHOUT cars since you get so much public service

- you did consider that cars are used not only for private travels and trips but also for services, like a plumber with it's vast and not so light nor small tools, or ambulances etc so PURE public transport is not possible, while the inverse is pretty obviously possible if density it not too high

- how dense area like many Italian, France and Swiss cities can evolve, for instance in Green New Deal terms given that there is no room to demolish and rebuild and no way to really upgrade existent constructions

- have you see how costs of services skyrocketed here and there after being cheap for a long time, in the same lane of those who own who keep saying "do not own anything, it's cheaper and efficient rent than buy", with examples from tele-heating services to public transports

Long-story short: the USA have made bad infra probably because of short-term private economic interests, Swiss is on the opposite side of the spectrum but BOTH can't really evolve. Meanwhile we see talks like https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... who clearly state a thing: we know the actual situation is messy and without a solution. Those who understand should go a bit far, divest from cities, already-made buildings etc BEFORE most realize the same...

Oh, BTW the distribute society was the human society for most of our history because before massive and quick logistics we all eat local food produced mostly at a short kilometric distance, we live with stuff mostly made locally. Commerce give a big push in human development but cities was always just used for concentrate workforce. Even in ancient Rome the rich was a bit "outside" to live better descending to the center only to work. Economy of scale works for economy, human on scales work to find fellow cohort but not more than that.

bigbacaloa3• 4 years ago

Seems the conclusions can be summarized as: institutionalized corruption at the local level drives costs way up.

supernova87a• 4 years ago

In addition to the factors mentioned in the article, I boil it down in my mind to 2 factors, one legitimate, one dumb.

1) Here in the US and other now built-up countries, it's extremely expensive to displace existing interests and structures (both physical and legal, etc). People have built their lives, bought property, created interests, that have to be compensated to be moved out of the way. Even if a relatively neutral 3rd party could balance one interest against another, we simply have so many legal protections for people's interests that you now have to pay them heavily to make anything possible. Good for some reasons, bad for others, but that's a large part of makes it expensive. Just look at the ridiculous attempts to work around this at LaGuardia Airport. Never going to happen. Unless the government/state was forethinking enough to have reserved rights to some property to develop it, you now have to pay for the value it has accrued.

2) The other large part is that we almost now go looking for liability to protect ourselves against, whether real or perceived. This leads to endless environmental reviews, opportunities to object, lots of consultants required, conservative (read, high) costs, over engineering and over spec-ing. It has become an industry for everyone to get their cut, at the expense of the general welfare, but urged on by some small consituency, and they're all happy to stay employed to do so.

It's good for some things that property rights are being respected and the environment / issues are known before building something. But it has swung too far to that side I think.

And as sad as I am to say it, sometimes you wish that Elon Musk would do for local infrastructure what he did for government understanding of reasonable rocket costs. But this one is a lot harder to fix than offering for sale an alternative.

panick21_23• 4 years ago

1) This is a problem everywhere. And yet most don't have problem as extreme as the US. The are often solutions for those sorts of things.

2) This is certainty a problem but also not totally unique.

Musk wont help public transit, he hates it.

mymythisisthis5• 4 years ago

The U.S.A. also went through rapid de-industrialization for the last 30 years. Look at what is called the 'rust belt' in the North-East. Does the U.S.A., need all the bridges and roads it once built. Detroit is contracting.

Some towns might even be better off economically if they removed all their old bridges and replaced access to a town with a small ferry. If a town has transformed into a retirement community, becoming more bucolic and scenic would attract retirees and tourists. It would be less of a burden with up keep, more of a tourist draw.

Kon-Peki• 4 years ago

Does the U.S.A., need all the bridges and roads it once built. Detroit is contracting.

Detroit's population has been more or less stable for almost 10 years now. And one of the most important infrastructure projects in North America is going on now in Detroit:

https://www.gordiehoweinternationalbridge.com/en

hardware2win• 4 years ago

2b per km?

Thats insane

6stringmerc• 4 years ago

“You can’t fight the railroad”

Texas would be great for high speed rail and we all know it.

Texans hate the idea of the government using its power over them, especially when it comes to a train line in their yard.

A lot of the hostility in the US is probably historically based. I worked in rail engineering a few years ago and the rail companies are…powerful.

As in “Mrs or Mr Mayor/Governor go fuck yourself” level powerful. The legacy of rail is full of powerful assholes. It’s an awful industry for anybody with a decent education and understanding of the planet. Honestly if you are a big ox of a person and a flat earth advocate, a track gang is a good spot for you.

Rail is not liked in the US because the railroads have acted like assholes for more than 100 years here. Just ask the Chinese.

grecy4• 4 years ago

The thing is that money is not being "wasted" at all. It's profit for someone.

Just like healthcare & education, building big infrastructure projects lines the pockets of everyone even tangentially involved, so there is no incentive to change anything. People are literally making millions of dollars.

devoutsalsa• 4 years ago

If you’re not getting a good return on your paid taxes, I’d call that wasteful spending.

grecy4• 4 years ago

For YOU, sure.

For the people getting rich, it’s working perfectly and nothing is going to change.

AdrianB1• 4 years ago

We call it corruption here in Eastern Europe. Call a spade a spade.

photochemsyn2• 4 years ago

Transparency is the solution to that. For some reason, you also left out one of the largest government contracting sectors in the USA, i.e. military and intelligence procurement and contracting - where the waste is more extreme, as it can be hidden behind classification on 'national security grounds'.

nicoburns• 4 years ago

I’m other words, the process is corrupt, allocating money to private interests rather than to actually constructing the project.

adamsmith1432• 4 years ago

Of course it's wasted. If you paid for a service and received no service in return you typically call that fraud. Why would it be different in this case, because someone received "profit" for doing nothing it's all ok?

grecy4• 4 years ago

The service is still getting done, it just costs 10x or 100x what it "needs" to, so that everyone along the way can make more profit.

Not great for the person paying, but great for the people getting the money!

m0llusk2• 4 years ago

The idea that we can do better and save money by ignoring context is utterly and shamefully stupid. This piece highlights the Second Avenue subway. That line was first proposed roughly a hundred years ago. It was decided then that the level of complication from utilities and other subway lines made it unreasonably expensive to build. Over the years the Second Avenue line was repeatedly proposed and the conclusion was always the same. The level of complication made it completely impractical. The costs of construction would be astronomical.

So then it was decided that new tunnel boring technology would make the project pencil out. So the project moved forward. Sure enough, the complications caused costs to explode. If only someone had consulted the extensive literature on the subject that had accumulated over the last hundred years.

Now researchers look at what went wrong and have decided that more careful control of contractors would fix things. That is false. The Second Avenue subway has always been impractical. Basic research shows that has been demonstrated at length many times. Making generalizations about transit construction based on a project that was ruled out repeatedly over a period of a hundred years makes no sense. The Second Avenue subway did not break records with its expense because we don't know how to build. The Second Avenue subway cost a phenomenal amount because it is an impractical project with a huge amount of complications. No amount of clever design or management could possibly make the Second Avenue subway cost a reasonable amount. And this has been solidly understood for a hundred years.

MontyCarloHall3• 4 years ago

None of this is true.

That line was first proposed roughly a hundred years ago. It was decided then that the level of complication from utilities and other subway lines made it unreasonably expensive to build.

The utility density under Second Avenue is not any higher than any other avenue. There are very few other neighboring subway lines to contend with (especially when the line was first proposed). In fact, the only other subway tunnels that the actually completed portion of the Second Avenue Subway contends with already had built-in provisions to connect to a future SAS tunnel (63rd Street tunnel, finished in the late 80s).

Over the years the Second Avenue line was repeatedly proposed and the conclusion was always the same. The level of complication made it completely impractical. The costs of construction would be astronomical.

Other cities with equally complex underground infrastructure (e.g. Paris) manage to complete cut-and-cover subway construction at a fraction of the cost.

So then it was decided that new tunnel boring technology would make the project pencil out. So the project moved forward. Sure enough, the complications caused costs to explode.

Again, other cities manage to construct deep bore tunnels at a fraction of the cost. For example, Korea is building a deep bore (50m underground) high speed rail line under Seoul (GTX A) with several underground stations at a fraction of the cost of the SAS. This line will carry heavy rail trains at 180 km/h, so it is a considerably more complex undertaking than a regular subway tunnel.

(It’s not just the SAS, by the way; insane construction costs are rampant in the NYC Metropolitan Transit Authority. For example, it cost $30M and took 3 years to build a single staircase: https://www.amny.com/transit/30-million-subway-stairs-times-...)

sofixa• 4 years ago

Other cities with equally complex underground infrastructure (e.g. Paris) manage to complete cut-and-cover subway construction at a fraction of the cost.

No offense to New York and New Yorkers, but Paris is surely much more complex underground. The area has been continuously inhabited for more than 2000 years, and has seen a lot of change. There are centuries old buildings and underground Infrastructure that need to be worked around.

rayiner• 4 years ago

Here is a good article where people responsible for recent transit mega-projects in Paris and London mock the excuse that tunneling under NYC is especially complicated: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

London’s subway work has to stop for freaking Roman ruins. The Second Avenue subway is cake in comparison. It’s just that Americans, specifically New Yorkers, are incompetent at projects that require collective action. More disorganized than the French! There should be some sort of award for that.

jcranmer• 4 years ago

Alon Levy has written extensively on reasons why the MTA builds at roughly 10× the rest of the world in subway construction costs. (The short answer is that, when you have cost premiums in that ballpark, everything is going wrong to some degree). I could go into detail, but I'll focus on one particular detail to show why your following quote is wrong:

No amount of clever design or management could possibly make the Second Avenue subway cost a reasonable amount.

Roughly half of the cost of the 2nd Avenue subway phase 2 is in the station costs. (I don't have the most recent precise cost breakdown in front of me to give you precise numbers). If you want to cut the cost down considerably, looking for any inefficiencies in station construction costs is a good place to start, then... and it turns out there are glaring inefficiencies. One of the most obvious contenders is the use of full-length mezzanines, which are unusual, unnecessary, and extremely expensive in a mined station design (as opposed to cut-and-cover, where the volume needs to be excavated anyways).

That's one design change that can give cost savings on the order of at least 10%, and it's not even particularly clever design. Ultimately, the main reason why it's so expensive is that people like you, who are completely incurious about why anything may be expensive, are in charge of these projects.

m0llusk2• 4 years ago

Completely incurious? NYC has a lot of subway miles. This particular subway was repeatedly proposed and rejected as being too costly. And when it was finally built it turned out to be hugely expensive just as predicted. And now this unusually expensive line is being used as an example of all subway construction. That is kind of like trying to explain the cost of food by reviewing the menu at a top rated restaurant or calculating the cost of driving by focusing on luxury sport vehicles. Anyone who actually cares about calculating and comprehending costs needs to be careful with outliers.

And what is with this "people like you" remark? If I had input into the NYC subway system then I would focus on deferred maintenance instead of building a fabulously expensive new line that will never produce a return on the money spent on it. The verifiable fact is that the Second Avenue subway line was known to be hugely expensive from the start. Cut and cover construction was not an option in this case. I make a point about there being a hundred years of detailed analysis describing why the Second Avenue subway could not be constructed for a reasonable cost and that makes me completely incurious? Have you ever bothered to investigate the previous proposals which were rejected? Not even realizing that you are committing to a "It's different this time" strategy creates problems.

christkv• 4 years ago

Read about the building of the new subway line in nyc the amount of corruption and people being payed to do basically nothing is amazing.

JCM9• 4 years ago

The environmental review process is also horribly broken in the US. In practice it does relatively little to protect the environment and adds enormous cost and complexity to projects. Important needed infrastructure is held up for years, sometimes decades, in lengthy court battles that frequently don’t meaningfully alter the proposals. In the end the same project is built but at 2-3x the cost.

We should, of course, protect the environment but we’ve gotta find a way to do that which is efficient and doesn’t waste public funds (where that current waste ironically could then be diverted into meaningful projects to protect the environment!).

helloooooooo• 4 years ago

Environmental review isn’t just about the hippie-greenie meaning of environment, but the actual built-environment. Questions asked include: how does the proposed plan interface with existing infrastructure? How will humans interact with it? What kind of traffic volumes are proposed?

It isn’t just about protecting and engineering our way around natural features. It’s about engineering around the built-environment as well.

xphilter• 4 years ago

And it’s still a waste of time and money.

panick21_23• 4 years ago

And yet despite that transit projects in the US almost universally fail at most of these aspects. Or play into the existing status quo that is supposed to be changed.

And really these questions were already asked and explored in the design phase. By the time this has to be done all these things have already been threw many iterations.

Sometimes its better to just do a project, because you can always change a lot of things and iterate on a lot of aspects of a transit project.

ch4s3• 4 years ago

The EIS process in New York amounts to little more than legally mandated graft and a blocking function for preventing new housing from being built. A residential project on the edge of Downtown Brooklyn nearly died because it cast a shadow on a tiny community garden used by fewer than 20 people. The compromise was to shorted then building which eliminated 20 or so units of affordable housing.

mymythisisthis5• 4 years ago

At this point in history, I think we really need to stop building in green-fields, farmland, etc. and only concentrate on redevelopment. We are past the point of ecological sustainability.

jandrewrogers• 4 years ago

I have first-hand experience being required to do an environmental impact study and an archaeological study to fill a pothole in an existing road. These laws are beyond unreasonable. Same with catering to the people that think building out mobile networks alters their bodily fluids or some such.

We've ceded the entire process of deciding what can be built to the fevered imaginations of the most hyper-sensitive among us that have nothing better to do with their time.

photochemsyn2• 4 years ago

Let's say the USA builds out rail infrastructure at the same scale as found in Europe, Japan, and China.

What's that going to do to domestic fossil fuel sales? How about domestic vehicle sales? Airplane traffic and airplane fuel sales?

It's very notable that the countries with the most sophisticated train networks - Japan, China, Europe - are also importers of fossil fuels. Since the USA is an exporter of fossil fuels, a collapse in domestic demand due to an efficient nationwide train system is not something the ruling oligarchs are interested in financing, it's as simple as that.

Ericson2314• 4 years ago

Real estate and car interests are much more to blame than fossil fuel interests.

f0e4c2f7• 4 years ago

I believe Ray Dallio's most recent book talks about this a bit. Essentially the idea that more developed countries have slow downs in productivity related to waste.

A year or two ago I read the book The Power Broker about a guy who was responsible for a lot of the construction in new york city in fairly corrupt ways. You get the idea in the book that they were just figuring out the earliest versions of ballooning costs and slowing projects down in those days.

In the same way private contractors benefit from the military industrial complex and are incentivized to keep it alive and even promote conflict, We have a sort of bullshit industrial complex too of consultants and other nonsense jobs that come in and make projects take longer.

It seems like there must be a way to go back to building stuff as fast as we could 100 years ago in the US.

In China they can still build that way today[0][1] in a way I find embarrassing and annoying.

Patrick Collison explores this idea some on this page[2]. I consider it to be one of the most important problems of the modern age.

How different would the world be if in 3 months SF build 19 giant skyscrapers full of apartments you would want to live in?

Some of these problems are exacerbated by the fact that even if you could do it now, capital isn't as cheap as it used to be. Which makes it even more frustrating that we went through that period without massive infrastructure updates and improvements.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWp6vSHFG4M

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6f_sayw0mM

[2] https://patrickcollison.com/fast

kspacewalk22• 4 years ago

We have a sort of bullshit industrial complex too of consultants and other nonsense jobs that come in and make projects take longer.

Forego those "bullshit industrial complex" studies, and there'll be some environmental, safety or cost fuck-up. Outside observers will then get to comment derisively on lack of foresight or planning, so it's really a win-win for us.

It seems like there must be a way to go back to building stuff as fast as we could 100 years ago in the US.

There is. Forego a lot of the building/safety code, cut corners, and optimize speed over all else.

In China they can still build that way today[0][1] in a way I find embarrassing and annoying.

Imagine how embarrassing and annoying it must be for Chinese people to see the relatively sub-par quality of the end result.

How different would the world be if in 3 months SF build 19 giant skyscrapers full of apartments you would want to live in?

I can almost guarantee it would not happen. They can build it, but it's not likely to be an apartment I would want to live in, at least long term.

Don't get me wrong, there's certainly a middle-ground somewhere between the extremes you're talking about. However, when it comes to, say, transit, I'd much rather aim for a first-world country that builds "less slowly" and cheaper without compromising safety or quality, like Spain or the Netherlands, over a place like China, which may set the record for speed but won't be setting any records for quality or longevity of its infrastructure. (And I'd even say that's okay for China, they need it deployed quickly because they, until recently, were growing fast from a very low baseline.)

chii• 4 years ago

Imagine how embarrassing and annoying it must be for Chinese people to see the relatively sub-par quality of the end result

there's no evidence that infrastructure projects in china, built for 1/3 of the price of what it would cost in the US, is any less quality. In fact, things like highspeed rail is much higher quality, due to leap-frogging of technology!

stoppingby• 4 years ago

Imagine how embarrassing and annoying it must be for Chinese people to see the relatively sub-par quality of the end result.

That’s honestly just cope. China has the best rail network in the world by far and there’s really nothing even close to what they’ve accomplished in about 15 years.

In the time the US has been twiddling their thumbs planning and throwing billions at contractors to consider high speed rail and scams like hyper loop, China went from 0 miles of high speed rail to thousands.

There’s a lot of cruft in construction in the US and it’s impossible to deny. I lived near a highway that was being repaired for years. It was ongoing before I moved to that city and apparently only finished after I moved out 5 years later. Thorough environmental checks for building dams, okay. But just build a goddamn road—especially when all you’re doing is fixing what’s there. Quit selling it out to your biggest donor/lowest bidder. Pay someone who delivers results with a record to back it up even if the initial budget looks higher.

Infrastructure is like a pair of boots. Pay a little extra now and you’ll quickly realize why it’s good you didn’t cheap out.

lifeformed• 4 years ago

Tokyo builds for half the cost and the quality and safety is light years ahead of NYC results.

system16• 4 years ago

Imagine how embarrassing and annoying it must be for Chinese people to see the relatively sub-par quality of the end result.

While this may be true for many shady developer-led real estate projects, it's absolutely not the case for the country's major infrastructure projects like airports, subways, high speed rail, highways, bridges, dams, etc. They rival or surpass anything you will see in the west in scope and quality, and built in a fraction of the time.

thatfrenchguy• 4 years ago

Forego those "bullshit industrial complex" studies, and there'll be some environmental, safety or cost fuck-up. Outside observers will then get to comment derisively on lack of foresight or planning, so it's really a win-win for us.

I mean, just look at any other developed country like France and look at how they can still build things at a reasonable pace while doing environmental studies. Everyone knows that environmental studies in the US are insane, you just have to read one to be convinced of it.

panick21_23• 4 years ago

. They can build it, but it's not likely to be an apartment I would want to live in, at least long term.

So what? Are you the only person that matters? How about the intern at tech company. How about the guy that cleans the offices.

Should the have to rent a house 2h away and then be forced to buy an old shitty polluting car, wasting 5h of their life and polluting the whole area instead? Is that a better result.

And of course if you do it correct and you don't just build dumb towers, you can pretty easly build nice high density neighborhoods where people wont need a car and you can get density not unlike huge skyscrapers.

CalRobert2• 4 years ago

It'll take more than 3 months but with Builder's Remedy SF may indeed get a lot more apartments soon!

panick21_23• 4 years ago

Well 'The Power Broker' is of course a really famous book and person. He is basically responsible behind the US having the brilliantly self destructive idea to build gigantic high ways threw every city in the US and destroying the city centers, lowering property values and facilitating suberiba and urban sprawl.

What has to be understood about the situation back then is that he was responsible for a totally undemocratic infrastructure companies. If he built a bridge, he could collect tolls, and then build more infrastructure with those tolls. So in effect, he was operating basically an infrastructure business. And not just any old infrastructure business, he basically controlled access to one of the world major cities. He was more powerful then the major or any elected official.

Today the process just incredibly different. Today there are about 500 steps of 'public engagement' that have to be cleared. Funding has to be pulled together from lots of source, federal, state, local, private and so on. This basically leads to a situation where no city can really do anything for itself, it always requires far more. And on all levels a project needs to be agree on. When the federal government was pushing highways based on the Moses template, there was a top town push, the states bought in and the cities happy plowed over their cities to build highways.

Today for most of these policies there is no clear aliened solution. For a while the Obama administration was pushing 'light rail' and a few such systems got built by cities tried to hook into that subsidy. But then not really much expand unfriendly beyond that. And instead of looking at 'what is the right public transit solution' cities instead will just check what subsidies does the federal or state government provide that we can use to invest in public transit. State DoT meanwhile have been historically created to build highways, and that is really what they are good at and focus on, so if you build a highway, state will likely give you money, if you build a bikelane the state wont. Even worse the state DoT will just plan a highway threw your city and you can't stop it.

And then of course there is the environment piece. Almost any tram line will be better for the environment then using the car. But the horrible bad for the environment existing infrastructure, the 20-lane highway doesn't have to clear 'environment' review. It might have to clear some if you want to extend an existing highway, but that's much easier. So the burden put on new infrastructure projects, is far larger then the burden put on existing systems.

But the problem is really even deeper then those first other problems. The whole land use polices the US has done for 60 years is hurting the country when it comes to public transport (trains, trams and so on). Because of the sprawl style of development cities are broke and can't even fix or maintain existing road and water infrastructure. The city center and the poor parts of the city are systematically subsidizing the sub-burbs. The politically influential suburb of course do not want to finance city center public transit because are not well connected. But they do support another lane of highway that they use to get into the city. A transit line into the suburbs never makes money because you simply can not connect suburbs because there is just to much sprawl, not enough density for it to make sense.

When you do, your train station just ends up being a gigantic parking lot, see for example Torronto Go network. Granted this is better then not having rail at all, but far from ideal.

So, to even start to fix this, and start to make sensible public project choices and investments a lot has to change. First of all the tax system has to change to reflect reality (example being a land tax rather then a property tax). Shitty parking lots and cheap warehouse building shouldn't get better taxes then nice mixed-use apartments. Your infrastructure cost and income have to be realigned, suburbs need to be systematically pay more in fees for utilities to reflect the much higher infrastructure costs. Then you have to reform the zoning code so that you allow mixed use and higher density almost everywhere. Your environmental review process has to acknowledge some fundamental truths about the current system and what it replaces. Then you have to start building your transit together with redevelopment of areas to get higher ridership and higher (property/land) tax from those lines.

At that point these infrastructure projects will still be expensive and over budget, but at least you will get results were people 5 years later say 'well at least we got this amazing infrastructure' and don't remember how much it cost. Because at least you overpaid for right project, an not another lane on the highway that you would have also overpaid for, just with worse result.

Here is the thing, in countries like Switzerland, infrastructure often goes over budget as well. And so did high speed trains in most countries. But if you do it correctly, it still ends up being a good deal. If California does this right, and starts also connecting local rail and builds a true integrated rail system across of all of California, with a high speed back bone, these high cost will be more then worth it.

I strongly recommend 'urban3' check on youtube or their website. They do real data analysis of cities and show in data visualization where your city is losing money and where its making money. You can also see where public transit increases property taxes. Cities need to take that into account and focus their limited funds on places where they are making money (very often the poor districts actually should be more of the budget).

Here are some case studies:

https://www.urbanthree.com/case-study/

lezojeda• 4 years ago

I also highly recommend "The Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joseph Tainter which also talks about the economic diminishing returns of any activity in societies as they become more complex. Uses the roman empire as its main example for his hypothesis but some other societies as well, it's worth a read.

Balgair• 4 years ago

How different would the world be if in 3 months SF build 19 giant skyscrapers full of apartments you would want to live in?

I mean, considering how the Millennium Tower is tilting so badly, I'd give such blitzed construction a hard pass. And anything in the collapse zones too.

aaron695• 4 years ago

It'd be good to see an adult comment on the Vegas Loop.

Vegas Loop $50 million. 2 years from contract signed to opening. 1.7 miles, one lane. Currently has shared driven cars - https://www.tiktok.com/@alexsibila/video/7156602211508768046

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company

How cutting edge is the prufrock? https://www.boringcompany.com/prufrock

Musk knows what to do, cut out bureaucrats. Pay more money to dig deeper rather than mess with permissions.

Vice is run by children, and children of the most boring kind. Reading articles on Vice for this stuff is pointless.

willio58• 4 years ago

Imagine if instead of using teslas where a person is driving you (lol), they could just do what cities have been doing for centuries and put in a super fast and high capacity metro. I've never understood this idea of "let's go underground, get into a car, buckle up, and let a guy drive me to a place not that far from me and not that fast"

mozman3• 4 years ago

Bring back small time corruption. It’s reserved for the super wealthy in the US but if foremans could grease the wheels every now and again things go a lot faster.

You used to get this for free in NYC as you had to bribe someone to avoid concrete delivery delays and rejected mixes. They made sure all the little guys with a tiny bit of power stayed out of your way.

The industry is now known as expediters and depending on the city is useless.

As a country I think we forgot how to do business. It’s clear people aren’t happy with their wages..

usui• 4 years ago

Doesn't tolerance for small-time corruption necessarily manifest into tolerance for big-time corruption?

mozman3• 4 years ago

We already have ubiquitous big time corruption. Just look at corporate America.

lbriner2• 4 years ago

It doesn't have to be corruption, which tends to reward the people in the know far more than those who aren't!

There is already the concept of an expedited payment. You want the concrete on the agreed schedule, it's $3000 but if you need it express because you screwed something up, you can pay $500 and we'll get another driver in etc.

mozman3• 4 years ago

Being in the know is a major advantage in life. If you are pragmatic and know how to talk to people life is so much easier.

lazide• 4 years ago

Ugh. That just makes it worse as more money disappears into the cracks and there is less accountability.

The issue is the folks paying for it don’t demand results, they usually prefer it get drug out. It means more fees to the folks involved, a longer time in the cushy job overseeing it, etc.

It’s usually the taxpayer or some large entity where the leaders are political and can get in on the graft, or are easily fooled.

Once the planning authorities get out of the way, just look at most private construction - anything where it’s not a giant megacorp or entity paying for it.

It’s done in 1/5th the time of equivalent public works, and at a fraction of the cost too.

In most of these places, the politicians/leaders know how to control the captive base, and the captive base just shrugs and pays their taxes without demanding better.

So as long as the graft isn’t too obvious, ‘everyone wins’ - except the end user of course.

But they usually don’t actually need it (as in someone dies or an economy collapses or whatever), so they just putter along bitching about it without doing anything or looking closer. I guess that’s also part of the issue with having something that ‘mostly works’ already, no rush to replace it.

lbriner2• 4 years ago

So many issues which all come back to culture and how you both set and incentivize it in the workers. Not many humans are going to bite the hand that feeds them so if they can pretend they have a full-time job as a "dropped nail collector" or something for $100K/year, many people will.

Definitely need to do something about Political interference, the bane of many countries. People who have the power to sign checks/cheques but have no actual skin in the game if they change things, screw things up, promise their buddy some lucrative contract etc.

The transparency has got to be one of the best ways of forcing things into the open though. Instead of a large contractor hiding a tonne of profit (or contingency) into their price, they specify it all - that should be the cost of earning public money. It helps both ways too. If the Project goes awry and needs the contractor to do more, they need to be paid more based on their rates.

It sounds like NY is especially disfunctional though. I would love to see a decent (and long!) documentary on this sort of thing :-)

cratermoon• 4 years ago

One of the most convincing analyses I read, and I may dig up the link someday, is that the US sucks compared to Europe because every project is treated as a one-off unique effort, and there are so few of them, while Europe just builds transit the way the US builds houses: ongoing, repeated, standardized.

It's easy to compare this with an aspect of software development, something most HN readers are no doubt familiar with: If something is hard, do it more frequently, until you get good at it.

Nobody masters a skill by planning and thinking really hard about how to do the skill, then suddenly doing the skill perfectly. No, you start out with a goal and a general idea of the method, begin with the basics, try, fail, learn, try again. For days, weeks, months, years, until you master the skill.

ravenstine• 4 years ago

The entire point of these projects is to waste money. Or, rather, waste money from the perspective of those whom are paying. Those receiving certainly aren't wasting it.

fastaguy882• 4 years ago

I am always surprised when I learn that administrative/business advancement seems to be based on how much money was spent. I get it; it's much much easier to quantify spending than value per dollar. But in academia, I notice that there is a tremendous incentive to build new buildings and start new schools/departments, rather than improve existing infrastructure. Part of it is the donors, but I think there is an incentive to be able to say "I did this ...", where this involves a large budget. I suspect it is the same for public works projects -- career advancement depends more on spending money that producing value.

rrwo• 4 years ago

Part of the problem is that people in the US are hostile to the government actually doing anything using government employees instead of external contractors or consultants.

jl2718• 4 years ago

Deceptive title. No answer, just magical thinking about people ignoring their incentives.

Here’s an idea, not a great one, but something: torts and bonds. Regulators specify public-interest outcomes and associated monetary values, which are the bonding requirements. Then public interest lawyers sue for a maximum of the existing bond on the grounds of any violation of the public interest outcomes. The plaintiff would be required to pay the the non-refundable public cost of the court case. It is important these court cases would not be based on intent or following standards, or technical merit; they are strictly about outcomes defined and valued by the bond.

This would push technical standards and project evaluation into the insurance industry, and the finance industry would select their tolerable level of innovation and risk in each bonding pool. It is important here that the bonds be actual dollars held in trust, and not just letters of credit, and additionally, that no government agency provides finance or insurance in any form.

It would have the obvious side-effect of requiring a lot of up-front capital to do anything, and tying up a lot of capital, which would have a huge range of risk, and therefore interest rates, as a project amortizes out its tort risk over time. The bonds would only be recoverable by torts, successful decommission of the project, or more realistically, subsidizing renewal of the project.

The macroeconomic effect would be deflationary as the bonds would basically be a burn pit for dollars, but this would open up opportunities for more efficient public funding through central bank bond purchases and the elimination of tax burden. It would also massively reduce the public burden of regulation and administration, especially as the tort fees would pay for it. I think it would also promote localization of investment, as the bonding capital would be a high-yield investable asset most appropriately held or rejected by the people knowledgeable and/or responsible for the quality of the result, which is the community itself.

Okay, this is Hacker News, so, please go ahead and tear it apart.

How the US can stop wasting billions of dollars on each transit project

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