[HN Gopher] Why American construction costs are so high (2019)
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Why American construction costs are so high (2019)
Author : simonsarris
Score : 109 points
Date : 2021-04-27 16:50 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (pedestrianobservations.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (pedestrianobservations.com)
| m0llusk wrote:
| This is woefully lacking in context. The Second Avenue subway in
| particular was proposed more than a hundred years ago and at that
| time the proposal was considered to be far more expensive than
| could possibly make sense. Over and over again the proposal came
| back up and got shot down again because of the expense. By the
| time New York actually committed to building the Second Avenue
| subway there was roughly a hundred years of literature going in
| detail into why the project was simply to complicated and costly
| to ever make sense.
|
| So then they actually built it and if you can actually imagine
| this it turned out to be so expensive it didn't necessarily make
| sense. But instead of referring to the hundred or so years of
| detailed documentation of this problem neophyte analysts descend
| and make what they think is a detailed comparison of costs when
| in fact they should have been examining the many complications
| faced by this extremely complex project. Ultimately this analysis
| is drug down by the weight of their failure to comprehend the
| Second Avenue subway alone because of the huge scale of that
| project and the complications that it faced.
|
| This is like looking at per seat construction costs of the Airbus
| 380 and deciding that something strange must have gone on to make
| it cost more per seat than a basic small scale commuter aircraft.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have no opinions on the American industry, but I have known
| folks that have run local (NY) construction companies.
|
| They have _all_ said that you need to deal with the wiseguys.
| They also have told me that they are nothing like what TV makes
| them out to be.
|
| Sort of like the famous "widgets" scene in _Back to School_ [0].
|
| I can tell you that the Japanese (at least in Tokyo) construction
| industry is _awesome_. They build incredibly ambitous and robust
| buildings, in a _really_ short time.
|
| I traveled to Tokyo regularly, for 20+ years. I tended to stay in
| the same hotel.
|
| I remember looking out my window one year, and seeing a big
| field.
|
| The next year, it was a big hole in the ground.
|
| The next year, it was a 30-story skyscraper; fully occupied.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlVDGmjz7eM
| criddell wrote:
| Isn't Japan known for tearing down homes after 25-30 years? Are
| commercial buildings built to last?
| njharman wrote:
| I thought they were known for the 100yr mortgage. And
| multigenerational living/thinking.
|
| That's all I've heard about.
| freetime2 wrote:
| They are also known for knocking down houses after 30
| years[1]. Things are changing, though. It's becoming more
| common to renovate and buy secondhand houses.
|
| And multi-generational households are also becoming much
| less common [2].
|
| > The percentage of multigenerational households has been
| halved over the past two decades, dropping from 50% to 24%
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/16/japan-
| reusabl...
|
| [2] https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/62
| /5/S3...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That may be the case, but Tokyo sits on one of the most
| active seismic faults in the world.
|
| Buildings need to be _solid_ (actually, they are often built
| to jiggle around). Friends who were in Tokyo when they had
| that horrible Sendai earthquake, said looking out the window
| from the 20th floor was scary as hell, but the buildings were
| fine, afterwards.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| What does it matter if construction is cheap and efficient?
|
| Nobody cares if cars are "built to last" 30+ years, because
| we can just make new cars. There's a persistent mythology in
| construction about "they don't make 'em like they used too"
| and "back in the day they were true craftsmen".
|
| It's mostly BS, old houses are incredibly shitty compared to
| modern standards. But this type of attitude slows down
| progress. Any sort of innovation or productivity improvement
| gets looked down upon as just being a way to cut corners.
| criddell wrote:
| Well, there are the environmental costs of tearing down and
| building new vs upgrading an existing structure.
|
| There are also economic concerns. Most houses in the US
| hold some value beyond 30 years. A house build in 1990 in
| the US is usually still worth something but in Japan a lot
| of houses from that era are worth nothing. The land may be
| an asset still, but the structure is not.
| freetime2 wrote:
| Yup, and loans are also cheap in Japan. You can get a 35
| year fixed-rate mortgage at 1.5% APR [1]. Build a new 3
| bedroom house for JPY 20,000,000 (~$185K USD), and you're
| paying JPY 61,000 (~$560) per month for a brand new house
| designed to your tastes, with all the modern conveniences
| (note this doesn't include cost of land).
|
| As an example of what that might get you, here's one of the
| first search results that comes up when looking for new
| houses in Omiya:
| https://www.athome.co.jp/kodate/6971997067/. The monthly
| payment on this house (including land) would be JPY 95,500
| (~$880 USD).
|
| I personally bought my house used, but I can also
| understand why almost all of my neighbors chose to build
| new houses.
|
| [1]
| https://www.shinseibank.com/english/housing/loan_kinri.pdf
| yummypaint wrote:
| I think part of the quick turnaround on houses is related to
| superstitions about dwellings in which people have died. Most
| of the value is also in the land rather than the structure so
| the economics are less punishing. I suspect the costs of
| building in commercial areas is high enough to offset some of
| this.
| [deleted]
| 1cvmask wrote:
| This point the author makes is an interesting observation:
|
| 9. Institutions part 3: global incuriosity
|
| The eight above factors all explain why American infrastructure
| costs are higher than in the rest of the world, and also explain
| high costs in some other countries, especially Canada. However,
| one question remains: how come Americans aren't doing anything
| about it? The answer, I believe, has to do with American
| incuriosity.
|
| Incuriosity is not merely ignorance. Ignorance is a universal
| trait, people just differ in what they are ignorant about. But
| Americans are unique in not caring to learn from other countries
| even when those countries do things better. American liberals
| spent the second Bush administration talking about how health
| care worked better in most other developed countries, but
| displayed no interest in how they could implement universal
| health care so that the US could have what everyone else had,
| even when some of these countries, namely France and Israel, had
| only enacted reforms recently and had a population of mostly
| privately-insured workers. In contrast, they reinvented the wheel
| domestically, coming up with the basic details of Obamacare
| relying on the work on domestic thinktanks alone. The same
| indifference to global best practices occurs in education,
| housing policy, and other matters even among wonks who believe
| the US to be behind.
|
| This is not merely a problem in public policy. In the private
| sector, the same problem doomed the American auto industry.
| American automakers have refused to adopt the practices of
| Japanese and German competitors even after the latter produced
| small cars better suited for post-1973 oil prices. They instead
| dug in, demanded and got government protection, and have been in
| effect wards of the American federal government for about 40
| years.
| jimmyed wrote:
| Tl;dr anyone?
|
| I'm guessing it's something to do with the US dollar being
| overvalued.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| No, it's mismgmt., nimbyism, enviro review, non-arms length
| bids, unions, sloth and political fantasies.
|
| It's instructive to look at good projects: SF MacArthur Maze
| rebuild and San Jose Terminal B, both with aggressive project
| leadership.
|
| http://www.amazingmaze.org/
|
| https://airportimprovement.com/article/13-billion-modernizat...
|
| And awful projects, like the failed Calif. High Speed Rail, and
| brutally overbudget WTC subway rebuild, with aimless
| leadership.
| rfrey wrote:
| The article has very good headers that you could scan in < 15
| seconds, no guessing required.
|
| 1. Engineering part 1: station construction methods
|
| 2. Engineering part 2: mezzanines
|
| 3. Management part 1: procurement
|
| 4. Management part 2: conflict resolution
|
| 5. Management part 3: project management
|
| 6. Management part 4: agency turf battles
|
| 7. Institutions part 1: political lading with irrelevant
| priorities
|
| 8. Institutions part 2: political incentives
|
| 9. Institutions part 3: global incuriosity
| rodonn wrote:
| No that isn't one of the reasons given.
|
| The bigger reasons are: a) US unwillingness to learn best
| practices from other countries about how to keep costs of
| construction down, especially for public transit
| infrastructure. b) US builds much bigger + fancier stations for
| the trains compared to other countries, which drives up cost c)
| US procurement is done based on cost alone, which leads to
| frequent cost overruns and delays. d) a lack of internal
| managerial competence and instead relying frequently on costly
| external consultants e) bad political incentives
| jimmyed wrote:
| Well, thank you.
|
| The reliance on external "consultants" seems like a cabal,
| much like the ones you find in the Pakistani army. How
| rampant is corruption in the states?
| wespiser_2018 wrote:
| Reliance on external management was exactly what saved the
| Green Line extension.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Municipal governments in the US tend to be incredibly
| corrupt, and consultants are generally the vectors of that.
| Not as bad as India or Pakistan, but definitely worse than
| every other "western" country. Most municipal governments
| in large cities are overwhelmingly left-leaning, which
| means the elections aren't really competitive and
| politicians can be as corrupt as they want (do nothing jobs
| for relatives, pick and choose which developers are
| allocated which land, arbitrarily deny permits, etc) with
| no repercussions. The party exists to play kingmaker and
| drive turnout for the general elections.
|
| The only thing that's starting to change is that far-left
| parties are having some success at the local level. My city
| has multiple city council members who ran under a socialist
| party, which would have been completely unheard of 10 years
| ago.
| jimmyed wrote:
| Are you suggesting that far left politicians are less
| corrupt?
| intergalplan wrote:
| I'd expect most challenger parties to be less corrupt
| than an incumbent party that had held power for a long
| time, at least for a while, and maybe for a _long_ while
| if their hold on power remains more tenuous than the
| incumbents ' had been. I'd expect this to be _especially_
| true at the local level, where the money involved in
| running a challenger party operation and campaign is
| unlikely to be high enough to support much corruption
| before office is taken.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Than the Democratic Party? Absolutely; the far-left
| politicians tend to be idealists explicitly foregoing the
| deep power / money networks that the DNC provides. Which
| is why they don't have much success at the state /
| federal level.
| [deleted]
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Currently, yes, that is the dynamic. They take special
| pride in not accepting money from corporations,
| lobbyists, big real estate, etc and the politician to
| lobbyist to consultant pipeline is the main center of
| corruption in the country today. For example, Jim Crowley
| is now a highly paid consultant for Squier Patton Boggs.
|
| In other times and places that may not have been the case
| but right now, the far left is noticeably less corrupt
| than the center or the right.
| jimmyed wrote:
| The problem with the new far left (and new politicians in
| general) is they are corrupt for power, whereas the swamp
| is corrupt for money.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| I'm not even sure what this means? Power politics aren't
| "corrupt", they're just politics. The power determines
| who gets the money / resources; in the case of the far-
| left that generally ends up being the working class.
| Things have been out of balance for so long there is a
| lot of sentiment in favor of wealth distribution right
| now. The power is a means to an end.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| And how is the opposition not supposed to appear desirous
| of more power?
| joshgrib wrote:
| It's probably fair to say most "outside" candidates would
| be less corrupt than someone entrenched in the existing
| political structure. But also anecdotally, in the US the
| more moderate liberal part of the left doesn't care much
| about corruption, but the farther left socialist part
| does a lot because they see it as a roadblock to gaining
| power. Anyone currently in power wouldn't be as concerned
| about corruption because they actively benefit from it
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| No show jobs ???.
| grouphugs wrote:
| it's because the nazis paywalled EVERYTHING
| Retric wrote:
| Glosses over the real reasons, both high costs and cost overruns
| are incentivized.
|
| _Usually this money comes from outside sources, such as higher-
| level governments, but even when it is purely local, individual
| stakeholders may treat it as money coming from other parts of the
| city. In this environment, there is an incentive to demand extra
| scope in order to spend other people's money on related but
| unnecessary priorities._
|
| There is little reason to be efficient when spending other
| people's money without their input or any long term consequences.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Slightly different but I work in defense as a contractor and I
| usually summarize it as "being paid for work".
|
| The incentive is to do the most work because being done early
| and under budget doesn't maximize $. Usually the market keeps
| these entities honest. Do shit work that's over budget and you
| lose business. But there is no market at play here, thus the
| govt needs to play the part of the market and penalize for this
| behavior but they do not. /Endrant
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Well, you see, if you get the work done earlier and under
| budget, then the next time you'll be given stricter deadlines
| and less budget.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| But if it's completed late and over budget, your company
| won't get the bid in the future because of your soiled
| reputation as long as there are enough competitors. Hence
| the reference to markets.
| belval wrote:
| In a perfect world maybe, in practice I doubt it. It's
| just not very human-like to take a lot of risk in large
| projects. If IBM takes a big project and delivers it late
| and over budget, they still delivered it so they will
| likely be picked for another project with the same low-
| bidding strategy.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| And for projects internal to companies, there is usually
| no market or bidding (last time I heard of, anyway):
| here's the department's budget, go and deliver. You
| didn't manage to spend all of it? Next quarter, we're
| cutting your budget, and giving you a bigger project. Oh
| no, now you've overspent? Well, that's your fault really.
|
| As the proverbial wisdom goes, "to improve a dairy's
| profits you'd need the cows to give more milk and eat
| less food, so feed them less and milk more often".
| jcranmer wrote:
| This is basically part of the thesis that Alon Levy is
| presenting here. Essentially, the reason for the high
| costs is that the government lacks the management ability
| to recognize that the bids coming in are unreasonably
| low-balled, combined with subsequent difficulties
| actually overseeing the construction process.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Even if the government has the ability to properly manage
| the process it does not bring it to bear because both the
| government bureaucracy and the contractor benefit from
| the waste of resources.
|
| The larger the amount of taxpayer money that is being
| spent the more opportunity for a larger more powerful
| bureaucracy to oversee the spending and more opportunity
| for profit by the contractor.
|
| The same mutually beneficial waste exists at the
| contractor to labor unions interface (union drives up
| cost, more $$ for them, contractor passes on cost, more
| $$ for them) and at beureaucracy to politician and
| appointed administrator interface (bigger bureaucracy
| more resources go to it and more power for the
| administrating officials).
|
| The only loser in the whole deal is the taxpayer who has
| to pay more for less.
| somethingAlex wrote:
| Exactly this.
|
| I was at a "company retreat" back when I was in IT
| consulting. It was mostly the top salespeople for that
| year so I, being on the delivery side of things, found
| myself in a strange world. After some drinking one of the
| salespeople started talking about a project that went 2
| months past the deadline. I asked "...and they just paid
| for that extra time?"
|
| Everyone got all awkward as I realized that not only did
| they pay for that, they would continue to pay us to go
| over deadline. I was the naive one. It's just one of
| those topics you don't talk about.
| throwaway-8c93 wrote:
| In other words - different business environments create
| different equilibria.
|
| In Chinese/Soviet/1920s America equilibrium, with an
| insatiable demand for construction work, the profit
| maximizing behavior is to be done quickly in decent quality,
| then hop on to another project.
|
| In the modern western equilibrium, where projects are few and
| far between, the profit maximizing behavior is to extract as
| much revenue as possible from any single project, employ
| lawyers, ask for extensions, attempt regulatory capture,
| create an opaque chain of subcontractors, etc. - as it's not
| clear whether there will be any new opportunity to do so in
| the future.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| We have a winner!
|
| Zooming out a bit, this is why low growth is self-
| reinforcing. We need constant heavy demand to drive
| continual investment and productivity improvements.
| moate wrote:
| Yes/no?
|
| I mean I'm pretty sure there is massive demand for
| affordable housing (especially in Manhattan!) but there's
| no incentive for developers to shift towards that vs
| bilking the everyone out of as much as possible for more
| "high end" construction.
|
| The current system "works" for the people taking in the
| money, which they can then use to lobby the people giving
| the contracts to continue the current paradigm.
|
| As with most things related to capitalist enterprises I
| think the solution is pulling people kicking and
| screaming from their beds and dragging them to the
| gallows during a revolution, but that feels unlikely...
| epa wrote:
| Alfred Chandler Jr described this as 'hidden unemployment'.
| The true social cost to society is high prices to support
| mostly inefficient jobs, this keeps people employed.
| gibsonf1 wrote:
| New York is definitely not representative of America in the sense
| that NYC Unions have a true strangle-hold on labor and logistics
| costs in the city unlike most other places. (I think NYC is
| likely #1 in the free world for distorted construction markets
| because of this) As an architect living in NYC, I was shocked by
| how blatant this control was, how unaccountable labor was during
| construction, and the killing of a great pioneer project with
| modular construction because the modules weren't built in the
| city for example.)
| capekwasright wrote:
| The section discussing (inter/intra)agency turf battles reminded
| me of a recent article discussing how the pandemic has led to
| some significant reevaluation of what the role and purpose of
| traditional "commuter rail" is within public transit as a whole
| (particularly focusing on the MBTA/Boston, contrasting the quote
| from Frank DePaola):
|
| https://www.governing.com/now/taking-the-commuter-out-of-ame...
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Yes American computer rail service is a complete scourge.
|
| It's a regressive sop to white fighters and their posh
| descendents.
|
| It simply begets more car culture, a band-aid that hides
| scaling limitations where they are most salient.
|
| It's a self-defeating honey-pot that soaks up the political
| will for transit in something that will never get broad
| traction.
| sthnblllII wrote:
| Maybe try having some compassion for white America, and try
| to see the race riots of the 1960's that destroyed the cities
| their grandparents built from their perspective. Demonizing
| an entire ethnic group would not be tolerated if any other
| group were being attacked. Honestly this is probably just
| flame bait. Never mind.
| whereis wrote:
| Take a peek at the Honolulu Rail Transit project on O'ahu.
| Boondoggle plagued with fraud, waste and abuse.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Even if it is so, you don't get it much cheaper when 60%-70%
| percent of a single family home is land.
|
| Going from expensive to ridiculously cheap in construction
| methods will only mean shaving $100k-$150k from a $1m home.
|
| Going for extra-cheap interiors will probably save more for house
| in such price range.
|
| The real solution is to rehouse America in highrise appartments.
|
| This way, you can get up 100 fold land price reduction.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| There's very few homes in America where land is 60% of the
| property value.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Then, there is more runway there. But still...
|
| Foundation work is not going anywhere on any construction
| method except for smallest homes.
|
| Framework work is probably easiest to eliminate, but you will
| still have to count one most basic.
|
| Even if you have 4 fold work hours reduction, and 2-3 fold in
| materials you save $300k on a $1m home, and end up with a
| very basic house.
|
| Apartments are better than trying to improve upon a single
| family home.
| narrator wrote:
| An extreme example: 1 mile of subway in San Francisco cost just
| over 1 billion dollars to build. The central subway was a 1.7
| mile long subway extension that recently finished construction:
|
| "Total cost overrun, largely driven by the claims settlement,
| three change order omnibus packages, contingency reserves and
| additional project management and other services, puts the final
| cost at $1.89 billion and sticks SFMTA with a $184 million
| deficit for this single project alone."
|
| https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/major-construction-on-centra...
| ncmncm wrote:
| Short answer: legalized corruption.
|
| Waste and overrun are not problems, they are the whole point of
| the endeavor. It is the opportunity to direct those into chosen
| pockets that motivates the stakeholders. The project itself
| amounts to legal cover, similarly to real estate now used for
| international money laundering. It looks like a real project, and
| something comes out at the end, but the majority of the money
| moved is just dollars shuffled from public purse to private.
|
| It's all legal, so no risk of indictments. The US is the world
| leader in legalized corruption.
| dang wrote:
| Some past threads:
|
| _Why American Construction Costs Are So High_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19313042 - March 2019 (158
| comments)
|
| _Why US Major Infrastructure Construction Costs Are So High_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19308481 - March 2019 (2
| comments)
|
| An adjacent one for good measure:
|
| _Why Are Canadian Construction Costs So High? (2018)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21618134 - Nov 2019 (140
| comments)
| asploder wrote:
| Thanks for linking these past threads.
|
| Alon has continued their work on this subject with a team of
| other scholars as the "Transit Costs Project":
| https://transitcosts.com/about/
| realitysballs wrote:
| This title is too generalized , it's not talking about 'American
| construction' . It's talking about American large-scale civic
| construction in large metropolitan areas.
| zinckiwi wrote:
| Agreed, I came in ready to argue that US residential
| construction was positively cheap compared to much of the OECD!
| JPKab wrote:
| The article lacks precision in the fact that it's not necessarily
| "American" construction costs, so much as "why are construction
| costs in large American cities so costly". DC, NYC, LA, SF are
| not representative of how infrastructure projects are pursued in
| the rest of the country.
|
| We know very well that there are orders of magnitude more
| bureaucratic obstacles, as well as dramatically higher labor
| costs, when comparing any building project conducted in Texas vs.
| California. New York City's municipal projects are widely-known
| to have dramatically inflated labor costs due to various factors,
| not limited to rampant corruption within unionized labor. I'm a
| supporter of labor unions, but a minority of unions give the
| majority a bad name by allowing themselves to be used as tools to
| enrich corrupt officials. European unions seem to be far, far
| less susceptible to these kinds of grifters.
|
| There are certainly issues at the federal level as well with
| metrics for funding allocation, but let's not pretend that
| building large infrastructure in states with lower regulations is
| remotely as expensive as in places like California which have
| ridiculous levels of red tape and NIMBY empowerment. (Understood
| that construction in California has to take into account
| earthquake mitigation, but it isn't remotely enough to explain
| the cost deltas.)
| bradleyjg wrote:
| > DC, NYC, LA, SF are not representative of how infrastructure
| projects are pursued in the rest of the country.
|
| If the suburbs are different, this is a decent point. But the
| major American cities and their suburbs are a majority of the
| country on every metric that matters. BOS-WASH + SoCal alone is
| more than 20%.
| ff317 wrote:
| The state of Texas is ~9% of the US pop, and Dallas, TX (top
| metro area by pop in the state, 4th in the country) has a
| substantial public transit infra to study (DART).
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Totally reasonable to say we should look at Greater Houston
| and Dallas-Ft. Worth as well as BOS-WASH, SoCaL, and
| Chicagoland.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| They are comparing large American cities to large cities in
| other countries, so it's apples-to-apples.
| xxpor wrote:
| >We know very well that there are orders of magnitude more
| bureaucratic obstacles, as well as dramatically higher labor
| costs, when comparing any building project conducted in Texas
| vs. California. New York City's municipal projects are widely-
| known to have dramatically inflated labor costs due to various
| factors, not limited to rampant corruption within unionized
| labor.
|
| Please read the actual link. This simply isn't an issue the way
| you think it is. "It's the unions" is simply being
| intellectually lazy because it fits your preconceived notions.
|
| "I am not overlooking union power, I believe it is not an
| important factor, not when right-to-work US states have very
| high construction costs too while Scandinavia has low costs."
|
| The problem is the quantity of labor. In the US we use many
| more people to operate a TBM vs what they'd use in Europe. On
| commuter rail lines we pay conductors $100k a year to collect
| tickets when in Europe they'd use a ticket machine. On the NYC
| subway they have a driver and a conductor when in Europe they'd
| only have a driver at best, or even some lines are being made
| driverless I believe. They're trying that in NYC too but it's
| complicated and costly because of how old the signaling system
| is, because it was too costly to ever upgrade.
|
| The agencies should focus less during union negotiations on
| keeping salaries and benefits down and more on reducing the
| quantity of required workers. If they were able to do it in
| Europe, they can certainly do it here.
| wil421 wrote:
| Who do you think requests more quantity of labor for every
| job?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The unions.
|
| And the contractors pass on the cost because the bigger the
| final dollar amount the more opportunity there is to
| squeeze in profit.
|
| And the beurcrats rubber stamp it because the bigger the
| amount of resources they control the more powerful they
| are.
|
| And the politicans ignore it because it provides them more
| power to do favors and a bigger haystack in which to bury
| their nepotism and unethical meddling.
|
| It's self serving waste all the way down.
|
| The fundamental problem is that nobody anywhere in the
| chain or responsibility wants to spend taxpayer money with
| precision, efficiency and care because doing otherwise is
| in their best interest, as is every other party, except the
| taxpayer who has no choice but to bend over and take it.
|
| It's not just a union problem. But rest assured the unions
| are doing all they can to perpetuate it as it benefits
| them.
| bjourne wrote:
| How does that work? Unions do not run companies and hence
| have no say in negotiations between government offices
| and contractors. Unions only concern themselves with the
| relationship between the employees and the employer. I
| don't think you know what a union is.
| bluGill wrote:
| That isn't true. Union members vote. There are a lot of
| laws on the books about what can and cannot be done in
| those negotiations - many of them written by the union.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| >> quantity of labor
|
| This is something I don't really understand about American
| business. In my experience it's pretty common in America to
| have "superfluous" jobs - the Walmart greeter for example,
| valet parking attendants etc. etc.
|
| Now on the one hand you can say these roles aren't
| superfluous at all, they're required, maybe some people find
| a valet convenient (does not compute for me), maybe some
| customers spend more in your store after a cheery hello at
| the entrance.
|
| On the other hand, society works just fine without these
| roles and at lower overall cost.
|
| Is it a workaround for capitalism's failings? Like "hey of
| course there's a job for everyone who wants one" kind of
| thing and we'll just quietly eat the cost because the flaking
| out on society payments (taxes to cover rule of law etc.) is
| cheaper overall than having a couple of extra minimum wages
| on the balance sheet?
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| It's actually likely due to low minimum wages. Countries
| with high minimum wages do not have superfluous jobs. They
| still end up with similar employment rates overall as the
| increased spending power of the bottom 50% stimulates the
| economy overall but there are definitely fewer bullshit
| jobs.
| JPKab wrote:
| I agree with your statement here, but it should be noted
| that it's important to have smart minimum wages adjusted
| for regional cost of living. In the US, the minimum wage
| hikes can often result in local reductions in employment
| in the short-term.
|
| In the long-term, minimum wage hikes tend to not at all
| reduce employment, even when implemented in clumsy
| fashion like the US tends to do.
|
| It's a shame that conversations on these things are so
| politicized, because it immediately prevents nuanced
| discussions because ideologues pounce and label you an
| opponent if you try to discuss realistic details.
| leetcrew wrote:
| interesting. as an american, I have just about the opposite
| impression of mainstream american businesses. most retail
| stores seem have the bare minimum number of employees to
| ring up customers and stock the shelves. and grocery stores
| are trying to eliminate the cashiers. the exceptions tend
| to be higher end stores or, for some reason, clothing
| stores. I can barely walk five feet into a gap without
| someone trying to help me shop. I only see valets at nice
| restaurants or garages that are too tight to allow
| customers to park their own cars.
|
| the walmart greeter is an odd exception. why do they pay
| someone to stand at the door and say hello but have almost
| no one out on the floor to help me find things I want to
| buy?
| Aunche wrote:
| Walmart greeters are to deter theft. An old lady may not
| actually stop anyone from stealing, but neither does your
| average door lock. Both keep honest people honest.
| bluGill wrote:
| In addition to the theft issues already mentioned, people
| in the right place help customer service and so are worth
| it because people feel better. As such the wal-mart
| greeter is cheap compared to the cost of a whole store.
| The cashier makes about twice as much per hour, and
| doesn't generally give the good feeling to customers.
| JPKab wrote:
| Your response was well-reasoned and thought out, and I
| certainly wasn't TRYING to imply it was mostly unions.
|
| But having done work in the past to do detailed analysis for
| the WMATA (they run the DC metro system) on various
| understaffing issues, the unions do contribute to issues with
| operations and maintenance. I will not and cannot comment on
| their issues with construction of the Silver Line.
|
| But as far as maintenance, the unions (they do the same for
| BART by the way) constrain hiring the proper number of
| maintenance techs, so that the employed techs get large
| quantities of overtime pay. A single person working 12 hours
| a day ends up costing the same as two people working 8 hour
| days, but is definitely not going to be able to keep up with
| repairs, resulting in the constant broken escalators and
| elevators and out of commission tracks that have plagued
| WMATA increasingly since the late 2000's.
|
| Reducing the quantity of workers when negotiating with an
| entrenched union is very, very difficult to do. They tend to
| want to keep the same quantity, or very slowly increase the
| quantity. This is very well documented behavior that is
| covered extensively in the book "The Machine That Changed the
| World", which was the first book documenting Toyota's journey
| with LEAN manufacturing, and then talking about the
| challenges GM faced with their unions when trying to
| implement these same practices.
|
| All that being said, you were correct to poke holes in my
| statement and you added to the conversation significantly, so
| thank you for that.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > But having done work in the past to do detailed analysis
| for the WMATA (they run the DC metro system) on various
| understaffing issues, the unions do contribute to issues
| with operations and maintenance. I will not and cannot
| comment on their issues with construction of the Silver
| Line.
|
| As soon as you said "WMATA" I was going to ask about the
| Silver line. From the outside it certainly looked like it
| had problems, though I suppose tunnel boring wasn't one of
| them.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| You can try to break it down, but the fact is in NYC the
| quantity of labor is a union-negotiated (and demanded)
| problem.
|
| The NYTimes did a detailed article on this a couple years
| ago, with a focus on the NY subway expansion:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
| subway-.... There's no escaping that the overstaffing was a
| political boon to a union.
|
| _Why_ NY construction unions are so much worse than
| Scandinavian unions is a whole different question. But it's
| not really deniable that the public-union interaction in big
| cities here is incredibly extractive and antagonistic, and
| that drives up costs.
| closeparen wrote:
| The rest of the country keeps its transit infrastructure costs
| down by refusing to have transit.
|
| New York and California have plenty of roads.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| And roads aren't even cheap, but they are nice and
| decentralized and do not require smart planners.
|
| That's a nice resiliency and I give roads credit where they
| are due for it. But cars are terrible and we simple cannot
| continue to do the easy status quo thing.
| closeparen wrote:
| Grids can be resilient, but these days we protect
| neighborhoods from traffic by forcing use of
| arterials/collectors that become single points of failure.
| Often this is even retrofitted onto grids via turn
| restrictions.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I don't see this discussed at all, but if you're going to use New
| York City as your exemplar and you're going back to 1910 for
| data, I don't see how you can avoid the fact that both labor
| unions and the construction companies were under the control of
| the mafia. They put people on the payroll to do literally
| nothing, sold materials at way above market value, and the buyer
| had no choice but to pay because anyone underbidding would get
| murdered.
|
| Unfortunately, the ratchet effect for pricing means getting rid
| of mafia control doesn't necessarily undo the cost increases they
| dictated. Also, prevailing wage practices mean labor unions for
| the same trades that aren't themselves corrupt still end up with
| the same price inflation, at least regionally.
| sdsaga12 wrote:
| Agreed that New York City is an outlier in a number of ways,
| but there does appear to be _something_ interesting going on
| with regard to rising U.S. costs for a variety of things
| besides just construction (e.g., health care and education).
| Slate Star Codex did an interesting though definitely
| inconclusive piece on this in 2017:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...
| spaced-out wrote:
| I'm not sold on labor unions being the primary factor in this,
| though they may contribute, because construction costs in the
| US are so much higher than countries like France, which has
| even stronger labor unions and stricter regulation. I find it
| hard to believe that US labor unions are able to extract so
| much more value than their French counterparts.
|
| I think a bigger culprit is excessive local control and zoning
| restrictions, wielded to benefit property owners or to bleed
| developers and generate revenue for city governments. The
| shocking part, IMO, is that these costs far outweigh the cost
| added by notoriously strong French labor unions and EU
| regulation.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| From family in the industry, my understanding is it's not
| union benefits/wages/etc per se, but more the work rules that
| haven't changed with the times driving over staffing,
| inability to fire bad performers, and overtime issues.
|
| There's a lot of on-the-clock non-work built into the work
| rules. My relatives in the industry described the typical day
| as involving on-the-clock time built in for cleanup&changing
| into/out of work clothes, briefing on tasks for the day,
| safety briefing (AM and again after lunch for legal reasons),
| smoke/coffee breaks, etc. The longest stretch of
| uninterrupted construction is about a 2 hour sprint into the
| end of the day.
|
| On the staffing front, the only lever a project manager has
| is to give the 2-3 hardworking guys out of 12 a boatload of
| overtime hours to get the actual work done. This is one
| reason that on most every job site around the city you see
| some pretty sick cars. Those 2-3 guys are getting 50% of the
| work done out of the 12, and getting paid Google engineering
| money for it.
|
| NYT article years back talked about 2nd avenue subway covered
| examples of work rules. Tunnel boring machine in NY requires
| 3-4x the staffing of Paris, because thats the contract
| negotiated in the 70s when it was seen to be reducing jobs..
| and no one has revisited it. This is no small figure as we
| have a handful of these digging tunnels the last few years,
| at the rate of 50ft/day... for months. Similarly there is a
| mandatory on-site oiler who basically sits in the break room
| all day because the machines do not need constant oiling
| anymore the way they did when the rule was written half a
| century ago.
|
| One example from my relative - on a large NYC project he
| worked, they couldn't take deliveries from suppliers on
| Saturday because it required the job site to be opened. Per
| union rules this would have required some inane number of
| staff to be on-site getting overtime rather than just say the
| guy to open the gate & staff (if any) required to empty the
| truck.
|
| A lot of this is because public sector unions are treated as
| a voting constituent rather than a vendor by the government,
| and no politician ever wants to cross them.
| neither_color wrote:
| I have some family in the industry as well and they report
| the same thing happens with every crew, a few of the
| workers are what you would call "ninjas/rockstars" in
| software and the rest are just there to do the minimum.
| Unfortunately it's hard to tell when hiring because
| everyone acts motivated for the job and their real work
| ethic doesn't show up until a few weeks later and you're
| stuck with them.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Right on a normal project you'd weed out the poor
| performers but in this case its basically not possible.
| The workers knowing this is the case leads to a class of
| workers who show up and do the minimum. As long as they
| don't do anything overtly that would trigger firing for
| cause, they can coast from project to project.
|
| Therefore the only way project managers can get anything
| done is to give 25% of the team the opportunity to work
| 2x the hours for 2.5-3x the pay.
|
| So instead of paying just for your 12 guys, you are
| paying for equivalent of 9+(3x3) = 18 guys when its
| really like 6-9 guys worth of work getting done.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I will also add that there is essentially a ton of overhead
| built in by construction firms dealing with the
| city/MTA/PA. The industry generally sees them as being
| difficult customers who change their mind, plan poorly, and
| have a lot of change requests. This results in a fairly
| small pool of firms bidding on projects, the costs being
| padded, plus overruns and change requests being tacked on
| as they go for even more cost.
| barbacoa wrote:
| In New York City unions are essentially a subsidiary of the
| political system, funneling money into reelection champagnes.
| In return politicians return their support by requiring that
| any government contract must be awarded to contractors that
| use union labor. It is all a racket. I have heard stories
| from people who have done civil work in NYC and the level of
| corruption and waste is staggering. Like $5000 billed labor
| hours to drive to a site to plug in a cable. Firms will bit a
| 50% surcharge on any projects in NYC to compensate with the
| red tape and union labor costs.
| bluGill wrote:
| Unions in the US work different from France.
|
| In France unions wouldn't attempt to get their people
| $200/hour that the sandhogs in NYC get. We should bring the
| high priced unions to a realistic wage. However most union
| wages are not that far out of line.
|
| Also in France the union is more relaxed about letting go of
| jobs that are automated away. There is no reason a TBM needs
| twice as many people to operate it in NYC as in France. There
| is no reason for any trains to have a conductor anymore, and
| train drivers are something that should be all but dead as
| well (though France is way behind the automation curve here
| as well)
|
| That said, union labor is only a small part of the problem.
| Even if all of the most anti-union propaganda is taken as
| 100% true, union labor is still only a small fraction of the
| total cost of any build in the US. As such we need to look
| hard at what is going on in the other parts of construction.
| mc32 wrote:
| Why can't the feds do for construction corruption what
| Blumenthal and Giuliani did to organized crime in NYC.
|
| The feds know it's corrupt. Why can't they go there and say all
| projects need to come through us and they ensure there is no
| monkey business going on with the contracts?
| bluGill wrote:
| What makes you think the feds are any less corrupt?
| mc32 wrote:
| The idea is that people on the outside are less likely to
| be locally corrupt.
|
| Chinese dynasties did similar with their civil servants and
| Soviets practiced this in some areas to avoid this coziness
| that leads to corruption.
| lstodd wrote:
| This was done for funneling corruption money away fom
| local elites to some other non-local elites.
|
| The corruption stayed the same - it's a revenue center,
| why touch it.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > Why can't the feds do for construction corruption what
| Blumenthal and Giuliani did to organized crime in NYC.
|
| Ha! When I read that line I completely missed the last letter
| in the word "organized", and it made perfect sense. I thought
| it was an historical quote from Guiliani's last job
| application.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| If I were a developer in NYC and the feds said that, I would
| sue. constitutionally speaking, they don't have the power to
| say all building projects need to come through us.
|
| Yes, construction contracts and rates are fueled by
| corruption. That said, I would only be OK with the feds going
| after the corruption. Not taking over construction. Do
| investigations. Trap people in stings. Do all the good old
| FBI tricks. I encourage that, but governmental takeover of
| all contracting is going too far.
| bluGill wrote:
| The feds could say we won't contribute to a subway unless
| we actually build it.
|
| Though as I said elsewhere, that just means in a few years
| the corrupt switch to how to deal with the feds. Much
| better for the feds to be an independent anti-corruption
| unit.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I have worked construction in San Francisco, and a former
| General Contractor.
|
| There is a cost difference between all union projects, and non-
| union projects.
|
| The costs seem outrageous at first. If I wanted to hire a union
| local 6 Electican a few years ago the union would charge me
| $101/hr. for a skilled worker to show up.
|
| Yes--it sounds nutty?
|
| The answer is bypass the union, and go non-union?
|
| When all us said and done, and the project is completed, and
| the developer gets the bill; the few projects I worked on, the
| total cost of building was roughly the same?
|
| That doesn't take into account what non-union shops cost
| society either.
|
| Very few non-union shops provide health care. If they do, it's
| usually a lousy plan.
|
| Workers get sick, or hurt, and worker's compensation runs out;
| you have workers looking for government medical care.
|
| My point is I'm pretty sure the mob is not affiliated with
| unions in San Francisco. (I know that was not your point)
|
| My main point is when the building is completed, and it's time
| for the developer to sell the shiny new building; the price you
| pay is exactly the same.
|
| Non-union workers make developers more money. The buyer will
| not see those savings.
|
| You the buyer will not receive a better deal ever. The market
| determines the price.
|
| Now--if you are the developer, it's a no brainer--kind of--you
| want the building built as cheaply as possible. You hire non-
| union, provide lousy training, but live in a grand mansion. You
| spit out a few spoiled kids, and they run the money machine.
| (Big Bill of Bradley electric was apprentice for 5 years.
| Learned the trade. Turned around and opened a non-union shop.
| Made millions. Made so much money he could shoot his son in-
| law, and somehow get out if a long jail sentence. Making a lot
| of money is nice?)
|
| Many unions now have a no compete clause in their agreement.
| Unions don't want to pay for your schooling, and have their
| guys opening up non-union shops. I am pretty sure it's never
| enforced, or even legal? Wow--I'm just writing too much today.
| Don't feel that great? I'm finding this opening depressing in a
| weird way. Sorry about bothering anyone with my issues. I
| sometimes have no one to talk to.)
|
| O.k, I say "kind of" because with a union run job, it's usually
| done on time, and done well.
|
| This crazy rant is basically developers are usually the only
| one's saving money with non-union help.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > My main point is when the building is completed, and it's
| time for the developer to sell the shiny new building; the
| price you pay is exactly the same.
|
| It is more complicated than that.
|
| The way that supply and demand works, is that if costs go up,
| then there is less reason to create new supply.
|
| And a lower supply of an item, means that prices, for the
| overall market, will go up.
|
| That is how supply and demand works, and housing is no
| different.
|
| > You the buyer will not receive a better deal ever. The
| market determines the price.
|
| The market is determined by supply and demand. This is
| standard, 101 economic theory. If costs go up, supply go down
| (or supply increases a smaller amount), and price goes up.
| raincom wrote:
| Here is a book that describes various 'corrupt' schemes:
| Corruption and Racketeering in the New York City Construction
| Industry: The Final Report of the New York State Organized
| Crime Taskforce
|
| Here is a pdf the report:
| https://www.ceic.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/Fichiers_client/centre...
| kryogen1c wrote:
| michael franzese talks about this alot in various podcasts and
| interviews. it was true much more recently than 1910. the
| family isnt what it used to be, but its certainly not gone.
| j_walter wrote:
| There are still stupid high costs for stuff and people are
| still put on the payroll to do nothing. $70/hr for a guy who
| does nothing but get coffee...
| https://nypost.com/2018/03/05/union-workers-are-making-42-pe...
|
| There was a great piece done by John Stossel about why a pretty
| basic public park bathroom cost $2M to build and took years to
| finish construction.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKRuhiMDOjo
| tylermw wrote:
| John Stossel really shows his hand in that piece when he uses
| "wheelchair access" as an example of government spending run
| amok. Why shouldn't disabled people should be able to access
| facilities they pay for with their tax dollars? Why is
| complying with the ADA--a bipartisan law signed by George
| H.W. Bush--seen as a waste of taxpayer money?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| The ADA might be generally a good idea, but that doesn't
| mean that everything it makes you do is a good idea.
|
| On my street, the city(near Denver) recently added 3 curb
| cuts for ADA compliance. I don't know how much those curb
| cuts cost, but they weren't free. Now - no one really walks
| down my street. There were curb cuts at both ends of the
| block. Every driveway has a curb cut. But more curb cuts
| needed to be added because of the ADA, even though there is
| no clear explanation of how anyone with a movement
| disability is going to benefit from these new cuts.
| simfree wrote:
| Do you ever question why the sidewalk was unused? Without
| curb cuts, any potential sidewalk user with wheels is
| impaired with a detour through the street or a cumbersome
| stop and lift process.
|
| Does a parent with their kids in a stroller get
| discouraged by this? How about those with Rollerblades,
| non-electric scooters, or any kind of dolly?
|
| Curb cuts for cars are often a notable detour for other
| road users, many have a 1/2 inch lip (unlike sidewalk
| curb cuts).
| j_walter wrote:
| He certainly does mention that and it doesn't seem clear
| why, but either way how does something as basic as a
| restroom cost that much to build? You think there isn't a
| lot of waste involved and at the tax payers expense?
| tomekjapan wrote:
| Since I came to live in America I have been constantly shocked by
| how much different contractors are trying to screw you up. The
| spread in quotes can easily be as much as 5 times from the
| (already expensive) cheapest to the most expensive ones, with
| what I am guessing is the majority of contractors high balling
| and trying to score easy money. I dread the upcoming weeks of
| negotiations every time I need to get anything fixed around the
| house.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| Regarding station costs: can you include opportunity cost into
| your analyses? Maybe NYC is just far more economically productive
| than Paris, like if there are 50 story buildings all along that
| block, vs 5 story buildings in Paris...couldn't the cost even out
| because NYC is trying to diminish the disruption to local
| economy? Also hard to measure, but what are the QoL diffs between
| the two station methods, is one louder and more disruptive?
|
| I'm also wondering about technological differences. Can stations
| be constructed in a more modular fashion, can innovation occur to
| allow cheaper builds? And what about using more advanced tech in
| boring machines, like what TBC is trying in Vegas?
|
| Lastly, do we think a lot of stations is truly optimal? I don't
| know trains well, but if we get a fleet of SDCs in 20 years,
| maybe these can reduce station numbers by shuttling passengers
| their last mile or two, rather than building out billions of
| extra dollars of stations?
| gehatare wrote:
| Outside of Manhattan this is unlikely, Paris is much denser
| than NYC and the difference in GDP or however you want to
| measure economic productivity is too small to make much of a
| difference.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Google puts NY GDP at 1.75T, and Paris GDP at 785M (in USD).
|
| So more than double?
| pchristensen wrote:
| NY metro population is 18.3 million, Paris 12.3 million. So
| NY's per-capita is about 50% higher.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| NYC is unusual.
|
| Manhattan is mostly solid bedrock, for one.
|
| Thus the time it takes to create tunnels below all the pipeworks
| cannot be overlooked, as it's a very noisy endeavor.
|
| Also, the NYC subway system is (or was, pre-covid) 24 hours,
| extensive, and was forward thinking.
|
| The grates and vents you see today sidesteps the heat trapping
| of, say, the Tube (London).
|
| It's also built robustly because honestly, the riders abuse every
| feature.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| This is classic bad NY exceptionalism (and I'm living in NY as
| I write this!)
|
| - Bedrock is easier
|
| - Every city has pipes. Including NYC when they did cut and
| cover.
|
| - Arguably the 1930s IND started the trend of overbuilding.
| Being redundant with existing lines to drive out an already
| money-loosing bussiness isn't forward-thinking.
|
| - The grates and vents and easier precisely because cut and
| cover.
|
| - Elsewhere people abuse every feature less? More like the NYC
| subway is not in a state of good repair so the normal wear and
| tear is more visible.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| - I'll take your word for it, but building above ground seems
| easier.
|
| - NYC is old. We still have steam pipes in active use, and it
| predates the subway. Also, asbestos. Nor is every city at the
| same scale.
|
| - How do you quantify the amount of tax money that comes in,
| because the subway enables business? Home taxes are very low
| in NYC, because of the amount of money generated from
| business.
|
| Rent is high near any station, unless it's a completely run
| down neighborhood.
|
| It also enables immigrants and students in a way that car-
| heavy cities can't match. I know because I _was_ this
| immigrant and student.
|
| We don't have the problem SF does, as less desirabke
| neighborhoods are affordable by teachers and nurses. - You
| know what vents attract? Trash. If not cleaned out it becomes
| a fire hazard.
|
| - Abuse: Absolutely. DC and Boston trains are pristine by
| comparison, and I've ridden trains and railways in Japan.
|
| New York is by far the worst, for many reasons.
|
| It was even worse in the 70s and 80s, and the mindset never
| wentvaway.
| bluGill wrote:
| NYC is NOT old, the compare cites have been around for
| thousands of years.
|
| Every problem you list exists in every other city in the
| world. The details are different, but the problem is there.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| It's one of the oldest cities with modern amenities.
|
| When Rome builds its line into the heart of the city,
| they dig down very deep; where it's unlikely that any
| ancient artifacts will be found.
|
| Meanwhile NYC has 7.4k miles of sewage lines and a lot of
| unknowns: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-08
| -10/nobody-kn...
|
| This isn't meant to be a dick measuring contest, just
| that it's a city that wasn't really planned and so
| progress is painfully slow.
|
| https://opendata.cityofnewyork.us/projects/open-sewer-
| atlas-...
|
| Yes, there's a lot of graft, turf battles, and so on but
| then has its own unique set of infrastructure challenges.
|
| Then you have building collapses due to age or shoddy
| workmanship; not related to boring, but clearly a concern
| as they extend the line:
| https://ny.curbed.com/2015/3/26/9976560/explosion-leads-
| to-b...
|
| NYC is dense and in Manhattan especially there's no real
| business district vs residential.
|
| It's like code that is legacy and heavily used, with very
| powerful stakeholders. Retrofitting takes a lot of work
| and red tape.
| timerol wrote:
| - Building above ground is easier. But if you're building
| below ground, bedrock is easier than e.g. alluvial soil or
| sandy soil.
| https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/11/23/more-on-
| statio...
|
| - NYC is a brand new city compared to pretty much
| everywhere but the American West. We're talking about
| comparisons to Rome here, not comparisons to LA. And Rome
| is about 3x cheaper to build in than LA, which is about 3x
| cheaper than NYC. https://transitcosts.com/what-does-the-
| data-say/
| novok wrote:
| When people compare costs of building, they tend to compare
| to other large old cities like london, madrid, etc which
| still beat out NYC by a mile.
| somethoughts wrote:
| It'd be interesting to see a breakdown of a private mega-
| project (i.e. office/residential skyscraper) in NYC versus any
| other urban metro in the rest of the world to compare it to
| these public works mega-project. Is it mostly more labor costs,
| general technical challenges, bad project management, general
| corruption, etc.?
| deepsun wrote:
| I feel like solid bedrock is actually a perfect soil type for
| engineering. Other towns has to account for moving sandy or
| clay soils, diverting or pumping out their ground waters
| (sometimes it's even easier to actively freeze large areas of
| land).
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Precisely. Here in Prague, the subterranean geology is
| horrible. Broken rock, cavities, a lot of river deposits,
| unexpected (and rich) water springs. Not to mention a thick
| layer of shit dating from 1350 to approximately 1800 along a
| former ditch that separated the Old Town from the New Town
| and that served as a latrine for thirty generations of
| burghers.
|
| Building subway tunnels in such conditions is an equivalent
| of Olympic Games for engineers.
| ant6n wrote:
| Plenty of subways get built in bedrock. Its a bit more
| expensive to tunnel, but not unusual at all. It's not so easy
| to use tunnel boring machines, but you can blast. Its also
| possible to make station caverns right in the rock.
|
| Btw, the tunnels aren't the biggest cost of subway systems.
| Maybe 15-30%. I think the biggest tickets are usually the
| stations.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| As pointed out in part 2, the 2nd Avenue stations are
| grotesquely large. Sure they are pretty but I'd rather have
| 4x ugly stations.
| nerfhammer wrote:
| I'd rather have quad tracks. easier to keep things running
| 24/7.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Large stations are not just unnecessarily expensive, they
| usually take longer to walk through. Looks nice on opening
| day, and then a hundred thousand people waste an extra 2
| minutes every single day forever.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| They're not built for the same capacity, however.
|
| Ironically I think the city may shrink in the coming years,
| thanks to Covid and the upcoming fiscal crisis.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I'm not sure if underground blasting is a good idea when
| there are skyscrapers nearly a century old aboveground. Hard
| enough to assume recent building haven't had someone in the
| loop cutting corners (e.g. concrete that isn't as robust as
| expected), the old stuff had zero checks during constructions
| and definitely no computer aided simulations.
|
| Honestly it's a miracle that skyscraper collapses are so
| rare.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Second ave has little in the way of skyscrapers. It's
| mostly residential and small shops.
|
| But consider that tunnels are created through mountains
| (far heavier). Done right, I doubt it's an issue.
| Arrath wrote:
| It's really not a problem. Controlled blasting around
| vulnerable or weak structures is well studied and practiced
| by professionals. Computer aided design and modeling has
| only gotten better over the years.
|
| NYC in particular has some very stringent regulations
| regarding blasting, allowable vibration levels, and so on.
| Long gone are the days of gung-ho cowboys lighting off
| fuses leading to piles of dynamite, massive fireballs, and
| the like.
|
| Example reading:
| https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/229071708.pdf
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328666110_Large_st
| r...
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297751622_Strains_
| I...
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315527348_Reducing
| _...
|
| E: Trying to find a paper about blasting a road tunnel in
| Turkey under some ancient ruins. The stringent restrictions
| they were under and the things they did to maintain
| compliance were really, really interesting (as a blasting
| engineer) but I can't find the damn thing right now.
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