[HN Gopher] Subways cost two to seven times more to build in the...
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Subways cost two to seven times more to build in the USA than
Europe or Japan
Author : jseliger
Score : 42 points
Date : 2023-09-22 16:10 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nextbigfuture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nextbigfuture.com)
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Umm I'm sure they didn't include the North South line in
| Amsterdam in this comparison. It took decades, was billions over
| budget (total bill around 3.1 billion euro), collapsed houses.
| All for 9.7km / 6 miles of subway with 8 stations.
|
| Didn't read TFA but if the US is more expensive than that per
| mile then yeah you're really doing it wrong :P
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| SF's central subway was about $2 billion, 1.7 miles, and has 3
| stations.
| peyton wrote:
| Hah, sounds cheap. NYC is approaching that per mile.
| robomartin wrote:
| Everything is substantially more expensive to build in the US
| than nearly anywhere else.
|
| There's a long list of reasons for this. Sadly, we can't fix it
| because we have lacked real leadership for decades (pick a
| number).
|
| The fitness function that drives our governmental system and
| process does not have a set of variables that measure good
| outcomes, particularly in the long term. Instead, we have
| devolved into a system full of idiots (politicians) lying,
| scheming and throwing fecal matter at each other.
|
| As long as people keep voting for these clowns nothing will
| improve. And, yes, there is a point of no return.
|
| Note that I have not identified a single political party.
| sposeray wrote:
| [dead]
| hifromLA wrote:
| Truly nearly all the public transit infrastructure we have in the
| US was built decades ago (close to 100% if we're talking about
| heavy and commuter rail).
|
| This is a shame because comprehensive metros would transform our
| cities, enable infill housing, and help abate the housing crisis
| that is at the root of so many issues we're facing.
| kfarr wrote:
| Not a substantive article, but important topic and there are
| better resources out there. TLDR: big rail projects get
| overloaded to become job creation programs and satisfy pet
| political agendas
| heroiccocoa wrote:
| How much of this is because European salaries, land value, often
| pales in comparison to the US? It seems extremely unlikely to me
| that as Europeans we are 7x more efficient than the Americans,
| having witnessed the motivation of the construction workers
| building my nearby light rail transit...
| iancmceachern wrote:
| They also cost 2-7x the cost to ride
|
| The average BART fare is $3.96 and that's average, it can go up
| to double that of you go a long distance.
|
| A get you anywhere in the system ticket on the Paris Metro is
| 2.10 euros/2.34 USD.
|
| London is a bit more, it's 3.5 pounds/4.6 usd
|
| Tokyo looks cheaper
|
| New York is 2.90.
|
| I think it's just the bay area that's particularly expensive
| here. Suprise.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| BART's a bad example of pretty much everything. In terms of
| fares the price per mile goes down the longer you ride while
| the price to run that service goes up.
|
| Most of BART's ridership is between San Francisco and Oakland,
| which is what the most recent service cuts targeted. The
| suburbanites that see their fares subsidized by the urban
| riders got service increases. Go figure.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Many of the Metro rides in DC are $5 or more. Some people are
| saying that it's cheaper to drive to work and pay for parking
| -- something that is also jamming the roads. One study found
| that drive times are 20% longer than before COVID -- and that's
| despite the fact that many are working from home.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/09/22/dc-...
| jjk166 wrote:
| The high costs of American infrastructure projects (the problem
| goes well beyond just transit) really stems from how we pay for
| them. In most other countries, there are national or regional
| bodies of civil engineering experts who either directly lead or
| heavily advise decision makers for any projects that want
| funding. Generally they go where the work is and can spend their
| whole careers gaining highly specialized experience on numerous
| projects. When a project is proposed they know the potential
| pitfalls and solutions to common problems so their estimates tend
| to be reasonable. If local officials come around with a
| ridiculous request, they tend to get shut down.
|
| In the US management of projects is generally handled at the
| local level with state and federal governments only lending
| financial support. In any given location, any particular type of
| project is unlikely to be done more than once every few decades,
| so it is likely that none of the people involved in management
| have much if any experience with the specific subdisciplines a
| project would require, nonetheless up to date on best practices.
| Further, local governments simply can't afford to retain large
| staffs of highly specialized engineers. They may hire extremely
| costly consultants but there's no guarantee those consultants
| actually know what they are doing and their insight may be
| disregarded anyways. There is fairly little incentive to rein in
| budgets as they try to appease as many local stakeholders as
| possible, again none of whom are likely to recognize that their
| requests may be impractical. Contracts are likely to be awarded
| to local companies who have little experience and will need to
| reinvent the wheel when they inevitably face unexpected but
| common issues. These issues cause massive delays which are the
| real source of expense for most projects. Because the costs are
| consistently higher than expected, the higher level governments
| need to be willing to dispense larger grants, which in turn leads
| to a normalization of excessive costs.
|
| While it is a well recognized problem, overhauling how the US
| finances its projects is no easy feat. For the federal government
| especially there are concerns about their ability to make
| decisions about local projects beyond offering voluntary grants,
| and more generally people do not like a remote government's
| interference in local affairs. There's also the fear that in
| rejecting a grant for a necessary project (even if the plan for
| that project is terrible) it appears to oppose the idea of fixing
| the underlying problem. Finally, the US gives an enormous amount
| of power to individuals and private organizations to legally
| challenge public plans which means any top down effort to impose
| restraint on local decision makers is basically doomed to
| failure.
|
| People can call it graft or incompetence or mismanagement but
| this puts the blame on the specific people involved, and implies
| that if it were different people we would no longer have these
| issues. Unfortunately it is an issue with the system, which is
| why we see exactly the same issues across the country no matter
| who is in charge. We shouldn't throw our hands up in defeat, but
| we need to recognize the issue is real and will not be trivial to
| deal with.
| watersb wrote:
| Good points: local governments are often out of their depth
| when it comes to significant infrastructure projects.
|
| > _local governments simply can 't afford to retain large
| staffs of highly specialized engineers. They may hire extremely
| costly consultants _
|
| But...
|
| My father spent much of his career working as a government
| consultant on early-stage infrastructure projects, usually
| requirements analysis and grant writing.
|
| This is not lucrative work.
|
| My father started his career as a state government employee, a
| pool of analysts who are in turn tasked with helping local
| government agencies. In later years, he was a private sector
| consultant, covering the entire western region of the United
| States. His office was a corner of the living room. Southwest
| Airlines does not have a business class.
|
| By no means do I wish to complain, or deny the existence of
| government pork. I'm proud of his work and the improvements I
| got to see in some of the impoverished communities he managed
| to help, and I learned one way that local infrastructure
| projects can be undertaken efficiently.
|
| I wish my Dad were still around so I could ask him about this.
| joe__f wrote:
| I assumed the reason was going to be poor urban planning
| resulting in sprawling cities which need longer routes. From a
| scan read, this didn't appear to be the point made in the
| article.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| No, the issue is more bidding process shenanigans and
| regulatory overload from labor to environmental to local. It's
| become prohibitively expensive to do large public works in the
| US of all sorts due to these things. It's not just subways,
| it's bridges and tunnels and all other infrastructure that
| would be amenable in sprawling megalopolises.
| calaphos wrote:
| The article is about building costs per mile. If anything lower
| density should make construction simpler.
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