U.S. Taxpayers Are Gouged on Mass Transit Costs

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-26/u-s-taxpayers-are-gouged-on-mass-transit-costs.html

by tokenadult • 14 years ago

227 216 14 years ago

Seems questionable to me. Yes the Second Ave Subway is expensive, but how many cities are building new subway lines underground through incredibly dense existing infrastructure?

Also, US taxpayers may be making up for it by paying more upfront but less per ride (unless you live in DC or San Fran):

  City      Cost per Ride
  Mexico    $0.15
  Beijing   $0.29
  Seoul     $0.55
  Moscow    $0.69
  Tokyo     $1.68
  Barcelona $1.76
  NYC       $1.96
  Boston    $2.00
  Paris     $2.25
  Chicago   $2.25
  Toronto   $2.37
  Berlin    $2.95
  DC        $3.08
  San Fran  $3.18
  Stockholm $3.96
  London    $4.41

Source: http://www.treehugger.com/cars/subway-fares-around-the-world...

burnsbothends• 14 years ago

I disagree. Pittsburgh, for example, is worse than all those listed. $3.25-$4.50. And much of it is above ground, in residential areas. Only including major metros leaves out a large part of the picture- across the US, transit is VERY cost prohibitive.

yxhuvud2• 14 years ago

Well, it is cheap to build above ground, but there is also a lot more maintenance.

lucaspiller• 14 years ago

In London the Crossrail project (started 2005, due to open 2019, estimate £16b / $26b) is going from the East to West right through the middle of the city. Tottenham Court Road station (and many of the buildings surrounding it) are practically being rebuild.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail

DannyBee• 14 years ago

Since these numbers were published in 2009, D.C.'s metro has raised fares ~80-100%. Mainly due to construction costs and ridiculous maintenance costs for the stations, like many millions to repair escalators that break every year

vidarh2• 14 years ago

At least for London, that list is very wrong. The most expensive single zone journey on Oyster is 2 GBP, or $3.20 at current exchange rates.

lifeisstillgood2• 14 years ago

Hate to be pedantic about it but the oyster is a discount card (that everyone but tourists uses) - a single is really about 4 quid all zones

raldi• 14 years ago

Quoth the article:

--------

Tunneling in any dense urban environment is an expensive proposition, but the $5 billion price tag for just the first two miles of the Second Avenue subway cannot be explained by engineering difficulties. The segment runs mainly beneath a single broad avenue, unimpeded by rivers, super-tall skyscraper foundations or other subway lines.

bearmf2• 14 years ago

But it does run through one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

See Manhattan Community Board 8 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_densely_popula...

jrockway3• 14 years ago

The numbers don't make sense to me. The NYC subway costs $2.25. Is this figure weighted to account for reduced fare users?

Similarly, the Muni in San Francisco is $2. BART is commuter rail, despite its name, so I don't think its fares should be counted as "subway" even though some of it is underground.

Finally, Tokyo has a zoned system, ranging from 130 yen for short JR trips to more than 1000 yen for Tokyo<->Chiba trips.

And none of this includes monthly passes, 10 ride discounts, or the MTA's 7% "bonus".

settrans• 14 years ago

The $1.96 figure is presumably the pre-2011 effective fare counting the 15% bonus, i.e. $2.25/1.15.

snogglethorpe• 14 years ago

> Yes the Second Ave Subway is expensive, but how many cities are building new subway lines underground through incredibly dense existing infrastructure?

Tokyo for one. E.g. the very recently built Fukutoshin line, deep tunneled subway underneath some of the busiest areas of the city (the tunneling is complicated in part because it had to dodge myriad existing subway lines), including very elaborate and expensive stations, had a cost-per-km about 1/4 that of the SAS. The Fukutoshin line is also overbuilt in various ways because it will be interlined in the future with the Tokyu Toyoko line (an extremely high-ridership suburban line).

A number of recently built subway lines in the Tokyo area had many problems, and were considered extremely expensive—but they were still much cheaper than the SAS...

So it isn't "complexity," it isn't "density," and it isn't high wages (Japan is not a low-wage country!). It's not fares—Tokyo transit fares are roughly on par with NYC; they're distance-based, so sometimes higher, sometimes lower, but it works out to roughly the same thing. Arguably it isn't even unionization, as Japanese industry is heavily unionized, although of course Japanese unions are rather different than U.S. unions.

One difference may be that Tokyo actually keeps building subway (and other rail) lines, and thus has has kept around the necessary in-house organization and knowledge for doing so, and has a wide selection of competent contractors available. U.S. cities typically have none of these things, and end up relying on consultants (and may not even have the competence or freedom to choose the consultants well), and a limited selection of contractors. [The NYC contracting situation is reportedly pretty dire, with a very few contractors having figured out how to game the system.]

shimon_e• 14 years ago

China is very densely built. They're building metros under all their major cities.

scottfr2• 14 years ago

I few years back I was thinking of running for the board of AC Transit in the bay area.

I did some research: the cost per mile to move a person on AC Transit was ~ $1.50 (total cost including subsidies, not what you pay). Compare that to a cost to pay for a cab to take you one mile of ~ $3.00.

So if you have two people in a cab, that cab is just as economically efficient as a bus. Literally, a car that waits for your call, comes right to your door, and chauffeurs you around, is as economically efficient as our bus system. This is crazy! We could replace AC Transit with a fleet of cabs.

Also, I've heard that the "Nextbus" system which makes those predictions for when the next bus is arriving makes most of their money fixing the next bus sensors. The reason the sensors are broken is AC Transit employees continually sabotage them because they hate being tracked.

Truly, it is an incredibly screwed up system. Anyways, I was too busy to run for the board of directors, but someone really need to fix AC Transit!

tokenadult• 14 years ago

Literally, a car that waits for your call, comes right to your door, and chauffeurs you around, is as economically efficient as our bus system. This is crazy!

I recall that when San Francisco retrofitted its city buses so that all are accessible to people using wheelchairs, an economic analysis showed it would be cheaper for the city taxpayers simply to provide free taxi service to all wheelchair users. The reason for putting people who use wheelchairs on city buses seems to have been wholly political--to mainstream such persons into a form of transportation that makes them more visible to other members of the public (at least, the members of the public who use buses).

I have both an emotional reaction and a rational reaction to this policy trade-off. On the one hand, my own late father was confined to a wheelchair as a quadriplegic (after a slip-and-fall accident on an icy parking lot here in Minnesota) for the last six years of his life. So I totally get why friends and relatives of persons who use wheelchairs want public places, and by extension public transportation, to be accessible to persons who use wheelchairs. That allows many more family outings with grandparents and their grandchildren than might otherwise be possible, for example. But my rational reaction is still that we all have to work hard to pay our taxes, so "public" money (money derived from taxation) should still be spent responsibly. If devoting taxi service (and, I hope, someday a self-driving car service) with public subsidies helps needy members of the population more than bus service, so be it. Spend the least money to get the positive externality is generally the way to go in public policy.

scottfr2• 14 years ago

Dealing with disabilities is definitely an issue for the bus system. Does society need a public financed transportation system for disabled people. I would say absolutely.

However, I don't think that should be the general bus system. Loading/unloading a wheelchair can take several minutes each way throwing the bus off schedule. Furthermore, to accomodate the disabled you need more stops. So you have stops ridiculously close together (like 40 meters in some cases). This further slows down the buses a lot.

I think we need some sort of parallel taxi/bus service for the disabled and to focus on making the main bus service fast and on time. How to fund this though or make it work. I don't know.

malsme• 14 years ago

In my location, those sorts of disabled facilities have more than one use, so if there's no disabled person taking the space, then parents with prams or buggies use them, if there's no parents, then standard passengers use them (they have more leg room and are close to the door). They are always busy spaces, so not sure why they'd be a problem.

DenisM7• 14 years ago

> If devoting taxi service (and, I hope, someday a self-driving car service)

I think the idea is not to make disabled people go from point A to point B, but to integrate them into society. There is nothing worse for an injured/disabled person than to be isolated, they will get clinically depressed. It's not one of those "man up and tough it out, soldier" situations - societal acceptance is crucial to mental health. Yes, we should spend money responsibly and not spend more than needed to reach the goal, but the goal must be stated inclusively.

A self-driving car is the exact opposite of what is needed.

yxhuvud2• 14 years ago

More or less free taxi for people with disabilities? Sounds awefully lot like the system we have here in Sweden.

http://www.fardtjansten.sll.se/sv/Information/Information-pa...

Anechoic13• 14 years ago

So if you have two people in a cab, that cab is just as economically efficient as a bus. [..] We could replace AC Transit with a fleet of cabs.

Does that include the cost of increased congestion from the increased traffic?

leeoniya• 14 years ago

havent read it yet, too in love with appropriate mobius rail graphic

mcphilip• 14 years ago

The recent article in Esquire about rebuilding the world trade center sheds a lot of light into the particularly inept NY & NJ Port Authority mentioned in this bloomberg piece.

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/world-trade-center-rebuild...

tnuc• 14 years ago

I wonder why Bloomberg has such a problem with the NY & NJ Port Authority?

Oh that's right, Bloomberg is the Mayor and would rather give the contract to someone more cough _deserving_.

angdis• 14 years ago

A bunch of right-wing baloney. The transportation systems in NYC are what make that city even possible. It is very easy for an uncreative bean-counter to look at the price tag of public transportation systems and then not be able "add up" all the long term benefits of having a city where people and businesses can thrive and get around and that are enjoyable and aesthetic.

If you really want to talk about "gouging" the taxpayer, instead look at highway funding and regulations that practically enforce sprawl by requiring parking spaces, and multi-lane streets through urban cores.

tayl0r• 14 years ago

Are we reading the same article?

The author isn't trying to say that the cost isn't worth it- he's just saying that it could be done much cheaper if the system wasn't so screwed up.

notJim• 14 years ago

It doesn't sound like you read the article. The article doesn't say the US shouldn't spend money on transit (the point you refuted), it says that other countries pay less for transit because they mange projects better.

antidaily• 14 years ago

No one is arguing the value of public transportation in our cities, just that it could probably be built for less. If anything, this article could be a left-wing talking point - using private companies instead of public workers costs more.

bane2• 14 years ago

Absolutely, absurdly true. The D.C. metro is adding a new line, almost all of it will be above ground and on existing right-of-way reserved specifically for the eventual construction of the line decades ago and operate in fairly low density part of the system. It'll be 37km long and run $6.8 billion dollars. It'll have 29 stations.

Compare to the new Seoul Bundang line which is 32.8km with 28 stations in some of the most dense urban areas on the planet. It'll run a bit under $400 million to build or about 1/17th the cost.

Once open, it'll probably cost riders under a dollar for most trips, compared to over $3 on the DC Metro.

No matter how you figure it, cost of labor, eminent domain, legal, whatever, there's simply no way to figure the D.C. costs as making sense when a world away a similar line, in another developed country with far more difficult construction issues is much cheaper in every way possible.

whatusername2• 14 years ago

7 Billion for 29 stations and a full line? I wish.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/south-morang-finally-gets-... 1/2 a billion for extending the line 3km and building 1 station. (All in the suburbs - where there used to be a train line that was ripped up)

rosser• 14 years ago

Just an off-hand observation: Australia also has a common-law legal system, which TFA suggests correlates strongly positively with out-of-control prices on such projects.

Anechoic13• 14 years ago

Compare to the new Seoul Bundang line which is 32.8km with 28 stations in some of the most dense urban areas on the planet. It'll run a bit under $400 million to build or about 1/17th the cost.

Where are you getting that cost from?

bane2• 14 years ago

http://m.cnngo.com/seoul/life/sin-bundang-line-opens-end-sep...

It could just be for the 17km most recent portion but still...the cost per km is a fraction.

rayiner3• 14 years ago

My parents live near the silver line, and it's ridiculously over-designed. This huge concrete highway in the sky, for what could have very easily been a pretty cheap metal raised framework.

001sky3• 14 years ago

Hollywood. Accounting.

001sky3• 14 years ago

A huge part of the problem is that agencies can’t keep their private contractors in check. Starved of funds and expertise for in-house planning, officials contract out the project management and early design concepts to private companies that have little incentive to keep costs down and quality up.

--Citation from the article.

michaelochurch• 14 years ago

Misleading title (in the current political environment) because the gouging is done by contractors who've figured out how to exploit an antiquated (lowest-bidder wins) system. The article is not suggesting that we have "too much" mass transit, but that we pay too much for what we get, and this is undeniably true.

The gouging doesn't stop once the infrastructure is built. U.S. transit is also expensive when delivered (it costs over $100 per person round-trip to go from New York to Harrisburg, PA; for two people, it's cheaper to drive). Finally, we pay again through exorbitant real estate prices because our transport infrastructure, in this country, is so poor.

Anechoic13• 14 years ago

the gouging is done by contractors who've figured out how to exploit an antiquated (lowest-bidder wins) system.

As someone who works on transportation projects, I find this to be incredibly unfair. Yes, there are a few shady contractors out there, but there are a lot of things that can happen during design and construction that can increase costs through no fault of our own. For example: change orders. A project gets designed and approved, the contractor gets his contract and starts digging. Two weeks into excavation, the project engineer tells the contractor "oh, that tunnel needs to be built 20 feet deeper and moved 15 feet to the south." Why? It could be for any number of reasons, maybe construction uncovered a gas line that couldn't be moved, maybe some politician wanted the line moved further (or closer) to a friend's business, etc. There are also the inevitable lawsuits, environmental issues and so on.

One of my big beefs, and one of the factors that IME increases costs for architectural/engineering consultants like me are the hoops we have to jump through to demonstrate that we're not ripping off taxpayers. There are all sorts of audit requirements (including the dreaded DCAA audit), insurance requirements and so on that increase our costs and so we have pass on those costs to the taxpayers. Recently we had an issue when negotiating a contract for transit design project - my firm's is relatively new, and we don't have a revenue history with which to develop audited rates, so we intentionally set out rates low in an attempt to convince accountants that our lack of audited rates wouldn't be a problem. We spent a munch arguing with the prime's accountants who wanted our audited rates to we could demonstrate that our profit on the job wouldn't exceed 10% (they were obsessed with the 10% profit number), depsite the fact that our rates were 40-50% lower than other similar contractors. We had to get someone from the Federal government to step in and tell the prime that our rates were fine as-is.

Insurance requirements are the other big issue. General liability isn't so bad, but E&O can be costly for big engineering projects, even if you're exposure is low. However many projects have a "one size fits all" with respect to insurance requirements and require everyone to carry $10+ million in general liability and $5+ million in E&O. If you're the general contractor responsible for digging up streets which can have all sorts or negative effects, that's probably reasonable. If you're the graphic designer responsible for creating the signs for the project, that's probably a little excessive.

jbooth8• 14 years ago

Yeah, but the issue is that due to the lowest-bid system, the govt is guaranteed to get a contract that doesn't properly plan for contingencies and most likely leads to disaster.

It's not that all or most contractors are bad, it's that the least honest tends to win the bid.

rz2k• 14 years ago

I think you would enjoy reading the article that specifically addresses the issue of lowest-bidder leading to rights of contractors, leading to ever more explicit rules and difficult hoops to jump through.

Considering what is behind this article, and its audience, you might even feel heartened about prospects for some progress on the conditions.

deveac3• 14 years ago

You cite change orders in your defense:

>For example: change orders. A project gets designed and approved, the contractor gets his contract and starts digging. Two weeks into excavation, the project engineer tells the contractor "oh, that tunnel needs to be built 20 feet deeper and moved 15 feet to the south."

But I think it's worth pointing out that change orders are probably THE primary mechanism of gouging used by contractors in 'lowest-bid-wins' scenarios, as you should know.

What often happens is that contractors lowball, knowing that they will make up the margin on the change orders which are not competitively bid. A well designed RFP can mitigate this somewhat by requiring menu pricing on add/deducts for the most common in-field changes, but it can't account for everything, and bidding contractors look for open ended RFPs and exploit them.

There may only be a few 'shady contractors' out there as you say, but a)low-bid systems bring them to the top of the short list, and b)I'd wager almost every 'reputable' contractor's change order margins are higher than for the exact same work that was competed in a public RFP.

Just my thoughts on that. Raised an eyebrow since change orders are the primary mechanism for inflating post-award margins.

Edit:

Also want to point out that my use of the word 'gouging' is kind of a loaded term:

>But I think it's worth pointing out that change orders are probably THE primary mechanism of gouging used by contractors in 'lowest-bid-wins' scenarios

Are these contractors gouging? They are not doing anything illegal, but it can fall into questionably ethical territory. But from many contractor's point of view, they are stuck bidding on a system that is designed somewhat unethically. From a systems standpoint, when the only factor in winning a bid is lowest cost on the delivery of a product that will unquestionably have change orders, you get a scenario where the following is actually happening.

1)Firms provide goods and service for margin 'a+b' which is averaged over the life of the project

2)Only margin 'a' is competed

3)Margin 'b' is projected but undefined and can be adjusted by the Firm after the award based on margin 'a'

Is it ethical to even ask a Firm to submit a bid based on margin 'a' set equal to margin 'b' knowing that the system is designed to produce competing bids distributing the total product margin unevenly between the two variables, weighting 'b' much more heavily and minimizing 'a' in order to win the bid and work at all?

I don't think so, and what happens is you get a system that is almost explicitly designed to inject increased total project costs and increased variability.

I think that under this system, it's an incredibly gray area on the how ethical increased post-award margins on change orders are. Just the fact that an increase occurs does not strike me as unethical, but there is absolutely zero doubt that some of the margin increases are absolutely unethical and drive the total product margin up well past what it would have been if bid under a possibly more efficient system (throw out high and low bids for example).

If gouging is going to happen, it's going to happen on a change order, but it's not so black and white.

Spooky23• 14 years ago

The characterization was unfair, but essentially true from an outsiders perspective. Government procurement policies create a cozy aristocracy of vendors who are equipped to work with the government.

Add to that the fact State laws are often rigged in various ways to give preference to union shops, and all of the sudden someone is low-bidding a $10,000 toilet seat.

jbooth8• 14 years ago

Yup. 2 anecdotes from a 3-year stint in town government:

1) Built a new town hall because they were double-desking at the old one. Lowest bid wins, realistic and competent bids lose. They lay the sidewalk outside while it's below freezing out. Official in town who's managing the project shows up, "What the hell are you doing! You can't lay concrete while it's freezing." "This is the only way we can do it on the budget, sue us if you don't like it." Cracked, shitty sidewalk, would be cheaper to rebuild it than sue. Shitty sidewalk persists.

Built a school, too. Lowest bid. HVAC system is so noisy that several classrooms are unusable, and the floors are all fucked up through half the school. $1.5 million in legal fees later, we settle for $500k in damages, not enough money to fix the defects.

larrys2• 14 years ago

"Lowest bid wins, realistic and competent bids lose."

But what would the best practice be to determine that the realistic and competent bids are objectively evaluated? How do you solve that problem in the real world (and not even talking about any other conflicts or issues)? Employ consultants or? My anecdote would relate to government bidding for some mfg. projects. It was very clear that the people evaluating the bids (at least in the small area I was involved with) took into account the reputation of the bidder in awarding the contracts.

Anechoic13• 14 years ago

Official in town who's managing the project shows up, "What the hell are you doing! You can't lay concrete while it's freezing."

Wait, what? Town official witnesses substandard work and just let's it go on? How was that not grounds for at least withholding payment from the contractor?

we settle for $500k in damages, not enough money to fix the defects.

No retainage?

Shitty contractors to be sure, but in a properly-executed contract agreement, there should have been ways to mitigate the poor performance.

delinka• 14 years ago

"...not enough money to fix the defects."

Not even enough to cover legal fees. Would have been cheaper just to fix it.

SODaniel• 14 years ago

This I believe is NOT news.

rickmb• 14 years ago

Seems to me like the author is very selectively shopping in non-US examples in order to just go on an anti public-transport rant.

In most places in Europe costs of mass transit projects are notorious for spiraling out of control, and unlike the Madrid example other Western countries tend to do exactly the opposite and usually spend a lot more money on prestigious design and architecture of public works than is common in the US.

And that's okay, because besides the notoriously crappy and corrupt management of these projects by government officials, the results are worth it.

Symmetry• 14 years ago

Yes, but they spiral from 1/3 of what a typical US bid would be to 1/3 of what the final US price tag would be. It isn't more than an order of magnitue like with Spain, but France, Germany, etc all still end up paying much less than the US for comparable rail systems.

jt2190• 14 years ago

I'm not trying to pick a fight here, but the United States strongly rejects, on a cultural level, the notion of a professional class of government employees. From the article:

  > A huge part of the problem is that agencies can’t keep 
  > their private contractors in check. Starved of funds and 
  > expertise for in-house planning, officials contract out 
  > the project management and early design concepts to 
  > private companies that have little incentive to keep 
  > costs down and quality up. And even when they know 
  > better, agencies are often forced by legislation, courts 
  > and politicians to make decisions that they know aren’t 
  > in the public interest.

All you ever hear about at election time in the U.S. is "big government waste." My colleague from Spain tells me that in Spain everyone goes to work for the government, and that entrepreneurship is lacking. Perhaps that means that in order to have cost-efficient mass-transit projects in the U.S. we need a Spanish-style government and culture.

Anechoic13• 14 years ago

I'm not trying to pick a fight here, but the United States strongly rejects, on a cultural level, the notion of a professional class of government employees.

This is an excellent point. When the US Federal or a state government agency decides they need to link point A and point B with a transportation project, the agency typically only provides a basic outline of project requirements. Outside contractors are used to develop the more detailed requirements, and even the RFP for design and construction.

This creates a situation where big engineering firms try very hard (and often succeed) in creating RFPs that only they are qualified for. Yes, this really happens. In fact, whenever I read an RFP the number one question on my mind is "is this written so that only XXX firm can win it?" The answer tends to be "yes" in many cases and we don't bother bidding on it.

The obvious solution would be to prevent companies that write RFPs from bidding on the project. The problem is that no one (or at least no one good) would want to bid on the RFP prep work! If given the chance to win a $250,000 RFP preparation project, or a $500 million general engineering contract/$10 billion construction contract, the highly qualified firms will wait to take a shot at the larger work.

ImprovedSilence• 14 years ago

I wouldn't go so far as to say that outside contractors are writing those RFP's, and turning around and winning them, that would lead to allll sorts of legal trouble for all parties involved, a risk no large contracting company would be willing to take. I will say however, that often times, the particular govt office/personal have a working relationship with a contractor, or have done business with them in the past, and will tailor an RFP so that only the company they want to work with will win it. Sometimes this is bad, but sometimes if there is already an established relationship, and a good management structure in place between the two parties, it may be the most effective way to accomplish a task.

pessimizer2• 14 years ago

This creates a situation where big engineering firms try very hard (and often succeed) in creating RFPs that only they are qualified for. Yes, this really happens.

I want to second this so it doesn't sound like conspiracy theory or sour grapes. Speaking from the perspective of somebody who worked for the state, and went through the process of putting out RFPs and final selection, at least half of RFPs are put out as a technicality after the deal has already been made informally with somebody's quid-pro-quo-friend/drinking buddy/nephew. It's the art of adding bizarre requirements to straightforward jobs, until you find a set that only one known vendor could satisfy - and using those to eliminate all of the other proposals before they ever get to the selection.

danmaz744• 14 years ago

The solution would be to have an internal technical agency that is able to write the RFP. Especially one where the incentives (bonuses etc) are tied to the long term success of projects.

zacharycohn• 14 years ago

Might be a good market opportunity for a small firm that only does RFP prep work.

mmphosis• 14 years ago

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

mturmon• 14 years ago

Not a downvoter, but this theory gets tossed around in bars and over dinner in LA sometimes (LA was one of several cities where this scenario played out).

Short summary, it's not clear, in LA at least, if the GM/Goodyear "intentional destruction" scenario really did the Red Line in. The ridership had been decreasing for several years before the purchase of the Red Line. Long-time residents say predictable things -- autos were more convenient and faster than streetcars.

Short of doing your thesis on this, it will be hard to separate the truth from the legend on this story.

(Not a public transit hater.)

DenisM7• 14 years ago

FWIW, I spent some time researching the cost of tunnel-digging online, and off the top of my head, the costs were $30m/mile in India, $100m/mile in US, and $1b/mile in New York city.

The reason I dug through this was to explore possibility of building an entire city where all motorized transportation is under ground, and surface area is reserved for pedestrians, wheelchairs, and bicycles. IIRC, the cost of tunneling came out comparable to the cost of housing, so it's not a completely unreasonable idea. Imagine a 10km grid of 20-40 story residential buildings spaced out with trees and parks and bike/walk paths among them for miles on end? And an underground entrance every 1000 meters. No cars on the street, no noise, no traffic lights - go/ride where you please. Now if only I had the budget to build a brand-new city I would start now. :)

aristus2• 14 years ago

High-rises separated by green space was the original vision of high-rise designers. But what developers and financiers heard was "more salable square footage in less footprint" and we ended up with what we have now.

I personally don't enjoy living in high-rises. If I had to design city, it'd be more like San Francisco: buildings 5-6 stories high, tops. Lots of walkspace, lots of trees, definitely a lot more greenways as you describe.

But I don't see the point of having all that greenspace if the majority of people will be 20+ stories away from it.

DenisM7• 14 years ago

Population density is required to make all amenities to be within walking distance, and to make meaningful public transportation (one you can rely on). In your scheme, low density would mean one has to drive to see your friends or visit favorite caffe (hello traffic gridlock) or take a bus, which will take forever over longer distances and all the traffic light stops.

My concept is to build a city as a 10,000m square with building spaced out at 100m from each other in a grid for a total of 10,000 buildings, each one of 20 stories, 4 flats per story, each flat 12 meters to the side, three persons per flat. This way I could fit 2.4 million people in lavish 1400sqf condos in the city size of 10km to the side, and have the bus to cross the city in 10 minutes through underground tunnels with no traffic light stops.

Large population density creates huge opportunities for development of arts, as there is more audience and a bigger chance of there being enough supporters for a given new art thing in one place.

pessimizer2• 14 years ago

You could name it Getrobbedsville. Sounds a lot like the Brutalist Chicago projects that I grew up near, or at least like the artists depictions used to get them financed. Massive human density with no structure freaks me out, and I don't even have a driver's license.

mortenjorck• 14 years ago

There's much, much more to it than just planning a community with some closely-spaced high-rises. The real failure of these projects like Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini-Green was that they were part of the whole misguided public housing system. They weren't just brutalist high-rises; they were cheaply-built, poorly-maintained structures into which the most disadvantaged members of society were rounded up and told to live.

Not much more than a mile away from the former site of Cabrini-Green, in Chicago's Near North neighborhood, is Cabrini's urban-planning counter-example: Carl Sandburg Village. This series of mid-century high-rises and low-rises shares a lot of design concepts with Cabrini, but was privately built, with better architecture and higher quality, and following a conversion from rentals to condos, has been carefully maintained over the decades by its owners.

While Sandburg Village's residents are not the city's poor, they aren't necessarily affluent either: The place has a reputation as an affordable area for first-time buyers as well as retirees.

enf• 14 years ago

Congratulations! You are Le Corbusier and you have invented midcentury modernist city planning.

In all seriousness, if you are going to build a city with no vehicles on the surface, Towers in a Park is not the way to do it. There are many successful examples of medieval cities with high enclosure, and no successful examples of modernist cities with low enclosure. People are very sensitive to distance, and the only way they will ever walk from one of those towers to another is if there is also something interesting or useful for them to look at every 20-30 feet along the way.

DenisM7• 14 years ago

I'll read up on that guy, thanks.

DenisM7• 14 years ago

And to be sure, I am not married to the low-enclosure idea. I did the math for the worst-case scenario: "what if everyone wants plenty of space around?". If people in fact prefer higher enclosure I would have no qualms about spacing the buildings three times as closely, and maybe setting aside parts of the real estate for greenbelts a-la central park in NYC. That would actually allow me to achieve even higher population density, which is the goal I was shooting for. My only concern is that such approach creates non-uniformity in desirability of different buildings, which may in turn create population density distortions and thus trafic abnormalities. So I would have to schedule more busses in some areas. Too much thinking for a concept, but certainly manageable if one were to actually build this.

robomartin8• 14 years ago

This article is one-sided. The problem is that it is aimed at the wrong side.

Yes, government purchasing and management of projects is a disaster. I have first hand experience in this realm. As a taxpayer you almost want to cry when you see it happen. I won't get into the nitty-gritty of the details. I saw, as an example, a government agency pay DOUBLE what they would have paid for a commodity computer accessory. They had bids (mine, among others, I am sure) that cut their costs in half. Yet, they went with the bid that doubled their costs. Why? Because those doing the buying were so incompetent and insecure that they wanted one supplier to provide all the components rather than allowing the best suppliers to come in and provide them with competitive pricing. It was "cover my ass" at it's best.

Let's not even mention the ridiculous rules that make it nearly impossible for small businesses to participate and expensive for others to do so.

To make matters worst, this particular contract was awarded to a foreign supplier. The funds came from Obama's "American Reinvestment and Recovery Act". Money that was supposed to create jobs in the US went out of the country. When confronted with this reality they came back saying that the company in question had sales offices in the US and that they had formed a corporation in the US and that this qualified them as a US entity. Holy crap!

I firmly believe that we'd do far better if government wasn't involved in most of this stuff. I'm not sure how that can happen, but the idea is appealing to me.

I said that the article is one-sided because it completely ignores on of the real reasons why these construction projects are so expensive and take so long: unionized workers. To put it plainly, their purpose in life is to rape the US taxpayer for as much as they can get and, in the process, provide themselves with as much pay, benefits, vacation and short work days as possible. And we keep paying for them once they retire in the form of ridiculous lifetime pensions. The real cost of that tunnel is probably far greater once you take into account having to pay those workers' pensions for life.

Examples of ridiculous union behavior abound. If you've ever had to work with or within a unionized system you've probably experienced the state of disbelief most rational people experience when they realize what's going on.

Take, as an example, doing a trade-show in NYC. I have dozens of examples of union bullshit, but I'll just mention one. We did a show where we needed to have a light turned off above our booth. That's it. The request was that simple: Please turn off the light above our booth. Of course, a union electrician had to do this. The fee? $368. Three hundred and sixty eight dollars for the guy to go over to the breaker panel and flip a switch.

OK, here's another. You are not allowed to plug in your devices into the electrical system. You know, what you do at home and at the office all the time. Nope, a union electrician has the necessary expertise to install an extension cord and plug in your computer into the AC outlet. I forget what the fee was for that, but it was ridiculous.

Our solution? We did all of our booth setup work at night. The union workers in the night shift are lazier than shit. They don't want to work. So, they let you do almost whatever you want as long as you let them sleep on the job. Sometimes you'd have to slip someone a hundred dollar bill to be left alone. Far better than dealing with their bullshit.

I have not had to work with unionized construction crews. I can only imagine how much worst the whole thing must be.

The best thing that could happen to this country is if unions were outlawed. Of course, that will never happen. I'd sure be nice though. Imagine, people actually having to work for a living. And, produce, behave, be responsible, be capable, compete, etc. What a concept.

Dont' get me started about the planned California high-speed rail. It's a $68 billion money grab designed to feed unions and keep politicians who favor them in power. The money will never be recovered. The line makes no sense whatsoever. Sick.

jrockway3• 14 years ago

The problem is not unions but the failure of your conference venue (and the State of California) to push back against unions. Wal-Mart doesn't pay $368 for someone to turn on a light.

ComputerGuru2• 14 years ago

Walmart is just about the most anti-union company in existence. Bad example.

robomartin8• 14 years ago

How can they push back against unions? They are mobs. They have been mobs since day one. In fact, in the early days union leadership was down-right criminal (not saying that's the case today). Look at what is going on in Chicago right now with the teachers union. They don't give a shit about our kids. They want more and more and more until the goose is dead. They are not willing to toss out bad teachers and work under the same rules that proper the free market.

As an engineer I have to be good at my job. If I suck at it I either get fired, or, as a business owner, loose my ass. This simple reality does not exist in the unionized ecosystem. You can completely suck at your job and have a job for life. Not only that, you can retire and continue to earn a pension for life. Does that represent the values of our country? Is that what we think this nation is about? The land of the most incompetent and lazy? I think not. Take unions out of the equation and see how the incompetent go away or, all of a sudden, decide to actually work 'cause they'd have something to loose. Unions do nothing good for our country today. Don't buy union products if you can help it.

danmaz744• 14 years ago

The facts cited in the article show that in "socialist" Europe, where unions are much stronger and governments bigger, mass transit is less expensive to build and more efficient to operate. How do you explain that?

robomartin8• 14 years ago

You can't make that argument. The environments are very different.

It's like trying to build a Silicon Valley somewhere outside of Silicon Valley. The environment is different. Some have tried, but it is hard or nearly impossible.

Unions in the US are a cancer that is killing this country. I don't know what the solutions is. I, for one, avoid buying any products that come from unionized work forces whenever I can. Sometimes there are no choices. I have to drive on the roads as they exist, for example, but, as much as it hurts me, you will not find me buying an American car.

bearmf2• 14 years ago

There is no comparison of labor costs in the article. I suspect a union worker in New York City makes more money than most European government employees.

ComputerGuru2• 14 years ago

So what's the solution? A return to an 1800s-sized government complemented with privatized solutions for everything else to make up the difference? I'm being serious - that's not something I would necessarily mind.

Unions do suck, but even more so in the government sector where they hold the taxpayer hostage and its the government that gives in to their every demand (since they always take the easy way out) with almost no alternative for recourse, vs in the private sector where alternatives can and do pop-up and are routinely considered.

The difficulty would just be in smoothly scaling back from this 21st century behemoth of a government that has gotten just so goddamn big, bigger than anyone ever imagined a hundred years ago regardless if it was the pro-State or pro-Federal government people you were referring to.

robomartin8• 14 years ago

I think that the problem with these kinds of systems is that nothing can be done until the system experiences total failure. In other words, we have to hit the bottom before people on all sides of the issue are willing to face realities.

I had an interesting conversation with this ex-union worker a few months ago. He worked in the printing industry all of his life. He told me the story of how his union effectively destroyed the company he was working for because they kept wanting more and more at a time when the printing industry was changing. He fought hard to push for compromise but he union would not relent. The end-result was that they went bankrupt. Everyone lost their jobs. And their pensions went to hell. This guy had a late realization that unions are really bad organisms that eat their host. He was sad to listen to. He'd been taken out of the cave by share force.

Retric• 14 years ago

A large US construction contract is going to require a fair number of US jobs even if it's won by a firm based in China.

rprasad• 14 years ago

I call bull. By law, public agencies are required to take the lowest bid. They cannot waive these requirements, and any contracts subject to the bidding process must be approved in a public forum (i.e., council meeting, etc.) in order to be valid. If any of the requirements were waived, the bid losers would definitely challenge the award of the bid.

So your story is nice, but that's all it is--a story to set up your attack on unions.

By the way, one of the single greatest expenses of the Afghanistan/Iraw war is a private company with non-unionized employees. You may have heard of it: Halliburton. And the type of stuff they've done to their fellow Americans (i.e., Jamie Leigh Jones et. al.) makes union shenanigans look like high school pranks).

stickfigure2• 14 years ago

This rant meanders too much to be a good HN post, but there is something in it that resonates with me:

The bit about union thuggery at trade shows is 100% true, and I've experienced it firsthand in Chicago. Union electricians must be hired (minimum one hour) to plug in a simple power strip. If your booth requires more than two hours to set up, you are required to hire (glacially slow) union laborers. We made it under the rules with one of those presto-setup tinkertoy-like lattice structures, only to find in the morning that someone ran over part of it with forklift. There are absurd rules about who can stand on the floor exhibiting; salaried employees only, otherwise you have to hire "professionals" out of their union pool.

Trade shows are a scam. Now that I'm an entrepreneur, I will never exhibit my business at one of these events. They are a huge distraction, there's no way the ROI is positive, and giving money to extortionists does not sit right with me.

robomartin8• 14 years ago

Sorry for the "quality" of the rant. :-)

You've mentioned a few other issues seen at trade-shows. And, as you say, yes, all of it is true. Union thugs will destroy --DESTROY-- your exhibit if you don't play by union rules. They will run stuff over with forklifts. Drop boxes with electronics and cause damage. They'll cut-off your power. And the list goes on. So, you have to learn to work within the system and enjoy the shafting.

For those claiming that "socialist Europe" is fine and they are highly unionized. Well, I've done trade-shows in Europe as well. Night and day when compared to the US., particularly if you compare to union-heavy towns like NYC and Chicago. Exhibiting in London, Munich or Amsterdam (all of which I have personally done) is a dream compared to what you can go through in NYC. For lack of a better description, there's a sense of having a common mission: having a successful show for all involved. In addition to that, I found exhibit hall workers in Europe to be far more polite, willing and able to help than their American counterparts. And, above all, I have never, EVER, seen exhibit hall workers sleeping on the job in Europe whereas I have seen that many times in the US (quite literally dropping to the floor in the middle of a booth to take a nap).

It's interesting how people voice all kinds of opinions until they actually experience reality. As you say, now that you are an entrepreneur and you've seen, first-hand, how fucked-up things are your opinion of trade-shows has changed.

I tend to agree with you with regards to ROI. I have personally spent upwards of $150,000 per exhibit about twice a year for a few years. In certain industries it's an arms-race of sorts. This was certainly true before consumers learned that the Internet could provide a very good buying experience. For a while, if you did not exhibit at key shows you didn't exist or potential customers would question the quality, size or viability of your business. Little did they know that the money burned at trade-shows would be far better utilized in product development. The ROI on these shows sometimes takes years to produce. I had one particularly interesting case with an Italian customer. I'd must have seen him at six trade-shows over three years before he bought anything from me. When he finally became a customer I asked him why it took so long to choose our products. He simple said that he needed to make sure we'd be around before making a commitment. How do you calculate the ROI on that.

But, I agree, today, trade-shows can be hard to justify. I have not done one in three or four years and love it. I have product that sells over the Internet with zero dollars dedicated to marketing through any medium (other than simply having a good website).

greenyoda• 14 years ago

"I said that the article is one-sided because it completely ignores on of the real reasons why these construction projects are so expensive and take so long: unionized workers."

Part two of the article (the link was at the bottom) deals with unionized workers:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-27/labor-rules-snarl-u...

For example: "When asked by transit blogger Benjamin Kabak about its high construction costs, Michael Horodniceanu, president of the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority's capital construction division, gave a two-word answer: 'work rules.' Citing the example of the city's revered sandhogs, he said the MTA employs 25 for tunnel-boring machine work that Spain does with nine."

vacri6• 14 years ago

My own personal experiences with unions have all been horrible, but I'd still much rather live in a world with unions than one without. The problem is that unions as a group have won the big battles - the right to have a life and to have a wage to support it - and there's only relatively humdrum stuff left.

quotemstr• 14 years ago

I come to Hacker News for sober technology discussion, not for breathless and conspiratorial posts advocating libertarian politics. Your continual political raving does a disservice to HN's readership. Please take it elsewhere.

puivert• 14 years ago

Outlawing unions is a pretty outrageous proposition. it's a basic workers right.

sutro• 14 years ago

Consider: it took about 3 years in the heart of the Great Depression to build both the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. Since the 1989 quake, a project has been underway to rebuild the Bay Bridge's eastern span. That project continues today, 23 years later, at a huge multiple of the inflation-adjusted cost of the original bridge.

rdl• 14 years ago

I wonder how much of the "libertarian" bias in the US overall is a result of the particular inefficiency of government projects in the US (obviously purely private projects are more efficient than US government funded projects), and how much is a cause (by forcing use of contractors/consultants).

Maybe this explains the difference between the US and Asia/Europe rationally, rather than as some major difference in philosophy given the same facts in each place.

devs1010• 14 years ago

I spend probably $350 a month commuting in the SF Bay Area on public transit, its ridiculous but its my only option since traffic is bad and parking expensive enough to make public transit the better option by far

xbryanx• 14 years ago

Seems like some of the comparisons being made here should be divided by average wage for skilled workers on these projects.

aswanson• 14 years ago

What's even worse is that they overcharge on the same properties they gouge taxpayers on, that the taxpayer supposedly owns. Crossing the GW bridge? $12. Going up the turnpike from DE to NY? $13. Going from Jersey to Philly? $5.

ChrisNorstrom• 14 years ago

I'm trying my best to see things from both side's point of view.

Maybe it has to do with Supply and Demand? Because Europe and Asia invest substantially more in their public transit networks, there's more of a market, more companies that build the networks, more competition, more experience, and more tried and true cheaper methods. While in the USA, we've got less public transit, less experience building it, a smaller market for building it, less companies that construct networks, and less competition between them, thus the cost is higher due to it being a specialty that few companies understand.

JumpCrisscross• 14 years ago

The hypothesised condition could be easily aleviated by hiring those non-US contractors who are performing so well overseas. Bombardier's bid for the high-speed Amtrak line between New York and Washington, D.C. being messed up by U.S. regulators [1], however, points to political factors.

[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2012/07/amtraks-high...

rayiner3• 14 years ago

American construction projects suffer from tremendous over-engineering. Here in Chicago we have the El and the Metra, which were built a hundred years or so ago. The El runs through the city mostly on elevated tracks above the existing roadways. The elevated tracks are supported by simple steel frameworks above the roadway. There's not a lot of room for stations, so they are simple platforms hovering over the intersections with stairs leading up to them. The floors are wood plank and there are some metal railings. The Metra is similarly simple. Metra tracks run on embankments across the city. They're simple dirt embankments with a retaining wall. Simple metal bridges cross the roadways, without a huge amount of clearance. The stations are mostly just wood and metal platforms with wooden railings, with wooden stairs leading up from street level. This all works really well--Metra is the busiest commuter rail system outside of NYC, shuttling 300,000 people into the downtown core every day.

Now, compare this to the new Silver line in DC. It's monstrously over-engineered, even though it runs on a dedicated right of way. Instead of running the train on a simple embankment in the middle of the road or on a simple raised platform, it runs on a huge elevated concrete platform: http://transportationnation.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/0...

And this is in a low-density suburban area!

Compare this to the El: http://marcel-marchon.com/img--117945132--Chicago-El-train--...

Transit does not need to cost a billion dollars per mile. Just build elevated metal-framework tracks above the existing roadways. It's cheap, durable, and actually much more pleasant for riders than going to a stifling underground subway station.

ericdykstra• 14 years ago

Whoa wait, this article is saying that [some significant subsection] of government projects is something like an order of magnitude inefficient? Hard to believe, I bet next we'll see articles saying that [some other significant subsection of government] is inefficient, too!

ianb• 14 years ago

How do private companies arrange infrastructure-sized projects? Oil companies seem to have substantial arrangements like these. Railroads maintain a lot of infrastructure privately. I'm guessing these companies don't get gouged like the government, but they really have all the same issues, like internal corruption, the bid process, change orders, competing interests in the company, etc.

mleonhard• 14 years ago

"The California High-Speed Rail Authority’s new CEO, Jeff Morales, arrived at the agency after a stint as senior vice present at Parsons Brinckerhoff."

This is how corruption works here in USA. Cheaters move between government management positions and overpaid contractor positions. This happens all throughout the country, from local governments up to the vice president.

U.S. Taxpayers Are Gouged on Mass Transit Costs

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