[HN Gopher] All Aboard the Bureaucracy Train
___________________________________________________________________
All Aboard the Bureaucracy Train
Author : zaik
Score : 131 points
Date : 2024-02-26 09:15 UTC (13 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (asteriskmag.com)
| roenxi wrote:
| > ... we refuse to learn from experts ...
|
| This theme comes up a few times in the article. It is a
| misunderstanding of the Western mindset.
|
| Everyone involved can see that there are people out there who are
| better than us at building. The issue is that their methods are
| _unacceptable_ and, when understood, are likely to be explicitly
| rejected.
|
| Think of it like communists refusing to allow private ownership -
| the evidence is available that private ownership leads to better
| results overall and they understand the mechanics of how it
| works. The issue is that there is a fundamental rejection of the
| idea that someone is entitled to control the benefits of an
| asset. There is no mechanical confusion about what would happen
| if private property was instituted, or how to affect it.
|
| It isn't a question of learning new things. The problem is things
| that are politically desirable (pristine air quality, well paid
| jobs for workers with ironclad security, not upsetting anyone,
| strong regulatory controls) are incompatible with a cheap & high
| quality product. As I repeat ad nauseam, most of what China does
| to successfully build infrastructure is literally illegal in the
| West.
| resolutebat wrote:
| The article doesn't even mention China, it's comparing the US
| against other Western countries like Spain, which is actually
| _very good_ at building public transport.
| renhanxue wrote:
| Many of the countries he compares against are part of the
| Western world, though? Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Nordics -
| all of these have significantly lower construction costs than
| in the US. What unacceptable methods are you thinking of, here?
| smokel wrote:
| The article uses several European countries for comparison.
| These also have "the Western mindset". The article does not
| even mention China, but refers to Asia, which is pretty big.
| tomgp wrote:
| This ignores the fact that European countries are able to
| complete infrastructure projects with better worker protections
| and tighter environmental controls for a fraction of the cost.
| I haven't read the article in question but follow Alon's blog
| where he provides ample examples of this...
| https://pedestrianobservations.com/
| roenxi wrote:
| I'm sure they are, but that is not quite addressing what I'm
| saying. I'm saying that building an effective transit system
| obviously isn't the purpose of the systems that control New
| York's transit.
|
| There are interest groups prioritising objectives other than
| building the infrastructure. Otherwise it is impossible to
| justify the actual outcomes of these projects - it goes
| waaaaay beyond incompetence and although everyone identifies
| a different interest group there is consensus that they
| exist. And my personal point is that the US (anglosphere,
| really) has a lot of systems to identify minority interest
| groups and make satisfying them a key part of completing a
| project.
|
| And therefore the problem isn't that people are refusing to
| learn, the problem is that building infrastructure isn't a
| priority. Someone who builds good infrastructure doesn't have
| any useful lessons to share, because that wasn't Goal #1. The
| people with veto power over the projects would like the
| infrastructure, sure, but if it doesn't get built cheaply and
| too a good standard then that isn't going to be a shock to
| the system that causes change.
|
| This article is subtly suggesting that there is a competence
| problem. I'm saying no, I think the people involved in this
| are plenty competent. There are just interest groups with
| enough power to scuttle the project and they need to be
| identified and negotiated with.
| gumby wrote:
| I think the US (and perhaps all other countries) have
| plenty of experience running roughshod over local
| interests. In the US case big infrastructure programs of
| the 50s were typically built on black communities; in the
| mid 1850s Hausmann built the central Paris of today by
| demolishing whatever he wanted.
|
| It's a positive thing that people's interests are heard as
| infrastructure is for everyone. If there's going to be a
| road, water treatment plant, or courthouse it has to be
| built somewhere, so some sacrifice has to be made, but
| better that there is some discussion, no?
|
| There has been a destructive and cynical view of the
| commonweal for the last 40-50 years which has made these
| discussion completely oppositional but that doesn't have to
| be the case. The article touches on this.
| krisoft wrote:
| > I'm saying that building an effective transit system
| obviously isn't the purpose of the systems that control New
| York's transit.
|
| You were not saying that. You said "The problem is things
| that are politically desirable are incompatible with a
| cheap & high quality product." That is an absolute
| statement. These two things are incompatible. It is not
| possible to have both.
|
| To which tomgp responded with an example where seemingly
| they have both. The things which you said are incompatible
| with each other.
|
| And then just after that you say that the "systems that
| control New York's transit" is basically corrupt.
|
| So which one is it? Because these two are two very
| different situations and switching from one to the other
| feels quite dishonest to be honest with you.
| danhor wrote:
| One of the most egregious issues with the second avenue
| extension is that the underground portion is way larger
| than comparable systems. A large part of this is backoffic
| space (which should be overground and consolidated, like
| everywhere else), which no minority interest group is
| interest in. And you can see that: In the next Phase they
| have reduced the backoffice space (which no passenger will
| _ever_ notice) due to cost pressures (saving over a
| billion, I think) and _no one_ complained.The same is true
| for many other examples.
|
| This is also noticable elsewhere. When looking at german
| planning, they reference other german projects and rarely
| projects of the sourrounding countries, and thus often
| don't notice the lessons learned there.
| this15testingg wrote:
| how does private ownership _not_ mean that someone is entitled
| to control the benefits of an asset? isn 't that the entire
| idea of capitalism?
|
| in the context of public (emphasis on PUBLIC) infrastructure,
| how does pristine air quality, well paid jobs for workers with
| ironclad security, not upsetting anyone, strong regulatory
| controls not be considered in a "high quality product"? How
| could it be high quality without those? The idea that public
| infrastructure has to be profitable/a product instead of a
| public good is misguided and ignores the realities of the costs
| and requirements associated with such things.
|
| would you say that the strong regulatory nature of air travel
| makes is low quality? if the NTSB/FHWA took car transportation
| as seriously as flying, I would imagine the US would not have
| 40,000 deaths a year just from driving. I don't understand how
| that amount of death (ignoring pollution, minor/serious
| injuries, personal cost, lost time, resources both monetary and
| material, etc) makes the US transport choices a "high quality"
| product.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| It's more of an American cultural trait. People are fearful
| and obsessed with safety. They can be vocal and overreacting
| for trivial stuff. They often act in a virtue-signalling
| manner and put stickers on their cars. Before anything gets
| done, millions of tweets and reddit comments have been
| written.
| vmfunction wrote:
| In US, safety is often tight to 'will we get sued for this'
| mentality that is associated with the corrupt legal system.
| This could also attributed to the over cost of building a
| train system in US vs other parts of the world.
| renhanxue wrote:
| Levy's research group calls this "adversarial legalism"
| and yes it does seem to be a contributing factor to high
| construction costs.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > most of what China does to successfully build infrastructure
| is literally illegal in the West
|
| The biggest thing China does to successfully build
| infrastructure is to repeat successful previous designs without
| modifying them - ie build 10 identical nuclear reactors,
| bridges, stations etc - and utilise the scale to do it much
| cheaper (it doesn't matter if your nuclear reactor is 30% less
| efficient than the latest, if you can build it for 30% cheaper
| in half the time)
|
| That's not illegal in the west it just appears hard to do.
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| Exactly, Chinas biggest secret is to lean on economies of
| scale. In case of transit they standardised early-on on only
| five types of train/rail-corridor and then whenever a city
| needed a metro, lightrail or any other type of rail transit
| they would just pick one of the five that fits best and build
| it using all the knowhow and economies of scale from previous
| builds. RMTransit has a good video about it [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehTy-qQVZhM&t=0
| gumby wrote:
| The article even lauds the benefits of this, using the LA
| schools as an example, but doesn't follow that thread.
| secabeen wrote:
| As I understand it, the challenge in building is in
| adapting the plan to site specifics, or adapting the site
| to the plan. In China and other top-down planning
| regimes, they will adapt the site to the plan. If the
| station or school plan requires that a historic
| neighborhood be impacted to use the plan unchanged,
| farewell to historic buildings. Here we adapt the plan to
| fit within the space, or whatever, but that quickly
| eliminates the cost savings, as now each station or
| school is slightly unique.
|
| This also shows up in residential and other smaller
| projects. Look at the historic aerial photos of
| Levittown, NY and PA, which created the notion of the
| suburb:
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=levitown&iax=images&ia=i
| mag...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown
|
| The original landscape is completely eliminated, all
| original trees are gone, it's been scraped clean. Most
| developments near major cities are infill or replacement,
| and they adapt their plans to the site. There are still
| greenfield builds happening in exurban areas, but in
| existing metro areas, everything is bespoke.
| roenxi wrote:
| > ... ie build 10 identical ...
|
| It seems unlikely that a cookie cutter design could just be
| emplaced in different areas without running into problems in
| the environmental reviews. Different local conditions would
| presumably require different local considerations.
|
| Projects can get shut down because Red Spotted Scuttlers are
| spotted in the local area. Or the local laws require
| different pollution controls. This is a facet of why I say
| "literally illegal" - I don't think your plan can be executed
| in a reliable sense while being legally on the straight and
| narrow path. Certainly not if activist groups start looking
| to take a project out by lawfare.
|
| It is a good idea, but to pull it off requires that nobody
| wants the project to fail. If someone goes looking it
| probably breaks rules.
| troupo wrote:
| > Red Spotted Scuttlers are spotted in the local area.
|
| Has nothing to do with cookie cutter designs.
|
| > Or the local laws require different pollution controls.
|
| Has very little to do with cookie cutter designs.
|
| > I don't think your plan can be executed in a reliable
| sense while being legally on the straight and narrow path.
|
| Strange how literally everyone in the world can figure this
| out, but not the US.
| roenxi wrote:
| > Has nothing to do with cookie cutter designs.
|
| If you can't build the design, then someone will have to
| design something else that can be built. If people aren't
| already using cookie cutter designs, there is a reason
| for that. The reason may be one that most people don't
| like, but it is still going to be there.
|
| And I am putting that the reason is probably going to be
| that the law probably does require consideration of site-
| specific factors.
|
| > Strange how literally everyone in the world can figure
| this out, but not the US.
|
| As mentioned, most of the world doesn't apply US
| standards and laws.
|
| And you're speaking a bit strongly. Most of the world
| doesn't figure infrastructure out. The median for project
| management and country-wide governance is dysfunctional
| failure across most of the globe. You can tell because
| most people are impoverished despite us having all the
| tools to sort that out for something like a century.
| troupo wrote:
| > If you can't build the design, then someone will have
| to design something else that can be built.
|
| Again. This literally has nothing to do with cookie
| cutter designs.
|
| If something cannot be built in the area because there's
| some local wildlife, there are exactly two choices:
|
| - no building is permitted, period, so you build in a
| different place (or don't build)
|
| - you can build, so you chose the cookie cutter design
| for the type of construction permitted. E.g. you can't
| build on the ground, but can build a bridge? You
| literally take "bridge cookie cutter design N" out of 3
| cookie cutter designs for a bridge station (or out of the
| 15 combinations for a modular station because that's what
| cookie cutter designs are).
|
| > If people aren't already using cookie cutter designs,
| there is a reason for that.
|
| It's not. It's the US' insistence on how special and
| unique they are.
|
| > As mentioned, most of the world doesn't apply US
| standards and laws.
|
| US is not as special as you make it out to be. The world
| also has "Red Spotted Scuttlers" and different pollution
| considerations based on locations, etc.
| roenxi wrote:
| There is a 3rd option - do a custom design that considers
| site-specific issues. Say there is a project with an
| unusual requirement. Taking one from my experience, a
| height limit so that a certain area still gets an
| appropriate amount of sun.
|
| The options are "go", "redesign to be more squat" or "no-
| go".
|
| What I'm giving you is a sketch at how advanced
| environmental laws actually conflict with the idea of
| using cookie cutter designs. The ideas are at odds with
| each other.
|
| > The world also has "Red Spotted Scuttlers"
|
| Not after a typical infrastructure project. Usually a
| bunch of habitat gets killed off and it isn't unusual to
| lose a population of something exotic.
| troupo wrote:
| > There is a 3rd option - do a custom design that
| considers site-specific issues.
|
| And this option is _extremely rare_.
|
| > What I'm giving you is a sketch at how advanced
| environmental laws actually conflict with the idea of
| using cookie cutter designs.
|
| No. What you're giving me is a lie that these are
| applicable everywhere all the time. You're also trying to
| sell a lie that the US is so distinct and special and
| unique that it can't have cookie cutter designs (unlike
| other countries) because only in the US this applies
| everywhere all the time.
|
| > Not after a typical infrastructure project. Usually a
| bunch of habitat gets killed off and it isn't unusual to
| lose a population of something exotic.
|
| That is, of course, not as true and not as common as you
| make it out to be.
|
| BTW. I live in Stockholm, in a country obsessed with
| ecology and pollution etc. Most stations are cookie
| cutter designs (of course). There's exactly _one_ subway
| station that never got built precisely because there was
| endangered wildlife in the area.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| You are really aggressively arguing that you understand
| US law while demonstrating repeatedly that you don't.
|
| Why?
|
| The core of the argument _roenxi_ is making is that the
| legal system in the US is *very very different* from that
| which adheres in Sweden.
|
| _roenxi_ at no point argues that the legal system in
| play in the US is good, or better. They are just saying
| that because of legal barriers, what you seem to imply is
| incompetence at the planning level is, in fact, evidence
| of a poorly designed legal system.
| troupo wrote:
| No, what roenxi, and now you are arguing, quite
| literally, that somehow cookie cutter designs for
| infrastructure are impossible because somehow laws are so
| extremely different and impossible to go around for every
| single one of the infastructure projects that for every
| single one you will need a bespoke design because
| environmental protection or something.
|
| Which is absolutely blatantly false.
|
| BTW, as far as environment protection goes, there's a
| sibling comment addressing the same:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39511375
|
| Infrastructure always relies on cookie-cutter designs
| and/or modular designs, and there's nothing special about
| the US in this regard except its insistence that it is
| somehow excluded from common sense.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| I agree that that comment summarizes what appears to be
| your argument "you can build infrastructure cheaper even
| with restrictive environmental protections".
|
| The response from _rayiner_ explains why this argument
| misses the point. It's not about terminal goals being
| more or less virtuous in the US. It's about the *process*
| for building in the US having many points of potential
| legal interaction that lead to delays and redesign
| requirements.
|
| And that legal system is quite different from how large
| projects are able to be executed in the rest of the
| developed world.
|
| The US used to build large projects this way, but there
| was a large populist movement that pushed to add more
| local veto opportunities.
|
| Those vetoes are extremely expensive at the macro level.
| troupo wrote:
| Funnily enough how you can build cookie-cutter parking
| lots everywhere. Cookie-cutter roads everywhere. Cookie-
| cutter shopping malls and gas stations everywhere.
|
| But any other bit of infrastructure? "oh no, local laws
| would not permit it because difficult legal landscape".
|
| So this let me get this straight. This
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y7cvszoFfzxmAG6Q8 (Aurora, CO)
| and this https://maps.app.goo.gl/ByZfS93g82C1NkjdA
| (Derry, NH) and this
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/uUEdDNtcK5MfHZUW8 (Ankeny, IA)
| and literally hundreds if not thousands of these can be
| built from cookie-cutter designs so that they are really
| indistinguishable from each other. But when we talk about
| anything else, it's "impossible because US is like no
| other and also you have to make sure there's site-
| specific design because advanced environment laws
| actually conflict with the idea of using cookie cutter
| designs" or something
| rsynnott wrote:
| > As mentioned, most of the world doesn't apply US
| standards and laws.
|
| EU environmental protection rules are, generally, rather
| stricter than those in the US, and Europe does mostly
| manage to build proper train systems (though not nuclear
| plants, unless one happens to be France).
|
| It's worth noting that the US has no particular problem
| building _roads_, visiting from Europe, as a country it
| seems to be about 50% road. I don't think environmental
| rules are as big a factor as you think they are in the
| US's train-y woes.
|
| EDIT: An interesting point of comparison might be
| Ireland; like the US, Ireland is a wealthy country which
| can't build infrastructure to save its life. It has
| pretty much the same environmental rules as other highly-
| developed European countries, but hyper-local politics
| and extreme NIMBYism makes doing anything impossible.
|
| There's a proposal at the moment to build a high-speed
| (ie 300km/h) line from Cork to Dublin to Belfast, but
| it's more or less tacitly acknowledged that that's the
| sort of thing you just can't do here, so there is a
| parallel plan, which may actually happen, to upgrade the
| existing Cork to Dublin line to fake high speed (ie
| 200km/h); this is kind of within the realm of the
| possible in Ireland, in that it doesn't require a new
| line, so may eventually happen at huge expense. Sound
| familiar?
| sarchertech wrote:
| The US appears to be 50% road due to sampling bias
| because you travel everywhere by road. The US also also
| has far more freight rail per capita than the EU.
|
| It's less a matter of who is better at building rail,
| than it is prioritizing freight over passengers.
| trelane wrote:
| Kinda. If "road" includes parking, they're not that far
| off, hyperbole aside.
| https://parkingreform.org/resources/parking-lot-map/
| rsynnott wrote:
| So, funny thing. Most of my experience of the US has been
| San Francisco and its immediate area. From my
| perspective, it's very road-oriented, and has an
| astonishing amount of space given over to parking; giant
| tech company offices and new apartment blocks are side by
| side with massive parking lots. You just don't really see
| that much in large European cities.
|
| Anyway, looks like it's 3% based on that map (though the
| area I was primarily thinking of falls just outside their
| definition of 'central', I think), compared to _26%_ for
| Atlanta. I'm having trouble visualising what that even
| looks like.
| rayiner wrote:
| > EU environmental protection rules are, generally,
| rather stricter than those in the US, and Europe does
| mostly manage to build proper train systems
|
| It's not a question of US laws being stricter (i.e. more
| protective of the environment), but rather requiring a
| process that is more onerous and expensive. In France,
| for example, the government does whatever environmental
| review is appropriate in deciding whether to build
| something. It then passes a law to build the thing, which
| preempts all local laws that could hold up building of
| the thing. Once the decision has been made, you can't
| easily sue to stop the project in its tracks.
|
| In the US, the government's decision to build something
| is just the first step in a process that involves many
| layers of review and phases of litigation that takes
| years before you can start digging.
| Mashimo wrote:
| The article mentions there was a time when LA build a ton
| of the same schools and it worked.
| roenxi wrote:
| Yeah of course it works. It is possible that literally
| everyone knows that approach works. How to build
| buildings things cheaply is not a mystery to the building
| builders.
|
| The issues is that the people making the decisions either
| don't want it to be cheap, or aren't allowed to make the
| cheap decisions. I'm betting option 2.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Not allowed by whom? Them?
| roenxi wrote:
| The activists of various stripes, locals, courts and
| regulators. occasionally bad incentives or requirements
| by whoever contracts out the work if it is sponsored by a
| public body.
| someguydave wrote:
| No, activists in court, politicians, unions, other
| bureaucrats, angry NIMBYs, etc
|
| Many people can stop initiatives in US politics and very
| few have the respect/political capital to overrule all
| the objections
| no_wizard wrote:
| What if you looked at all the justifications in the US and
| engineered for the most onerous ones by default rather than
| per project? It may raise the initial cost but would likely
| allow for the repeatability cost savings which could
| theoretically offset. A cursory non expert look at this
| suggests that things thst must be followed in the most
| onerous places also cover lesser places, but I'm no expert.
|
| Local environmental reviews remain a real challenge then
| though assuming it can even be done.
| cduzz wrote:
| One step out from "repeat successful designs" perhaps is "use
| the same project planning team / infrastructure from one
| project to the next" ?
|
| A critical flaw in US infrastructure is that the
| infrastructure owners typically have no "large project"
| management skills -- the transit system is run at a
| "starvation level" that keeps the staffing at just barely
| enough to keep the system running and there's no spare
| resource to have some "enormous engineering project" project
| manager just sitting around just in case you want to run a
| big project. Instead these organizations hire an external
| project management organization that (usually) doesn't share
| incentives with the client organization.
|
| It's unsurprising that large infrastructure projects without
| proper oversight end up being run poorly.
| mkesper wrote:
| From the article: VA: This lack of effective leadership
| from the public sector comes up over and over again in your
| discussions of American transit, both internally and in
| their relationships with other actors. They struggle at
| cooperating with other agencies -- with the Department of
| Transportation, with the Department of Environmental
| Protection, with parks, with buildings, with the fire
| department. And they're also quite inefficient at managing
| consultants because they don't have enough technical in-
| house knowledge to really understand how to.
|
| AL: Exactly. So then they'll hire a consultant to manage
| the consultants -- it's the most ridiculous thing.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Another thing they do is not a public/private build out.
| China owns the companies building the roads. It gets to set
| the price, design, wages, etc.
|
| The reason things are expensive in the US is privatization.
| It should be super obvious why. The contractors we hire are
| super incentivized to drag things out and bloat costs. They
| make more money by doing less. And since the gov is footing
| the bill, no harm no foul.
|
| It gets even worse when you take corruption into account.
| Because now the mayor can get nice kickbacks for awarding
| contracts to their drinking buddies who also are mysteriously
| campaign donors. Not saying corruption doesn't happen in
| china, it does, but not generally for infrastructure things.
| Instead, it's the drinking buddies being put in charge of the
| projects.
|
| One of the dumbest parts of Reaganomics was removing the
| public ability to maintain public infrastructure.
| himinlomax wrote:
| This argument is already refuted by the article; building is
| currently less expensive (often by more than half!) in
| Western/Northern Europe (excluding UK/Ireland) than in the US,
| and you can certainly be sure that air quality, labor laws,
| security and so on are not inferior in any way in Sweden or
| Germany compared to the US.
| btbuildem wrote:
| > their methods are unacceptable and, when understood, are
| likely to be explicitly rejected
|
| I agree, but not for the reasons you've stated.
|
| The methods are unacceptable, because they cut into profits.
| The reason anything at all is built in the US isn't because of
| some intrinsic good it will provide; it's because someone will
| profit off the building. If the finished product provides some
| value / service, that's entirely incidental.
|
| If you look at it this way, the problem simplifies greatly. It
| becomes easier to explain why we have failing infrastructure
| (too costly to maintain = no profit to be made off
| maintenance), why a lot of new builds seem cheaply done (more
| expense put into design, materials and execution = less
| profit), etc etc.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Of course someone is going to profit. That's the only reason
| anything gets built anywhere ever.
| samatman wrote:
| People who treat profit as a dirty word are responsible for
| enormous amounts of suffering.
|
| The only valid reason to subsidize some piece of
| infrastructure is if the provisioned public good leads to
| more overall wealth. I consider the word "wealth" broad
| enough to cover things like reducing carbon emissions, these
| things can be (and _should be_ ) estimated in monetary terms,
| but that will always be an approximation.
|
| My point is that subsidizing unprofitable transportation
| which doesn't itself provide value in excess of the subsidy
| is wrong. That's not public service, it's a boondoggle.
|
| The US, like any country, does subsidize infrastructure
| extensively. This includes the public highway system as well
| as our remarkable freight rail infrastructure. The reason
| this works is because the public goods so provisioned pay off
| extensively in wealth. While this includes the profits of the
| freighting and trucking companies, who after all won't
| transport goods if they don't make a profit, it also includes
| the entire country's population, who benefit from available
| and cheap goods. There are libertarians who argue that this
| would work just as well if the roads themselves generate
| profit, and I think they're wrong about that.
| Arn_Thor wrote:
| Profit is not a dirty word. I don't think that's an
| argument anyone is making. Profit is not _sufficient_
| motivation to make a lot of infrastructure happen, and
| until that's recognized we'll be building too little, too
| late. I think most actually would agree with the rest of
| your points--I certainly do.
| samatman wrote:
| If it isn't profitable overall, it shouldn't be built.
| Whether or not it should be profitable at the point-of-
| sale is a different question. But public goods which
| don't contribute to the common wealth are parasitic
| makework enriching the few at the expense of the many.
| numpad0 wrote:
| That's contrary to the reality. I live in a country
| sometimes described as the most successful communist
| country in the world, and our people's revolutionary train
| system is miles ahead anyone else's. "Communist"
| description is mere irony by the way.
|
| I think allowing market principle to self-regulate cost
| performance of infrastructure investment has its own
| merits, but large scale infrastructure like train systems
| is not something that a commercial entity such as a train
| operators to just passively and inevitably move towards
| greater societal goals by nearsighted means of quarterly
| paperclipping, it's something that totaritalian subsidy and
| control could yield great results.
| samatman wrote:
| So what you're saying is that subsidizing the train
| infrastructure in your country contributes enough wealth
| to offset the expense of the subsidy? Weird, that's what
| I'm saying too.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Part of it is political pandering too. Iirc a french team
| made an early plan for cal hsr that involved going straight
| up the 5 and one day serving the central valley through
| spurs. To the polticians whose communities that 5 freeway
| route would have bypassed that was untenable. Now the route
| snakes through vs following the fastest and certainly far
| cheaper 5 right of way (since land is already public here
| too).
| komali2 wrote:
| > Think of it like communists refusing to allow private
| ownership - the evidence is available that private ownership
| leads to better results overall and they understand the
| mechanics of how it works.
|
| This leans on too many historically and philosophically
| contentious points to be a useful comparison imo. I'm not sure
| who you mean by "the communists," presumably the USSR and the
| early PRC? But they both had quite different economic systems,
| and if your argument centers around "they didn't have private
| property," then, we should toss in a couple fascist regimes as
| well, at which point, are we discussing communism, or simply
| systems with no, or with arbitrarily removed, private property?
| Cause that could include feudalism. Or are we discussing
| central planning systems, in which case, that could be ANY
| system, regardless of whether or not there's private property.
| (and by property are we including toothbrushes lol?)
|
| And honestly it does also depend on what you mean by better
| results overall. In this article it seems a key argument is
| made:
|
| > The first element, that's the one that used to be present but
| isn't anymore, is a large public sector, because you need a
| large enough bureaucracy that can supervise all the
| contractors.
|
| Many conflate public sector with socialist tendencies, and the
| person being interviewed here seems to imply that the lack of
| socialist tendency in the USA (I doubt we'd disagree about
| that!) is hampering its ability to engage in public projects
| effectively. Wouldn't that be in opposition to your point?
| Sure, Germany isn't communist, but many would say it is closer
| to it than America, and it has better trains.
|
| And the USSR _absolutely_ had better trains. Whether it was
| truly communist, or something else, I feel is moot - it seems
| to be the thing you 're describing as "worse results," but, it
| had better results, surely? Unless you think the USSR's public
| transit system wasn't good?
| nix0n wrote:
| > The issue is that their methods are unacceptable and, when
| understood, are likely to be explicitly rejected.
|
| This sounds to me exactly like refusing to learn.
| resolutebat wrote:
| Interesting if somewhat scatterbrained interview. He's kind of
| wrong about cut and cover being preferable though:
|
| https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-we-stopped-building-cut...
| nemetroid wrote:
| Could you be more specific? To me, both articles seem to make
| similar arguments regarding cost vs. distuption.
| smokefoot wrote:
| Some serious ADHD apparent in this interview. Like what was
| that digression about North African countries writing in
| French? That really should have been edited out.
| xyzelement wrote:
| The theme of that section was about impact of
| history/tradition on the (suboptimal) ways countries do
| construction, including "X country tends to learn from Y
| country's approach even if the realities of X and Y are very
| different."
|
| I think the point was North Africa learns from France even
| though the situations are vastly different. All of Asia
| following Japan's approach was another example.
| Taikonerd wrote:
| I just read that as, "Alon Levy really loves this subject and
| is talkative."
| javier_e06 wrote:
| A TL;DR for sure but definitely but not apples to apples. A
| transit system is embedded with the cultural norms of the
| location so when applying cost once hast to wonder: What is the
| point of applying cost of a restaurant meal across the world or
| across states? Sure you can go there and save yourself a bundle
| but do you want to live there?
| nicbou wrote:
| So "you ship your org chart"?
| woodruffw wrote:
| This was an interesting read, with a couple of glaring errors:
|
| * The _systems_ that predate the modern NYC subway were not
| called the IRT. The IRT was a _single_ system, which now makes up
| the "A Division" of the subway. The other system was the BMT,
| which was combined with the IND to make up the "B Division"
| (since they have compatible trackage and car lengths /widths,
| unlike the IRT).
|
| * The interviewee claims that the IND only really expanded into
| two new areas (via the crosstown line and QBL), which isn't true:
| the IND also included the Culver and Fulton lines, both of which
| cover otherwise underserved neighborhoods.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Alon Levy definitely knows about the history of the IRT, the
| BMT, and the IND, so the interview getting that wrong is
| definitely odd. Although from the way it's worded, it's
| possible that it's just the interviewer doing an incorrect
| transcription, since Alon clearly refers to "the privates"
| (plural).
| davidw wrote:
| How expensive it is to build things in the US is a big problem.
| Ezra Klein also did a piece about this a while back
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/05/opinion/economy-construct...
|
| It's an "interesting" issue because it does seem to defy simple
| explanations.
| balder1991 wrote:
| Thanks, that was a good read.
| samatman wrote:
| > _The first element, that's the one that used to be present but
| isn't anymore, is a large public sector, because you need a large
| enough bureaucracy that can supervise all the contractors._
|
| If a large public sector is a prerequisite for lower-cost
| transit, then the cost of that large public sector needs to be
| included in calculating the cost of transit. I suspect that would
| change the analysis quite a bit.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| This topic is so politicized that the transit lovers don't feel
| free publicly acknowledging all of the costs. For instance, one
| manager of the local bus company said that while new city buses
| cost $800k+++, they're a good deal when spread out over 12 year
| and all of the passengers. So I asked him to include the cost
| of the driver-- and the driver's benefits-- and that totally
| changed the equation. It can reach $1m/year to fully staff a
| bus over a year. Suddenly, the hardware isn't the biggest
| expense over the lifespan of the bus.
| ljf wrote:
| Care to break down that $1m per bus for staffing? I am in the
| UK so am not across driver, service engineer, cleaner etc.
| salaries in America.
|
| $80k per year for for the bus
|
| $50k per driver (https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/us-bus-
| driver-salary-SR...) let's say the bus needs 4 to cover the
| route 14 hours a day, inc weekends and driver holidays - so
| $200k
|
| $100k engineer (guessing not needed full time for just one
| bus?)
|
| $50k cleaner (guessing not needed full time for just one
| bus?)
|
| Then $570k for fuel and management costs? I've seen figures
| around $150k per year for fuel.
|
| Some (no doubt out of date) figures:
| https://www.liveabout.com/bus-cost-to-purchase-and-
| operate-2...
|
| Just interested where the costs are, I can only assume that
| the company is making more than $1m a year on the route to
| take on that expense?
| comte7092 wrote:
| Note my comment below, parents quotes expenses aren't
| grounded in actual audited finances.
|
| I'd just note that in the US at least, bus services
| generally operate at a loss and run many routes due to
| political reasons rather than efficiency/profitability.
| chgs wrote:
| Does the interstate system run as a profit?
| comte7092 wrote:
| Well, obviously not.
|
| I wasn't intending to make a statement on whether or not
| public transit should be independently profitable, just
| providing context.
|
| I didn't even touch on ridiculous regulations like "buy
| America" (aka all buses have to be manufactured in the
| US) that drive up the cost of transit in a way that
| private drivers would never accept.
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| Precisely the right question to ask! Profit vs. loss has
| no relevance when one is providing a public service. The
| relevant question is cost: capital investment / creation
| cost & operating cost.
| comte7092 wrote:
| > Profit vs. loss has no relevance when one is providing
| a public service.
|
| I beg to differ. While profit shouldn't be the only
| indicator under consideration, when you are operating a
| state owned enterprise under a fee for service model,
| profit is certainly a valid metric to consider.
| chgs wrote:
| Cost and benefit. You could spend PS10b a year providing
| a 12tph high speed train from Wales AK to Prudhoe Bay,
| but there wouldn't be a reasonable benefit from it.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Your estimates are fine, but you're only talking about the
| basic salary which in the US is only part of the equation.
| You've got to include benefits including health insurance
| which is easily $10-20k/year in the US for a family. Add in
| pension costs and it's a good rule of thumb to double the
| quoted basic salary. If you do this, the $350k of your
| estimate becomes $700k. Add in more for two to three layers
| of management, and you're easily over $1m.
| tschwimmer wrote:
| 50k per driver per year sounds low. This page [0] suggests
| the low end is 60k and that's just what the driver makes,
| not the full loaded cost of the employee with benefits.
| I've seen the estimate for a loaded cost to be 25-40% more
| than the salary. So it ends up being more like 75k per
| driver.
|
| [0]https://careers.sf.gov/role/?id=3743990001605626
| [1]https://www.sba.gov/blog/how-much-does-employee-cost-
| you#:~:....
| comte7092 wrote:
| Many transit agencies openly publish this information, for
| example, here is Dallas:
|
| https://www.dart.org/about/about-dart/key-performance-
| indica...
|
| >one manager of the local bus company
|
| No offense to said manager, but I'm guessing they aren't
| doing the accounting, so it's not like they are the best
| source.
|
| Edit: a better source would be the national transit database
| [0], which tracks the fully audited costs of every transit
| agency in the US. A very cursory analysis of this file [1],
| dividing total costs by VOMS (aka vehicles used to provide
| peak service, not even the size of the whole vehicle fleet)
| for directly operated bus service (mode=MB, TOS=DO). Gives a
| cost of roughly $250,000 per year on average across the US.
| This is fully loaded, including operations, vehicle and
| facility maintenance, general admin, etc. basically the $1
| million per year is little more than a rumor.
|
| [0] https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/data-product/2022-annual-
| dat...
|
| [1] https://data.transportation.gov/api/views/dkxx-
| zjd6/rows.csv...
| nix0n wrote:
| > acknowledging all of the costs
|
| Road maintenance is the biggest expense of most local
| governments in the USA.
|
| Buses obviously take a toll on roads, but the shift to large
| SUVs is making things worse for the current system of private
| car ownership.
| renhanxue wrote:
| Probably less than you'd think. Levy is delivering a punchy
| oneliner here; what the Transit Costs Project research
| indicates is that what's often missing in countries with high
| construction costs isn't so much bureaucrats as it is in-house
| engineering and technical program management resources. A lot
| of the design and program management work they do needs to be
| done by _someone_ , but in countries with high construction
| costs this work mostly tends to be done either by consultants
| or by the contractors themselves, and that leads to misaligned
| incentives.
|
| They do get into these things a little bit later in the
| interview, but the surprisingly simple conclusion is that when
| an organization is buying something, the people working out the
| deal _need to understand what it is they 're buying_, or the
| organization gets ripped off. It sounds simple to the point of
| being silly when I put it like that, but it's actually true.
| And this should feel familiar to a lot of people in tech; how
| many times have you had to use or implement some very stupid
| system that got purchased because of buzzwords or because the
| people deciding what to use aren't the people using the system?
| (Education is particularly plagued by these problems.) What the
| Transit Costs Project finds is that this is a thing in public
| works as well: if your civil service has insufficient in-house
| technical expertise in its field, or if it doesn't trust its
| own technical expertise, that tends to make costs go up. It's
| far from the only contributing factor, but it's an important
| one.
|
| When cost overruns for these types of projects can routinely be
| measured in billions of dollars, I think it's not that hard to
| justify hiring a few dozen civil engineers to keep things under
| control. The "big" civil service Levy talks about doesn't
| necessarily need to be big in terms of team size, but it needs
| to have _weight_.
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| Thrn substract all the costs for police forces you no longer
| need. Bicycles and pedestriants usually don't have heavy
| accidents. Cars are dangerous.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| There's an Oxford professor, Bent Flyvbjerg (bonus points for
| knowing how to pronounce this) who's devoted his career to
| analyzing very large projects and why they're so terrible. The
| problems are not limited to transit, and they extend to big
| software projects and big construction as well. (Spoiler: they're
| inherent in the organization of bigness.)
|
| https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/optimism-hubris-and-stra...
|
| Willie Brown (former mayor of SF and state legislative leader),
| when he was safely out of office, said the quiet part out loud:
| the initial estimates are just to sell the project. No one on the
| inside takes them seriously.
| skadamat wrote:
| Surprised nobody in this thread mentioned "How Big Things Get
| Done". Fantastic read that talks about the challenges of big
| projects when they don't bring on the right people with existing
| expertise:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/How-Big-Things-Get-Done/dp/0593239512
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Final destination the Netherlands
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