[HN Gopher] Why are U.S. transit projects so costly? This group ...
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Why are U.S. transit projects so costly? This group is on the case
Author : jseliger
Score : 160 points
Date : 2022-11-11 19:25 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.governing.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.governing.com)
| kneel wrote:
| I once worked construction at a state park, I made prevailing
| wage which was 4X more than my regular hourly wage.
|
| Talk about the slowest moving construction project, everyone was
| incentivized to take breaks and milk their hours. We turned a 4
| hours job into a 2 day project.
| chasebank wrote:
| I worked for a private roofing company one summer in high
| school. The crew I was on would take two hour long naps under
| their trucks in the shade. I asked about it and one dude said,
| "The longer the job takes, the more we get paid." I can only
| imagine this attitude is amplified for government work.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Just wondering why does it affect the total cost though. I
| think the total cost is stated in the contract? So if you want
| to pay premium for the workers you are free to so that but that
| premium should be out from your pocket?
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Usually projects pay prevailing wage due to a mandate, so
| every bid has that cost built in.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Naively, wondering about this as well.
|
| One more Naive question: Can the government do giant speed
| bonuses i.e. make it worth their while to finish quick?
| drekipus wrote:
| Then you get rushed jobs, unfinished work, etc.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Doesn't seem like it would be hard to come up with
| Objective metrics. The main reason televisions get
| cheaper is because their quality/output/reliability can
| be objectively measured.
| thetli8 wrote:
| california regulations mandate prevailing wages for all
| public works projects [1]. it affects the total cost because,
| the government should be looking to save taxpayers money by
| offering the contract to whichever GC that can get the
| project done in the fastest + cheapest fashion.
|
| prevailing wages essentially maps out to be the _highest
| negotiated union rate_ in the same geography so the mandate
| basically shoots, in the foot, the ability for the project to
| collectively bargain.
|
| [1] https://www.dir.ca.gov/public-works/prevailing-wage.html
| [deleted]
| Victerius wrote:
| HN is dead. This comment section proves it.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| enchiridion wrote:
| There's a lot of tension over politics at the moment, I think
| people have been letting off steam here the past few days as a
| result, because I've noticed it too.
|
| Good news is that a lot of us know how good the dialogue can
| be. Instead of despairing, why not jump in and raise the
| conversation?
| InCityDreams wrote:
| As a Europerson...i don't really see much difference between
| this comment section and many others - over several years, at
| different times, let alone now.
|
| One comment: "I really think this is pretty much solely about
| politics [etc]."...is what we would refer to as 'social
| stuff'.
|
| Is it about being non-metric?
| tunap wrote:
| Many peoples' stamps are needed for any infrastructure being
| built. Engineers(electrical, structural, environmental, etc),
| architects, contractors, consultants, politicians and more, I
| presume. My rural county with 20,000 residences had 3 backwoods
| culverts replaced pre-pandemic(2 lanes, < 50 cars/day) & they
| each had price tags between $0.8 - $1.5 million USD. A million
| bucks to install new culverts & repave over... and the cheapest
| one wasn't even paved. Must be nice to get a slice of that pie.
| rnk wrote:
| Can you give some more info on the size of this project? Hard
| to understand why a culvert on an unpaved (and presumably small
| water source) would cost much.
|
| Almost any project on a highway costs a million dollars.
| tunap wrote:
| Take a peek down the rabbit hole. As a recent transplant, I,
| too, have a hard time understanding the cost(s). It is
| literally a creek, but it does get swollen when it rains. The
| other projects were on Holbert Cove Rd, in the same time
| frame.
|
| https://connect.ncdot.gov/letting/Division%2014%20Letting/Fo.
| ..
| ejb999 wrote:
| Not the OP, but here is one:
|
| https://www.newburyportnews.com/news/local_news/mayor-
| wants-...
|
| $655,000 to replace a 5 to 6 foot culvert
| pcurve wrote:
| For those wondering about why there was no mention of union...
|
| https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/01/08/meme-weeding-u...
|
| apparently, even in non union states, these project costs are
| ridiculous.
| legitster wrote:
| I agree that unions are probably not a universal cause for
| costs, but I'm not sure I buy into this 100%. The author is
| equating right-to-work with union representation which isn't
| accurate. And different unions can incur different types of
| costs on different projects.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Right - and in union-heavy countries like Germany and France,
| the costs are often much lower than in the US. There could be
| something to the structure or organization of US unions that
| impacts things here, but it's clearly not the root cause.
| legitster wrote:
| > the structure or organization of US unions that impacts
| things here
|
| An underrated topic. All unions are not made alike, and the
| laws dictating European unions are very, very different than
| those in the US.
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| There is very little discussion around this underrated
| topic. In India, the places where unions have a strong
| presence have lost a lot of industries. They have become
| notorious for getting any work done in those places, as
| some unions have morphed into gangs. This is not to imply
| anything about the benefit/tradeoff of unions in other
| countries.
| beastman82 wrote:
| It is not at all clear. Union contracts vary widely state to
| state, country to country. I don't think you can make this
| claim.
| robomartin wrote:
| > There could be something to the structure or organization
| of US unions that impacts things here, but it's clearly not
| the root cause.
|
| Yes. US unions are very different from European unions.
| Without getting into the details, US unions can be very
| destructive, while European unions are far more wholistic or
| cooperative.
|
| To be clear, this is not about union members. It's about
| union leadership and the "mafia" how they do business. Union
| members are along for the ride, are sold entire narratives
| they have to support and can end-up losing big. Entire
| industries have been seriously damaged by our unions.
|
| Source: I was in a union for about a decade. In addition to
| this, I have had this conversation with members of other
| unions, some of them as post-mortems after years of union
| damage caused job losses to China and, ultimately, the
| companies they worked for to shut down.
|
| Solution? I can't think of a single simple idea. These are
| engrained cultural things. People rarely wake up to the
| reality of what's going on until the are suffering, take the
| time to think it through and ultimately realize where the
| pain came from.
| bombcar wrote:
| You'd have to replace the companies with something like a
| co-op: from my experience with EU unions they're much more
| like what we would call a co-op; they're working with the
| business and the customer for the best possible solution
| all-around.
|
| Of course, in the US it's also become a huge political
| thing.
| wongarsu wrote:
| In Europe it's generally understood that it has to be a
| mutually beneficial relationship. Once it becomes
| parasitic, the parasite risks killing the host (no matter
| if it's the company having their employees walk out, or
| the employees/union forcing through demands that make
| their employer uncompetitive and close down).
|
| That's harder to implement in a more individualistic
| society like the US, and the history of violent union
| busting surely didn't help either.
| eric-hu wrote:
| For the US, there may be historical cultural reasons as
| well. Some unions were actually run by mafias. These are
| the same kinds of groups that would go around
| neighborhoods asking for "protection" money. If you don't
| pay, you don't get protection from their henchmen ruining
| your store.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Of course, the US also has a history of anti-union forces
| effectively being armed paramilities who would break up
| even the lightest of strikes or labor movements with
| public violence.
| [deleted]
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Probably because unions in France and Germany aren't as
| powerful as US construction unions.
|
| Also in the EU there is internal competition between
| countries for construction projects that brings costs down
| overall. Unions in Germany jacking up your costs? Maybe
| there's a construction company in Poland or Czechia willing
| to do it for less. In Austria I see many construction sites
| are full with companies from Slovenia.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| Unions in France and Germany are much _more_ powerful than
| in the US.
| legitster wrote:
| Uhhhh. Probably not though.
|
| US labor laws focuses on all or nothing union control of
| a workplace. And once they have control, they get a lot
| of legal power.
|
| Europe has a different model where unions do not have to
| have any sort of majority vote to be recognized. As such,
| membership tends to be more fluid. So the unions
| themselves have less specific control, but the unions can
| be larger, and be more recognized without as much
| antagonization.
|
| Also, US unions have a lot of power over healthcare in
| the US. Usually being a function of the state in Europe,
| there's a lot less cost at stake when dealing with a
| European union.
|
| So I think it's largely an apples to oranges comparison.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| It is an Apples to Oranges comparison.
|
| But when was the last time a major public U.S. union went
| on strike? Whereas French railway workers do it all the
| time.
|
| If you're talking about power along a single axis that
| alone makes the French unions significantly more
| powerful.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/20/threat-of-rail-strike-
| has-su...
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> But when was the last time a major public U.S. union
| went on strike?_
|
| If unions get their way, why would they need to go on
| strike? The French go on strike because their unions
| don't always get their way.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Unions in Europe can and do go on strike.
|
| There's even a German word, "Warnstreik," that refers to
| a short strike (as short as a few hours) carried out just
| to send a warning to company management that the union
| means business.
|
| The unions in the transit sector are extremely active in
| Germany and France. As we speak, Paris is at standstill
| because of a massive transit strike.[0]
|
| 0. https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20221110-unions-warn-of-
| indefin...
| bombcar wrote:
| More strikes indicates the union is _less_ powerful - a
| powerful union never has to strike, because they always
| get what they want just through fear of a strike.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| I think you have it backwards.
|
| Unless the threat is exercised every once in a while, it
| is not taken seriously.
|
| German and French companies know that unions are capable
| of and willing to go on strike if their demands are not
| met. That gives companies a much larger incentive to make
| concessions.
|
| The Warnstreiks I mentioned earlier are a tool for
| reminding companies every once in a while that the
| possibility of a strike exists. They're often used during
| contract negotiations, when the union doesn't feel the
| company is giving enough.
| bombcar wrote:
| So unless we nuke a country every once in awhile it's not
| taken seriously?
|
| The last rail strike was adverted at the last moment,
| like it often is, so I suspect the railroad union is not
| weak.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Not really. Unions in Germany are like a partnership to
| the company management, while in the US are like the
| enemy of the management focused on total control and can
| get away with a lot more stuff than what they can in
| Germany. At least in the construction business.
| peteey wrote:
| >some of the design, planning and early engineering is within the
| realm of what a professional civil servant could do.
|
| There's nuance to consulting costs. The government GS pay scale
| poorly accounts for specialized labor. It the government cannot
| pay to attract talent in a competitive fields, it must instead
| pay consultants.
| rhino369 wrote:
| It's not just a pay issue. Government is terrible at hiring
| good performers, weeding out bad performers, and motivating its
| workforce.
|
| Even if you hired a lead engineer for 400k, can't fire them if
| the end up being incompetent.
| acdha wrote:
| Government can easily get rid of bad employees. They have to
| be fair but it's far from the impossibility popularly
| claimed.
|
| What tends to be the case is that the management creates a
| mess and then complains that they can't sack some scapegoat.
| Following fairness rules would allow the employee to say that
| they were following policy or had their judgement overruled,
| so instead they're left alone and labeled "unfireable!"
|
| It's also important not to have too rosy an impression of a
| sector. Most of us here have seen private sector managers who
| were untouchable or managed to shift blame to others. They
| just didn't have public oversight and usually don't make the
| news.
| TexanFeller wrote:
| < Government can easily get rid of bad employees
|
| At one point my wife worked for the state and she had many
| friends that also did that I spoke to. My wife's job was
| intense, but a number of her friends would talk about the
| shows they spent 20hrs binge watching at work in the past
| week. I've been at privileged tech jobs that were somewhat
| relaxed, but nothing close to that. If someone is so
| useless that you don't notice when they're screwing off 50%
| of the time... Even if the government can fire pathetically
| low performers, they often don't!
| acdha wrote:
| There's plenty of that in the private sector, too
| (thinking of multiple guys earning 6 figures because they
| were reliable golf buddies) but in every case the problem
| comes down to management. For example, were those people
| being asked to do more? Were they getting negative
| reviews?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I dunno, I serve on a standards committee where one of the
| other volunteers works for the U.S. Govt, she's taught me a
| lot about a field I thought I was an expert in it.
| asdff wrote:
| LA metro is in a similar bind. They have to go with certain
| contractors because these contractors have hired all the talent
| that is qualified to build to LA metros own specifications for
| designs. They literally can't afford to understand their own
| specs.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| mushbino wrote:
| Hyperloop was mostly a scam to prevent governments from
| investing in transit infrastructure that actually works. The
| Boring Co only made a small tunnel in Las Vegas that only
| allows one Tesla at a time, and of course only Teslas.
| dementis wrote:
| The prototype "hyperloop" tunnel in California is now becoming
| a parking lot. https://news.yahoo.com/musks-california-
| hyperloop-prototype-...
| pencilguin wrote:
| Everything is easier to talk about when freely lying is
| allowed.
| asdff wrote:
| Elon will still have to contend with the anchor of process that
| is the public comment period and inevitable CEQA lawsuits by
| rich busybodies who are afraid the poors will have a more
| convenient time getting to their jobs in the service industry.
| [deleted]
| acdha wrote:
| This theory certainly seems more plausible -- he'd hate having
| to reach an agreement with people he can't order around,
| whereas selling cars is comparatively easy:
|
| > Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop
| was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for
| high-speed rail in California--even though he had no plans to
| build it.
|
| https://time.com/6203815/elon-musk-flaws-billionaire-visions...
| jdminhbg wrote:
| People say Hyperloop hasn't accomplished anything, but
| serving as a scapegoat for the completely unrelated failure
| of California HSR is more than nothing.
| Entinel wrote:
| I don't believe Elon ever had any intention to build Hyperloop
| as originally pitched and the fact that the general public so
| easily believed that a guy who makes his money selling cars was
| going to invest in a mass transit project hilarious.
| ww520 wrote:
| It partly has to do with the bidding process - the drive to get
| the lowest bid. Competent companies know the cost won't work and
| are unwilling to put up the surety bonds to take on a project. It
| leaves with the boldest incompetent company to make the lowest
| bid who gets their foot in the door and then jack up the cost
| overrun later on. Often the project failed due to cost overrun or
| sheer incompetence. At the end the cost of doing business go up
| for all parties involved.
|
| I've seen transit projects with hundreds of millions budget fell
| apart with nothing to show at the end, and have seen a transit
| project that doubled the cost and tripled the schedule to get to
| completion, and that was a good project.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Reform of the bidding process is probably the most actionable
| change that can be done. Even if we keep the core principle of
| a "lowest bidder" process, there are bound to be lessons to be
| learned from how other countries implement the process.
| legitster wrote:
| Also, the US bidding process is long, arbitrary, and favors
| rent-seeking. Only a small subset of local firms will bother to
| play in them.
|
| The way a private company would solve the problem would be hire
| a bunch of experts and in-house a lot of the technical design
| and procurement work.
| asdff wrote:
| The article mentions the issue of local alternatives, but here is
| an example of a half dozen "alternatives" to show how truly
| ridiculous this is:
|
| https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0byerml83ks8dvy/AAAOVqg4is6ytUG76...
|
| The sepulveda transit project will be an underground heavy rail
| project at the end of the day, unless the metro board is truly
| corrupt that is, but you have these homeowner groups who must be
| appeased (1), a monorail company that wants to use the transit
| construction opportunity to steal from the public purse by
| offering an objectively worse technology that the public will be
| saddled with forever (2), and despite all of this 93% of the
| actual public wants the underground heavy rail anyhow which
| offers the fastest end to end time (3).
|
| Despite this, LA metro is spending labor and time to come up with
| and market these alternatives that are complete farces--3 of
| which are monorail based which serve as appeasement to above
| groups. Now imagine how much more efficient this could be if they
| could just build what any engineer would select as the best
| option (the fastest end to end option), and not have to do six
| times the planning to appease certain groups anytime they planned
| to do anything at all? Metro can't even paint a bus lane without
| this massive community engagement process that only serves to
| hamstring transit from being most optimal for commuters, to the
| least likely to piss off car drivers or busybodys looking out
| their window (4). Oh and this one single bus route was funded by
| the taxpayer 6 years ago and ground was supposed to be broken 2
| years ago. Considering the route was planned even before taxpayer
| funding was approved, its been probably a decade at least of
| squawking and politicking and not a drop of paint has been put to
| the road surface yet.
|
| 1. https://la.streetsblog.org/2022/02/07/homeowner-groups-
| metro...
|
| 2. https://la.streetsblog.org/2021/03/15/ten-reasons-to-
| ditch-t...
|
| 3. https://www.dailynews.com/2022/06/20/public-says-93-favor-
| ra...
|
| 4. https://la.streetsblog.org/2022/04/28/metro-board-
| approves-b...
| bombcar wrote:
| Why are they looking at heavy rail? Wouldn't light rail to
| connect with the other light rail in the area make more sense?
|
| I agree the monorail is stupid.
| RadixDLT wrote:
| the money passes through many diffrent hands, contractors,
| construction companies, government taxes, license fees, architect
| designers, middlemen...
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Arpit Gupta put it very well -- we need Value Capture for transit
| financing: https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/562077-value-
| capture-is-...
|
| When you put in a transit line, the surrounding land values go up
| -- it's as old as the railroads. The governing body needs to
| capture the increase in those land values. This is how transit is
| funded in many Asian countries -- the transit project goes from
| being a cost boondoggle to a profit center that pays for itself,
| either by taxing the uplift in land values, or the governing body
| owning that land and leasing it out to e.g. shops.
| steve76 wrote:
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Finding more ways to spend even more doesn't solve the problem
| of why it costs so much.
| robomartin wrote:
| > The governing body needs to capture the increase in those
| land values.
|
| No. The governing body needs to not burn taxpayer funds like
| it's candy.
|
| Justifying the grotesque over-spending and timelines of these
| projects by saying "we'll come up with a way to _charge you
| more money in taxes to make-up the difference_ is the root of
| all problems with so many projects.
|
| Why is it that the first reaction isn't to say do not spend my
| money that way!
|
| EDIT:
|
| Interesting to see how this is misunderstood. Let's see if I
| can make it simpler to understand.
|
| 1- There is nothing wrong with demanding that government use
| our money efficiently. This should not be controversial at all.
| Would you pay 4x or 10x for someone to build you home or sell
| you a car? Why not? Why can't we demand the same fairness from
| government?
|
| 2- Do not give more drugs to a drug addict. You are not going
| to improve the cost-effectiveness of government projects by
| giving them ore taxes. First make them more efficient. Then we
| can talk about using the savings for other projects.
|
| 3- No. Our (people) reason for existing isn't to pay taxes.
| Taxes should be the minimum required to do the business we
| require, not a cent more.
|
| That's the problem. Nobody is interested in holding government
| accountable for the way they conduct business.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| It is necessary to cede some of your autonomy for
| cooperation. Cooperation is required for projects that
| benefit your environment which may serve other people. You
| have to cede some of your autonomy to serve other people.
| Anything less is a fantasy and it will hurt you.
| rnk wrote:
| How do you pay for infrastructure without taxing someone?
| Mass transit has other goods than the immediate user.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Bonds against future revenue.
| nrb wrote:
| Isn't it both that we should be more efficient AND
| contribution should be made locally for local improvements?
|
| I think value capture addresses this somewhat in the sense
| that if these projects are funded more locally, more
| attention would be paid to costs and timeline as opposed to
| the relatively distant federal money for which nobody feels a
| responsibility.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Governments are not businesses - they should not be
| thinking about "capturing value." Ideally, projects like
| this are handled at the minimum level of government: your
| city's transit system is your city's responsibility, funded
| through local taxes. This aligns interests the best.
|
| In practice, federal bureaucrats all over the world have
| figured out how to insert themselves into these kinds of
| local projects, which causes all sorts of conflict of
| interest problems, and divorces the person spending the
| money from the person funding the project (both the people
| who should be funding it and the people who are) and the
| person getting value from it.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Fun fact -- if we were to tax non-produced assets like land
| -- which nobody made, and the value of which is created by
| its neighbors and surrounding community rather than its owner
| -- then we could LOWER taxes on things like income and sales.
| So we could make transit pay for itself by taxing land
| values, instead of bankrupting the city with unaffordable
| boondoggles through bond initiatives and income and sales
| taxes, all of which are drags on the economy in one way or
| another.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Some places have extremely low property taxes.
|
| The combination of low tax rate and low property values is
| the sweet spot for people on a budget (example: A nearly-
| retired uncle of mine just moved to Alabama):
|
| https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn/property-taxes-by-
| state
|
| If you're wondering if my wife and I are periodically
| looking at the economics of living in Hawaii for
| retirement, we sure as hell are. =)
| ejb999 wrote:
| I don't know where you live, but I have never lived any
| place (all in the USA) that doesn't tax land already.
|
| I for one enjoy having open spaces that are not developed -
| raising taxes on vacant land so high, and thus, force the
| owners to sell to someone who will develop it seems like a
| really bad idea.
|
| Trees and open space provide a lot of value to everyone -
| those that live nearby, even if they don't own it, and to
| everyone that likes to breath fresh air.
| Retric wrote:
| It's not about undeveloped land. It's about low value
| assets that take up a lot of space such as surface level
| parking lots or single level big box stores. The more of
| that stuff you condense into the same space the less
| traffic you have because everything is closer together
| and the more viable mass transit becomes.
|
| Not everything needs to be a mega city, but sprawl has
| massive externalities.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Who gets to determine what that low value is? Where do
| they get the numbers from?
| larsiusprime wrote:
| > I don't know where you live, but I have never lived any
| place (all in the USA) that doesn't tax land already.
|
| The issue is that we tax the land and the buildings
| together. We should tax only the land. And we're often
| not taxing it enough.
|
| > I for one enjoy having open spaces that are not
| developed
|
| I enjoy those spaces too! You know what we have right
| now? SPRAWL. For miles in every direction. Pavement that
| gobbles up more and more greenfield spaces, for low-
| density, low-value uses. Outlying wilderness land is not
| very valuable, but land in urban centers is very
| valuable. Because we don't tax that land appropriately,
| we just encourage people to sprawl out further and
| further, and because we tax buildings, we discourage
| people from building densely. This leads to more land
| consumption and less of the open undeveloped space you
| like.
|
| Those trees you love? They're being cut down to make way
| for parking lots and strip malls and self-storage units.
| Really wasteful uses of land. Denser building would make
| it so demand for housing, commerce, and amenities are
| fulfilled on a much smaller footprint.
|
| If we taxed land appropriately, we would have way more
| undeveloped land, and more appropriate density in the
| city, and you wouldn't have to commute nearly as far to
| get to the wilderness.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Aren't the surrounding owners the surrounding community? So
| aren't owners creating the value in your example?
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Yes! The entire community together actually, not just the
| immediately nearby neighbors. Land in the heart of New
| York is valuable because it's in the heart of New York,
| one of the most valuable cities in the world, a feat
| achieved by many more people than just the 10 land owners
| surrounding that particular parcel.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| a_square_peg wrote:
| This is correct - I think it's called R+P (Rail + Property).
| The government doesn't pay for the project at all and grants
| exclusive development right to the transit operator, which in
| case for Hong Kong is MTR. They then negotiate revenue sharing
| with commercial and residential developers on rent etc.
|
| This works well and these transit operators make more money
| from real estate (about 2/3) than transit fare (about 1/3). The
| tricky thing (other than population density) is that the
| developer will have to assume the risk of the revenue forecast
| not panning out. I doubt that any transit operators in North
| America would be willing to do this.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It is worth noting that the HK model only works because of
| artificially high land prices. Virtually all land in Hong
| Kong is leasehold and the government uses lease revenues to
| keep taxes low.
|
| Hong Kong's projects are also not immune to cost issues. Per
| km they have the same cost issues described in the article.
| Recent projects have had massive cost blowouts, and even
| before then scope was dropped from projects to save money.
| The recent Sha Tin to Central Link dropped a station in
| Central to save money, and the new stations were only built
| to handle 9 cars instead of the rest of the line's 12 cars to
| save money.
| rnk wrote:
| We do tax them, but it's indirect, because property taxes go
| up. You could do it by say taking 25% of increased property
| taxes and remitting them to transit costs. That's an
| interesting idea I never heard of before.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| In California this is broken -- property taxes are assessed
| using the price when last sold, plus a 2% annual increase.
| Any property in California that hasn't changed hands recently
| is likely very under-taxed. Basically it amounts to a subsidy
| for sitting on property and not developing it.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Basically it amounts to a protection to people so that they
| won't be forced to sell their home just because property
| values go up, something that happened quite often before
| prop 13 went into effect. But hey, let's kick out people
| from their homes, that they can afford, because they can't
| afford to pay the Sheriff of Nottingham when he comes to
| collect his taxes.
| EricDeb wrote:
| I mean it's similar to rent going up.. you could afford
| it before you can't afford it now sorry
| 0_____0 wrote:
| That reasoning is how it was sold to the Californian
| voter in the 70s during the era of popular rebellion
| against taxes. The writers and underwriters of that
| ballot initiative knew what they were doing, keeping
| grandma in her house was merely a pretext.
|
| The average homeowner benefits directly from Prop 13 and
| fails to see how it has impacted other aspects of their
| life.
|
| The implications for the municipal governments have been
| disastrous. Municipal tax inflows went from being ~95%
| property taxes to being closer to 40% in the present day.
| The rest of the income comes from new taxes and fees
| invented to fill the gaps.
|
| Prop 13 is a major (but not sole) reason why CA has
| underbuilt housing for the last four decades. The tax
| assessed has no relation to the value of the land it sits
| on, so the trend is to underuse and underdevelop land. If
| your house is taxed at $1500 a year and keeps
| appreciating, why sell? Have that 4br/2ba to yourself, or
| rent it out and make a net gain of $60,000/yr. Either way
| it makes no sense to sell the property and allow it to be
| redeveloped into something that could house 10x the
| people.
|
| I know property owners who bought for $40k in Berkeley
| and are now sitting on 2.4MM$ in value, doing the minimum
| in repairs while renting the unit for $6k/mo. This is not
| unusual. These people do not deserve your pity, and they
| do not deserve a massive systemic wealth transfer in
| their direction.
|
| Unfortunately I think the dysfunction in California will
| have to reach catastrophic levels before Prop 13 repeal
| becomes politically^Wemotionally feasible for CA voters.
| The knock-on effects of P13 are too far removed from the
| average voter -- most won't connect increased crime,
| failing schools and public services, increased cost of
| living all the way back to it.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even if the "old lady gets kicked out" were a major
| issue, you could at least repeal Prop 13 for commercial
| properties, and implement other "prevent from being
| kicked out" rules.
|
| But Prop 13 will never change, it's a political 3rd rail
| now.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| No, I believe the way it's done in Asian countries is that
| public transportation is run by (usually) private companies
| that have the right to develop the land. Thus the incentive
| is to put things on top of transit which align with what
| commuters need. In Singapore, for example the pad around
| every station typically has a hawker stand (food court),
| drugstore, supermarket, which are the things you might need
| on your way home.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| The US used to work like this, developers would build
| streetcars to connect suburbs of cities and make it
| profitable to sell lots to build houses on.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
|
| I live in one but unfortunately there's no streetcar
| anymore.
| nephanth wrote:
| Tokyo works that way. Here's a good article I read about
| it: https://pmpstrategy.com/en/insights/publications/item/7
| 25-to...
|
| They do, however, mention some bad externalities at the end
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| This exists, it is called tax increment financing.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| > taxing the uplift in land values
|
| Need to be clear on this as theres a lot of bad assumptions
| below
|
| The best answer is not a standard 'tax' but a payment that is
| required when land surrounding new transit is redeveloped to
| higher density. This is the clearest, cleanest solution.
| Homeowners dont have to pay if they stay and developers just
| factor the cost in when buying property which removes the
| problem of money just ending up with existing landowners when
| they sell the land.
|
| This idea has been around for a long time but not widely
| implemented in the west yet because the politics is hard.
| Whichever country does it first will have a massive head start
| for the future imo
| michael_vo wrote:
| The director of the Switzerland rail real estate told me they
| went around the world studying existing systems and copied
| the Japanese way of building stations.
|
| The government owned the stations and leased retail spaces
| out to businesses in a repeatable templated way. Their goal
| was for users to never have to leave the station on their way
| to and from work. So they standardized metro/train stations
| to have a grocery store, dry cleaning, etc. This was highly
| profitable and successful.
|
| A lot of rail systems focus on the costs but don't think
| about how to design it so that humans want to use rail.
| mjmahone17 wrote:
| Isn't this a disincentive to densifying the land? It seems
| like the tax should occur at least on any sale, not just when
| redevelopment happens.
|
| A single family home near transit is far more valuable than a
| single family home away from transit. There's no reason
| existing homeowners should capture all of the value of that
| increase when they've paid nothing and done no work to make
| it happen.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| There are holes regardless.
|
| Imagine a railway line/station is built 10 mins walk from
| me.
|
| I'm not interested in the railway line. So I rent out my
| home and use the proceeds to buy or rent a larger one in a
| different location without said railway line.
|
| Trying to capture that value I think would result in some
| sort of weird rent control / rent tax central planning
| nightmare that would have pretty bad side effects. It'd
| probably end up looking a bit like California's Prop 13(?)
| where people just stay put.
| cheriot wrote:
| I'll be the LVT guy
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
| baby wrote:
| That is if the land there actually wants the traffic and is
| ready to adapt. Here in SF it feels like no one wants public
| transport to get to them, and they definitely don't want to
| build housing or reserve ground units for shops and restaurants
| jxf wrote:
| In NYC, all the places along the new Second Avenue line shot
| up immediately once it looked like construction was beginning
| again, and shot up even more once it opened.
| mikysco wrote:
| I feel like SF residents' aversion to new transit projects is
| unfortunate but totally reasonable... walk anywhere in SF
| near a BART (subway) stop and you face open drug use, trash,
| and other problems nobody wants in the neighborhood they call
| home. It's not like these are intractable problems - other
| major cities manage to keep their subway stops and
| surrounding areas clean & pleasant to use.
|
| The case against BART expansion is made by the experience &
| externalities of existing BART.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| I would posit that if the city had a direct interest in the
| land value immediately surrounding the transit station --
| as is the case in many successful Asian transit projects --
| they would have a much stronger incentive to make that land
| value go up, by making it cleaner and safer and more well
| maintained.
| andbberger wrote:
| the case against BART expansion is that the urban core is
| underserved, as a direct result of BART hoovering up all
| transit funding and available ROWs
|
| what you're describing is a you problem. SF residents who
| are well served by transit overwhelming favor transit
| expansion, it's the residents who are underserved (sunset,
| outer richmond) who oppose
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Only Civic Center and 16th Mission are like this. 24th can
| be a bit gross, but not always. The rest of the system is
| fairly clean. The problem is that everyone judges the BART
| by its worst stations but nobody decides whether or not to
| drive by the horror of a car crash, and that's a cultural
| issue. Americans culturally erase car trauma but amplify
| transit trauma.
| VancouverMan wrote:
| It's reasonable to judge a transit system based on its
| worst stations. If those happen to be the stations that a
| traveler will be using, then what's going on at those
| stations will have a significant impact on that
| traveler's experience.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Sure but those stations generally don't have "nice folks"
| (hate using that term, given that I grew up in an area
| that would be avoided by these nice folks, but most on HN
| are generationally upper-middle class so) living near
| them. 16th and Mission is the exception because of the
| rapidly gentrified Valencia street, but Civic Center is
| very much not where upper-middle class folks live. The
| BART station nearest to me is clean and nice. Proximity
| to BART generally increases property values and rents.
| WalterSear wrote:
| This just isn't the case.
|
| In my daily experience, BART station QoL issues reflect the
| neighbourhoods they are in.
| runarberg wrote:
| I'm curious, have you waked near a BART station recently?
| If so, which?
|
| If you go to an average BART station, say, Balboa Park, or
| North Berkley they are completely fine, not noticeable
| different then other areas in the same neighborhood. If you
| go to a newer stations (say Dublin / Pleasanton) this is
| even less so.
|
| And for that matter I'm not sure your parent is actually
| providing any correct insights. I'm not aware of much
| backlash from immediate residents against new transit
| projects in their neighborhood (such as the muni
| realignment near SF state or the Van Ness BRT lane).
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| It's pretty simple - don't tolerate this sort of behavior
| around public transit stations. Transit riders deserve a
| safe and clean commute. In the absence of that, they'll
| retreat to the safe clean cocoon of their cars.
| logifail wrote:
| > It's pretty simple - don't tolerate this sort of
| behavior around public transit stations
|
| (I hope it's not seen as outrageous to suggest this, but)
| perhaps one shouldn't tolerate this sort of behavior
| anywhere, ever?
|
| _Everyone_ deserves safe and clean public spaces.
| afarrell wrote:
| > Everyone deserves safe and clean public spaces.
|
| There is a cost to this and that cost includes the
| coercive use of force to prevent that behavior.
| hnov wrote:
| Well the people who smoke fent off of a piece of foil
| aren't going to disappear so you have to put them
| somewhere. If you were to put them somewhere in Pac
| Heights where the residents actively work against public
| transit that'd displease them, so they go where the
| community is less civically engaged and less powerful,
| like next to public transit. In effect there's a feedback
| loop where the area next to BART is only going to get
| grimier and Pac Heights are going to get NIMBYer.
| mikysco wrote:
| You're correct, of course, but the public good from
| improving the safety/cleanliness of shared infrastructure
| like transit has a much higher ROI than your "average"
| public space. Both have societal good but improving
| transit stops (especially rail) deserves higher priority
| than your average sidewalk
| logifail wrote:
| Our eldest (just turned 13 :eek:) walks down an "average
| sidewalk" to the railway station, rides a train (alone)
| into town, and walks an "average sidewalk" to his school,
| and back. Every weekday. He commented on drunks hanging
| around the (in-town) station in the late afternoon just a
| few days ago.
|
| _Everywhere_ should be safe.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| No one thinks "hey every place should not be safe".
| That's obviously what everyone wants. However, given that
| in practice we have huge swathes of places that are in
| bad condition you need to start by prioritizing. And it
| obviously makes a lot of sense to prioritize a public
| transit station, which not only has much higher usage
| than a random sidewalk, and is far easier and cheaper to
| keep safe because it has a much more limited geographic
| footprint and the major sections are not wide open easily
| accessible spaces but are controlled by gates that
| require tickets, than it is to do a wide open sidewalk.
|
| It obviously makes sense to start with the space that
| gives you the most return for the lowest cost and that
| would be any public space that has the highest usage and
| density, such as public transit stations.
|
| Even better, imposing safety in those transit stations
| will also have a significant effect in improving safety
| through the length of the actual BART train ride because
| access to the train is limited to the few stations.
|
| This is not true of a random sidewalk.
| inamberclad wrote:
| Except most BART stations are fine. Even 24th and Mission,
| the most notorious, is actually really not that bad. Once
| people use it, they'll hate it less. However, most people
| will steer clear for their entire lives.
| dpe82 wrote:
| We must not use the same 24th and Mission BART stop. IMHO
| 24th and 16th stops are _disgusting_. I use them both
| often but I 'm never happy to.
| pianoben wrote:
| Man, that's not even _remotely_ close to my experience. I
| used that station (and 16th st) regularly and saw:
|
| - frequent drug use - frequent drug sales - congested and
| filthy station entrances/exits - zonked out naked dudes
| starting fights on the platform (yes more than once or
| twice) - liquid poop on station stairs
|
| I wish I was exaggerating but... this is just how it is
| around those stations.
| dopeboy wrote:
| Depends on your definition of bad. Urine smells, homeless
| people, and knowledge that muggings typically happen
| around that area?
|
| I'd call that bad. I'm with you - we need more public
| transit in the bay. But there's a huge swath of people
| where that Bart experience just isn't going to work.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| > walk anywhere in SF near a BART (subway) stop and you
| face open drug use, trash, and other problems nobody wants
| in the neighborhood they call home.
|
| Is there any evidence these problems are actually related
| to BART? The Tenderloin district has equally bad or worse
| sections away from the Civic Center station. Market Street
| as a whole below Castro has had serious issues for decades.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's simple, right? If you can make $x and your apparent return
| is $y, I will take as much of your surplus $y-$x as I can. To
| make it acceptable, I will use other words, but I'm really just
| trying to capture your surplus and I will get it because you will
| tell people that $y is much greater than $Y (these true return)
| because you must inflate $y by some amount to represent the gain
| to you $y-$Y politically. An exploitable principal-agent
| situation.
|
| Now, both you and I, without overt collaboration will align and
| help us both at the cost of the other guy who is paying for the
| whole thing. We can sucker him a little, because he's a gormless
| fool and his friends are useful idiots who will join in the
| deception.
| thetli8 wrote:
| not to make this political but this is more political than not.
| people vocally want certain things (eg. prevailing wages) more
| than they want efficient costs so there's little incentive to
| make things cheaper.
|
| a good case is always california's railway vs. florida's
| brightline. the differences are stark:
|
| - $1B per mile vs. <$20M per mile [1]
|
| - prevailing wages vs. market wages
|
| - politics and nimby-ism vs. privatized project
|
| - delayed to maybe 2030 vs. opening 2023
|
| [1] https://fee.org/articles/florida-company-shows-california-
| ho...
| artificial wrote:
| The French company SNCF that originally was helping California
| with the high speed rail left in 2011 because the state wasn't
| listening to it's recommendations. They build a high speed rail
| in Morocco which took 7 years to complete and launched in 2018.
| They left saying that California is politically dysfunctional.
| https://www.yahoo.com/news/company-hoping-help-california-hi...
| masklinn wrote:
| I expect the Moroccan project was a bit easier with respect
| to right if way tho.
|
| Then again the LGV Est took a similar time per distance (took
| 12% longer but covers 25% more distance).
|
| Then then again, the LGV est was largely in the "empty
| diagonal"...
| hedora wrote:
| The SF area already has rail corridors that ran from all
| major cities (San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Silicon
| Valley, Santa Cruz, etc) to Los Angeles. Most of that
| project is over farm land, where right of way / imminent
| domain should be straightforward.
|
| Instead, we get the redundant Bart to San Jose (Amtrak has
| been continuously providing that route for a century or
| something.), and SF to SFO (caltrain covers that already).
|
| They need to pick one rail technology and move the entire
| region to it, then dictate the legacy systems operate in a
| unified way (allowing regional, independent rail
| authorities to completely override city councils,
| sacramento and DC), with the understanding that they will
| be fired if the transition to a unified system takes more
| than 5-10 years.
|
| Instead, they are doing the exact opposite of everything I
| just recommended, and all the systems are falling into
| disrepair.
| usaar333 wrote:
| Bart to SFO provided a valuable connection from Western
| SF/Daly City to Caltrain/SFO. It also provides the actual
| only connection between Caltrain and BART, giving better
| connectivity to the East Bay.
| foota wrote:
| That rail line is half the speed and built in one of the
| flattest parts of the country?
| [deleted]
| pkaye wrote:
| Is the Brightline also high speed rail?
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Brightline is basically a conventional (slow) train, whereas
| the CA project goes 2-3x as fast... totally different design
| constraints. Amtrak in California is already as fast as the
| Brightline.
| bombcar wrote:
| Brightline goes exceptionally faster than the CA line, _right
| now_.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Is the current speed differential just because of the rock
| slides?
| bombcar wrote:
| No, it's because Brightline exists and CA HSR doesn't,
| yet. So the speed is 125 mph to zero.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Right now it looks like the current top speed of Brightline
| is the same as most Amtrak lines in California (79mph).
| Brightline claims in the future it will have speeds up to
| 125mph. Conventional Amtrak trains already can go 110mph on
| sections of high quality track, and do in some places in
| the USA.
| bombcar wrote:
| True, but the only place Amtrak gets close to that I know
| of in California is through Camp Pendleton, and there it
| maxes out at 90.
|
| A "bright line" style upgrade to the SAN-LAX route would
| have been entirely worth it, and they're struggling along
| with it, but at pennies compared to what has been spent
| on HSR so far.
| willyt wrote:
| Paris-Bordeaux was EUR15m per mile for electrified 200mph
| capable line. $20m / mile doesn't sound amazing for a non
| electrified line that operates at 79mph now and might have
| sections that operate at 125mph in the future.
| eigen wrote:
| > Paris-Bordeaux was EUR15m per mile for electrified 200mph
| capable line.
|
| is that the LGV Sud Europe Atlantique between Tours and
| Bordeaux that opened in 2017? looks like thats EUR9B for
| 188 miles new track or EUR47M per mile.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Sud_Europe_Atlantique
|
| > The consortium invested EUR3.8 billion, French
| government, local authorities and the European Union paid
| EUR3 billion and EUR1 billion was contributed by SNCF
| Reseau (subsidiary of SNCF). Another EUR1.2 billion was
| spent by SNCF Reseau on the construction of interconnecting
| lines, control centres, capacity enhancements at Bordeaux
| and remodelling the track layout at Gare Montparnasse.
| atoav wrote:
| Without even looking into it I am going to say huge price
| differences between different rail projects are something I
| _really_ would expect to see. Building, planning and permitting
| a meter of track in a dense urban center is going to cost
| magnitudes more than building the same track with the same
| people through a more rural route even if it was done by the
| same people in the same system and state.
|
| That aside the trains might run through different terrain and
| might have to run at different speeds. Building a dirt path
| through a flat desert is surely more cheap per meter than
| building a tunnel through a mountain.
|
| So to compare such projects to each other in way that you can
| draw meaningful insights from the comparison means you have to
| ganular data science and compare how much of each track is
| going through which type of environment.
|
| I am not saying your point is not valid, but just comparing the
| final numbers is not going to cut it here.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| This certainly is a political issue, but privatization isn't
| the solution, it is the problem. US governments at all levels
| are so ideologically opposed to the idea of doing anything in-
| house that they overpay for consultants and contractors to do
| even the most basic things.
| blamazon wrote:
| Although I'm a fan, Brightline also leveraged a bunch of
| existing rail, whereas the California project is almost
| entirely new right of way. That makes it hard to compare the
| projects apples to apples in my eyes. It seems intuitive that
| building a new rail line from scratch is going to cost more and
| take longer than building off an existing rail line.
|
| I believe this is also the core of why Brightline has so many
| level crossings, and thus accident casualties as Floridians
| become accustomed to at-grade high speed trains. California
| high speed rail probably won't ever have to reckon with that
| grim issue, as it's been engineered out.
| pencilguin wrote:
| It is not about legitimate costs. It is about legalized
| corruption. Projects are super-expensive because the
| overwhelming majority of money spent goes to line pockets
| instead of building.
|
| The US's innovation has been to make corruption wholly legal,
| proof against indictment
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Other than government interference in the route planning, all
| private projects seem to be susceptible to all the same issues
| as government projects in North America. Like, NIMBY-ism
| affects private projects too (see: all home construction).
|
| Sidenote: California HSR is slated to travel at about twice the
| speed as Brightline, I'm guessing that has some non-linear
| ramifications on cost.
| Grimburger wrote:
| > people vocally want certain things (eg. prevailing wages)
| more than they want efficient costs so there's little incentive
| to make things cheaper
|
| If you look the database they linked you'll see that there's no
| correlation at all with GDP/capita and $/km of rail line built.
| Some of the most efficient on costs are countries like Finland,
| Korea, Spain, Switzerland, It's clearly not all about the
| wages.
|
| https://transitcosts.com/new-data/
| sleepymoose wrote:
| > $1B per mile vs. <$20M per mile
|
| Once again, California inflating the national average to insane
| proportions.
|
| I understand that the issue you're speaking to is farther
| reaching than just California, but I think we can all agree
| that it's one of, if not the absolute worst offender.
| bluGill wrote:
| NYC second avenue subway is worse by far. CA almost looks
| reasonable
| mushbino wrote:
| Labor costs are between 20-40% of the cost of construction. The
| Florida brightline project uses existing rail. The california
| project is all new rail and requires the purchase of land. It's
| also worth noting that private sector contractors in CA know
| how to game the bidding process and often politicians or their
| families have stock or personal relations with the contractors.
| bombcar wrote:
| The California project didn't _have_ to be sold the way it
| was - but that was the whole point, get the boondoggle
| started.
|
| They could have spend a fraction of the money on improving
| the capital corridor and the Santa Barbara - San Diego
| corridor instead, but that wasn't sexy enough.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| A lot of posters are saying politics. Doesn't that imply it
| did have to be sold in certain ways in order to get passed?
|
| i.e. A modest version with a negligible risk of boondoggle
| would likely never have gotten enough attention in
| Sacramento to make it out of committee.
| bombcar wrote:
| It got sold that way because of CA's slightly weird
| proposition system.
|
| There's no real political _willpower_ for transit in
| California as a state; it 's all located in some of the
| cities, which are plodding along relatively slowly but
| consistently (the San Diego Trolley is miles more than it
| was 20 years ago).
| thetli8 wrote:
| you're right that labor is only a part of it. but part of the
| reason why the CA project saw huge rises in costs is because
| of project planning and scope increases in the planning --
| both of which are politically driven.
|
| part of the politically driven issues stem from NIMBY-ism but
| the other (arguably more heinous) part is how the cities can
| force the plan to be re-routed [1]. not only do costs rise
| and opening dates delay, the hypothetical "high speed" nature
| no longer rings true.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/S0dSm_ClcSw?t=129
| runarberg wrote:
| I don't understand, was there ever an option not to put a
| stop in Palmdale? Skipping Palmdale would honestly be a
| huge lack of vision. There are like 3-400,000 people that
| live in the Palmdale / Lancaster area that would be in a
| nice transit distance from that station. The current
| Antelope Valley metrolink linke services like 6000 daily
| commuters even though it takes like 2 hours. Shortening
| this distance to like 20-30 minutes will surely increase
| this number by a lot.
|
| This is also the logical location for a connecting station
| to a future train to Las Vegas.
|
| Also this station will have passing tracks, so not every
| train will stop there. Even if only 2-3 of every 10 trains
| stop there, it will be a huge improvement to so many
| people. Honestly, if they were to skip it, they would
| probably realize that mistake and add it as an infill
| station, which would be even more expensive.
|
| I think the Palmdale station is kind of a non issue if you
| compare it to true cost drivers, such as UP and the city of
| Hanford, both of which have forced giant mega structures to
| the project, structures that didn't need to be that large,
| but were made to be just so that existing infrastructure
| didn't need to be relocated with temporary disruptions.
| thetli8 wrote:
| if the goal is having high speed transportation while
| minimizing cost burden to the taxpayer, palmdale and
| other similar cities would have been skipped.
|
| likewise, i'm not going to stop using LAX because it's in
| Inglewood and not koreatown; i'll figure out how to make
| the commute.
|
| if CA really wanted to build this right without
| succumbing to the pork granted to all these towns, CA
| should have probably taken a more incremental approach
| (eg. first build the cheapest, shortest-distance, and
| most environmentally-friendly path. then, build secondary
| rail systems that go through areas with high population
| density.)
| runarberg wrote:
| I think CAHSR has been pretty explicit in what the goals
| of the project are, and it includes servicing under-
| served communities with jobs and high quality
| infrastructure. So you might be attacking a straw-man
| here, as minimizing cost and the speed of travel is only
| one of many goals here.
|
| But OK lets say that speed and cost was their only goals,
| I'm actually not sure that the I-5 alignment straight to
| Bakersfield would be any cheaper. In fact it might be
| more expensive, as you would probably need to tunnel
| under most of the Tejon pass. Such a long tunnel is much
| more challenging--and hence expensive--then two shorter
| tunnels under the San Gabriel mountains and the
| Tehachapi. Now if you evaluate this with the benefits of
| a Palmdale station, this becomes a no brainier.
|
| Bear in mind that a similar situation arises in the
| north, where there is an option of doing a very long and
| expensive tunnel under the Pacheco pass, or take a slight
| detour to do a cheaper Altamont tunnel. Here CAHSR
| decided with the expensive option. Part of the decision
| is probably because Altamont is already serviced with
| good transit options, while areas south of San Jose,
| don't. Also note that a Tejon Pass tunnel would probably
| be even longer and much deeper then the Pacheco Pass
| tunnels.
|
| > likewise, i'm not going to stop using LAX because it's
| in Inglewood and not koreatown; i'll figure out how to
| make the commute.
|
| I don't think this is comparable at all. If the CAHSR
| would skip Palmdale, then people in the Antelope Valley
| would be forced to go to either Burbank or Bakerfield.
| For Burbank they can take the Metrolink, but it is
| extremely slow and has limited runs. For Bakersfield no
| mass transit option exists, you have to take a bus, and
| it is also like 2 hours. Going from downtown LA to
| Inglewood is simply not the same.
|
| > CA should have probably taken a more incremental
| approach
|
| So we've moved the goalpost here a bit, but OK. I think
| CAHSR actually agrees with you here. The first portion
| with CASHR funding to open is going to be the Caltrain
| electrification and modernization from San Jose to San
| Francisco. This is the cheapest, shortest distance, most
| environmentally-friendly path between two very large
| densely populated urban centers. The only rivaling
| corridor is probably LA to San Diego, but CAHSR probably
| realized the impossibility to get funding for that in the
| Obama era (as the Surfliner already exists; and the
| extensive tunneling required would be really expensive).
| After that the central valley is the easiest segment, so
| that is where they began after Calmod.
| themitigating wrote:
| "It's also worth noting that private sector contractors in CA
| know how to game the bidding process and often politicians or
| their families have stock or personal relations with the
| contractors."
|
| This is something that only occurs in California?
|
| FLORIDA CONTRACTS GO TO COMPANIES THAT FLOODED RON DESANTIS
| CAMPAIGN FUND
|
| https://theintercept.com/2022/09/27/florida-ron-desantis-
| cam...
| anonyme-honteux wrote:
| Would it be wrong to say that the US has lost the engineering
| skills necessary to build this kind of big projects?
|
| During World War II the US was an mind blowingly efficient
| juggernaut of public projects, but it seems that it has lost is
| way, and that today its engineering culture lags way behind
| countries like Japan, Germany, France, Spain, ...
|
| You can only reap what you sow in term of engineering skills.
|
| The best minds in the US are focused on showing marginally more
| ads, wall street , and lots of other things that pay very well,
| but not big engineering works.
| [deleted]
| twobitshifter wrote:
| The engineering knowledge is there and growing, and spans
| borders. Like all construction in the states, the people to
| construct things are lacking, but that's not the fundamental
| cost increase.
|
| Here's a few things I think are to blame (some as mentioned in
| the article and some of my own.)
|
| - Desire to minimally disrupt others, this extends beyond rail
| to other projects, look at the big dig in Boston.
|
| - Planning requirements re ISTEA act, have put engineering in a
| back seat to local concerns.
|
| - Lack of domestic production/ buy america - leads to paying
| higher prices and big startup costs on every project
|
| - No standardization of components. Almost every rail vehicle
| in the US ends up different. Every station is engineered from
| the start. 150 years ago, stations would come in on a train and
| be stood up to all look the same. England learned this late
| with crossrail.
|
| - Political desire and requirements to minimize and mitigate
| impacts of globally net beneficial projects. Elevated trains
| are a nonstarter in most cities. If you can't grade separate
| more trains mean more delays to cars, which means excuses for
| ambulances saving lives can be used.
| kortilla wrote:
| >Would it be wrong to say that the US has lost the engineering
| skills necessary to build this kind of big projects?
|
| Yes, that's not the issue. The US still has many of the best
| engineering schools in the world and projects very rarely fail
| in the US because engineers screwed up and couldn't handle it.
|
| The problem is that the government has lost the backbone to
| actually disrupt people's lives in the ways necessary to do
| large scale projects.
|
| The California rail is not difficult, but it is quagmired in
| NIMBYism and political trading. The chosen route is not about
| efficiency or anything engineering related, it's about
| scratching the right backs.
|
| >The best minds in the US are focused on showing marginally
| more ads, wall street , and lots of other things that pay very
| well, but not big engineering works.
|
| Because big engineering projects don't ever get greenlit. There
| has never been a case where we wanted to build mass
| infrastructure, got all of the approvals, and then went,
| "whoops, nobody can engineer this".
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Engineering is the easy part.
|
| The political and regulatory issues are much harder.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| This is correct, particularly for rail projects, consultants
| and contractors have to be hired from overseas because there
| are very few Americans who can do the work.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| I really think this is pretty much solely about politics. The
| US has plenty of engineering success in the private sector, but
| public sector projects are weighed down by corruption,
| environmental requirements, community support requirements,
| overpaid union wage requirements. Everyone wants a piece of the
| pie.
| xxpor wrote:
| Please read the actual article. It's much more complicated
| than that. France has incredibly strong unions, and yet their
| costs are a fraction of the US's.
| anonyme-honteux wrote:
| Germany has unions four time stronger than France and it
| has no issue building stuff.
|
| Union bashing is dumb story telling to keep the taxes of
| billionaires low.
| dev_daftly wrote:
| The version of unions in the US is completely different
| than in most countries.
| anonyme-honteux wrote:
| So what do you think that the US plutocrats would welcome
| German style strong unions efficient at negociating
| higher salaries?
| masklinn wrote:
| > it has no issue building stuff.
|
| Berlin airport.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Unions" are a generic term, much like "clergy" is.
|
| Generalizations about "clergy" do not make much sense if
| you want to cover Iranian Ayatollahs and Buryat Lamas at
| the same time. Same about unions. The context changes
| across the globe.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| I did. My conclusion is that the issue is over
| politicization as I said. Every interested party wants a
| piece of the pie, that includes unions, but it also
| includes everyone else in a 100 mile radius.
| anonyme-honteux wrote:
| I think your error here is that you assume that politics
| do not exist everywhere people are involved.
|
| A tram recently got built where my parents live near
| Paris. They had to involve something like 15 cities, 3
| departments, one region, the French state, and the
| european union. That was lots of people who wanted to
| have their way. It slowed things down. But it got built
| anyway and now it works.
| bombcar wrote:
| I take "over politicized" to refer to what the article
| was saying about how many of the various departments are
| elected, and how that causes delay.
|
| The US finds it hard to delegate _trust_ on these things,
| and parties throw up objections over and over again,
| either because they want to kill the projector because
| they want to cover their ass from those that want to kill
| it.
| xxpor wrote:
| Why be a civil engineer with all of the liability and hard
| stuff to learn, and earn $35k coming out of school, when you
| could be CS grad and earn $150k, with way less stress?
| kortilla wrote:
| >and earn $35k coming out of school, when you could be CS
| grad and earn $150k, with way less stress?
|
| First, $35k is made up, that's what someone working full time
| at In-N-Out now makes.
|
| Second, being an entry level civil engineer is not more
| stressful than working in CS. You bear no responsibility and
| don't do any physical labor. Why is that stressful?
| tr33house wrote:
| As someone who got both degrees from a pretty prestigious US
| university, this was my reasoning too. I haven't worked a day
| in Civil Eng since graduation and I don't regret it one bit
| anonyme-honteux wrote:
| Yes, exactly. US engineers are obviously not dumber than the
| ones from other countries, they are just doing other kind of
| work.
| onos wrote:
| If that's the point then it seems we are making the right
| decisions. Dominance in one at the cost of another,
| possibly less important area.
| anonyme-honteux wrote:
| I don't disagree to be honest because there are plenty of
| US cities where you can't do much in terms of urbanism
| even if you had the skills to build. They were built at
| the wrong era, for cars. They are just not dense enough.
| jakesgates wrote:
| I'm sorry $35K? Any source to show that rate? In small-town
| midwest U.S. the starting rate is at least $60k, so I'd be
| shocked to see it at anywhere near $35k anywhere in the U.S.
| bombcar wrote:
| The US can build massive projects, and many of the big projects
| you hear about world-wide are designed and built by US
| companies.
|
| We can even do it _quickly_ if we need to:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekUROM87vTA
|
| We just rarely need or want to.
| lamy wrote:
| I work on transit projects primarily on the west coast. My
| experience has been that 50% or more of the engineers were from
| outside the United States. While I don't disagree that the
| engineering skills are hard to find within local labor pools,
| plenty of experienced individuals are willing to relocate.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| It's lost the administrative and political skills.
|
| Engineering is easier than ever.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| because absolute power corrupts absolutely.
|
| More at 11
| creato wrote:
| In the US it seems like most problems with big projects are due
| to responsibility being diffuse across many political groups,
| and just about anyone with a lawyer has near veto power over
| almost any project. How is that absolute power?
|
| Blind pithy cynicism is unhelpful.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Problem solved, thanks!
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| What I find interesting about this "narrative" is... where is
| the specifics/proof?
|
| It feels like "something" (the media?) wants us to think that
| it isn't just a few bad apples ruining the pie. It's the entire
| pie. It's unfixable.
|
| What's also interesting is... say you do flag someone/something
| down as an example of corruption. Their side of the story is
| that they aren't doing anything wrong.
|
| What/where is the truth?
| phillipcarter wrote:
| And the transit projects across the globe that don't cost so
| much?
| hunterb123 wrote:
| that proves their point does it not?
|
| some transit costs $5m per mile, some transit is $1b per
| mile, find the corrupt one.
|
| anytime you have a large spigot of taxpayer money you'll have
| people in charge trying to funnel it away using contractors,
| lobbyists, etc.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| I would guess that it has to do with the legal need to pay people
| fairly for their land that the transit needs to acquire.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| The most important thing to understand is transit projects in the
| US are so costly on purpose. You can't fix anything until you fix
| the on purpose. If you manage to squeeze in one spot, new costs
| will pop up in another spot. It won't change until projects are
| cost efficient on purpose.
| glasss wrote:
| I enjoyed the blog post and discussion around a very similar
| topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31890048
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Better title: "why are US urban rail projects so costly?"
|
| The subject is way more niche than "transit". A big part of it is
| economies of scale. Europe, and other developed parts of the
| world also built a lot more urban passenger rail per mile.
|
| Now compare the cost of US freight rail - something the US does
| build and operate at scale - and it's much more competitive.
| Costs are often under $1M a mile, depending on factors like load,
| ground leveling, etc.
|
| Countries are better at the types of transit they build the most,
| and the US doesn't use a lot of urban light rail.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| Rail is particularly expensive to build in the US because of
| the lack of living experience and economies of scale, but all
| construction projects from roads to housing are more expensive
| in the US than in other comparable nations.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| I buy this. Even from a pure equipment allocation standpoint it
| would be more difficult for a particular state or region to
| spin up a job, let alone somewhere that has literally no
| existing rail infra to speak of.
|
| In the article, they mention that Italy has something like a
| SWAT team of rail planning and designing consultants at the
| national level that swoop in on local projects and offer
| guidance. That's just not something you get to unless you have
| a preponderance of rail projects under your belt.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Hearing about an Italian SWAT team for rail development just
| makes me think: "hire them."
|
| I wonder if it would be cheaper to just hire all of the
| talent, and then just buy Italian rail components if they are
| available and work. That is essentially what the tech
| industry in the US does now anyway.
|
| I guess certain "Buy American" protections get in the way of
| that, for good and bad reasons; but it's annoying that one
| solution is basically touching the third rail (sorry couldn't
| resist the train joke) in the country. Hire or import talent
| from abroad and learn from them, America's whole industrial
| history is basically a loop of that over time.
| bombcar wrote:
| California HSR basically did that, and the (French?)
| company left in a huff after a few years saying the working
| conditions were untenable.
|
| Much of our existing light rail rolling stock is European
| companies anyway - they make a deal to build a factory in
| the US to get the bid, usually.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_S700_and_S70
| nimbius wrote:
| in the case of Los Angeles its a combination of factors hobbling
| rail at any level. First, NIMBY suits every now and then that
| threaten minor stretches of the project and require significant
| funds to combat, or restructuring the program entirely so as to
| avoid the town in question. this added YEARS to the purple line
| expansion in LA and ensured it could not go through Beverly Hills
| or Westwood. Second, deliberate political boondoggling from
| Republicans ideologically opposed to any public transit, mass or
| otherwise. They know they cant defund or sanction it, so they get
| elected on platforms to "form a committee" or put a measure on
| the ballots to "fund an investigation and research" into things
| like delays or budgets for the program, which inevitably saps
| resources and time from the program and slows things down.
|
| IMO its largely NIMBYS though. California in particular has a
| bold cadre of arrogant holdouts for practically ANY expansion
| project. pull up google maps and look at the 710 freeway. Notice
| anything? yep, it stops deliberately before it gets to Pasadena.
| this lawsuit lasted nearly a _decade_ and forced the city to give
| up entirely on the project, ending it right around el sereno and
| safely away from rich people.
|
| say what you will about communism, but the central planning
| committees get things done.
| asdff wrote:
| People forget that we won WWII thanks to a centrally planned
| economy
| bluGill wrote:
| Central planning is great for big things. It is all the
| little things that are hard to get right
| asdff wrote:
| I'd argue warplanning is about getting all the little
| things right
| RadixDLT wrote:
| communists get things done but the shoddy quality and
| architecture is more costly than you think,
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/53-dead-china-building-co...
| kumarski wrote:
| Gati Shakti, Umang, and UPI will destroy most other countries.
|
| US refinery hegemony is so critical.
| deanCommie wrote:
| This is the natural outcome when you optimize a society for 1/
| lowest taxes in the developed world, 2/ no expectation of a
| social safety net, 3/ biggest possible upside to start a
| business, get rich, and become a millionaire or a billionaire.
|
| Planet Money did a whole series of trying to set up an offshore
| company and realized that despite their reputation, Cayman
| Islands and the like actually do more due diligence of new
| companies than Delaware does.
|
| The US is the best place in the world to start a company and get
| obscenely wealthy. As long as you take the risk that if you are
| unemployed you might die on the street destitute.
|
| This incentivizes all sorts of antisocial behaviour like whole
| industries dependent on the lack of structure in the rest of
| society (the legal field, insurance, healthcare -> none of which
| are nowhere nearly as big or as lucrative in the rest of the
| developed world).
|
| It also means every construction project is an opportunity for
| the enrichment of someone, rather than being done by the state
| for the betterment of society. Rail infrastructure and good
| transit in general is an incredible societal equalizer, and works
| best when it's basic, cheap, but reliable, frequent, and
| consistent. Which the US is just not incentivized to provide.
|
| So instead, these projects become vanity opportunities to suck up
| as much wealth and at least help some middle class construction
| workers make lucrative bank. Good for them I guess. Don't see any
| other possible outcome in America today, such as it is.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| I have to say, I was dubious that a study like this could come up
| with anything worthwhile, but the guy has some pretty sensible
| ideas:
|
| _Build it cheaper, so you can have more of it_ - yep
|
| _Do it faster, so it 'll be cheaper_ - yep
|
| _Quit throwing money at all those expensive consultants_ - yep
|
| ==============
|
| _Put a lid on all those lawsuits_ - he missed that one.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Isn't it kind of obvious? The US has a ton of infrastructure
| already in place, and in heavy use. It's not such an easy thing
| to build new infrastructure on top of old infrastructure with
| heavy traffic. It requires notices, permits, diversions,
| schedules, tons of money, etc. What it boils down to is that it
| is extremely inconvenient to build transit projects in the US for
| everyone involved - the builders, the government, the taxpayers.
|
| On the other hand, it's not too bad to build things in places
| where there's nobody, or no infrastructure. Because it
| inconveniences nobody. Nobody cares if some new building or
| railway is erected in a spot where there was previously nothing.
| This is why Europe's infrastructure is so much better than the
| US's - because most of it was destroyed in WW2, and Europe was
| able to essentially start from scratch. It's the same deal with
| China, which was previously unindustrialized, and has had no
| problems erecting massive cities and transit networks in all
| these rural places.
|
| I see no way for the US to get out of this quandry short of a
| couple things:
|
| - Some kind of weapons or terrorism scare that causes massive
| city depopulation
|
| - Major transportation revolution that enables mass transit
| without infrastructure, think flying cars
|
| - Building brand new cities, which honestly probably will not
| happen unless climate change really fucks things up
|
| So buckle in to your carseats folks, because we're gonna continue
| to be a car nation for years to come.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| China is able to build massive projects in the context of there
| already being heavy use of pre-existing infrastructure.
|
| Your take is just absolutely wrong when it comes to China - the
| US just has no cheap ways of managing competing interests like
| this.
| bombcar wrote:
| US cities have spread and sprawled, and there's no planning
| except for freeways.
|
| Somehow we can acquire land for massive multi lane behemoths
| riding over the fields, and build them before the developments
| come in, but building or extending a train line before that is
| completely impossible.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| All these analysis just wind up concluding in a different
| politically correct phrasing of "y'all mfers piss a hell of a lot
| of money away on stuff that would be overt graft if it weren't an
| official part of the process and there wasn't some service
| exchanged with a plausibly deniable reason"
|
| The whole system from top to bottom is a money sieve and it's so
| diffuse nobody is responsible so nobody has any incentive to
| clean it up and everybody has some token reason why their bit of
| pork is necessary so an outsider without tons of inside
| experience that tends to also result in deep investment in the
| status quo can't hope to accurately clean it up without breaking
| everything.
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