Why we can't have nice things

[ChargerCarl]

My point isn't that unions are the problem, but that the that the government allows them to get away with largesse. Government contractors will always try to get away with the best deal they can for themselves. It's up to the government to not allow themselves to be ripped off.

[antinimby]

^ Fine, then the government is the problem.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by Crawford

The Dubai Metro, for various reasons, offers absolutely no guidance for building metro systems in a typical western first world country. And I have been to Dubai.

What brings you to that conclusion?

[mhays]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

I don't know what people's assumptions are, but I do know that union labor in the region makes a killing compared to the rest of the country. The union guys I supervise make between $150,000 and $250,000 working on a big project like this and that's in New Jersey. I can only imagine New York City would be a fair bit higher. Yes, that obviously includes overtime, but that's where the unions make money to begin with. They slack off all week in order to make the big bucks on the weekend. If you told union workers they could only work 40 hours a week nothing would get done.

In the Seattle area, a lot of construction projects (my firm's included) don't do as much overtime. Depending on the trade the wage might be $40/hour. Overtime is a schedule acceleration method when needed, and sometimes a response to the lack of available people.

[BrownTown]

Originally Posted by mhays

In the Seattle area, a lot of construction projects (my firm's included) don't do as much overtime. Depending on the trade the wage might be $40/hour. Overtime is a schedule acceleration method when needed, and sometimes a response to the lack of available people.

That's much more intelligent. However it might be interesting to note that Seattle is actually spending significantly more per rider for their new light rail lines than the Second Avenue Subway is. Just goes to show you that with the density of NYC even these terribly expensive projects don't look relatively as bad as projects outside of New York where the costs may be much less but so is the density.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

What brings you to that conclusion?

Because Dubai operates under a radically different framework than a first world western democracy. It's an absolute monarchy that uses imported slave labor to achieve incredibly low costs for infrastructure projects.

I'm more interested in hearing about Western Europe, Canada, Australia and perhaps Japan. Anywhere else is going to be pretty useless in terms of understanding how the U.S. can lower infrastructure costs under a first world democratic framework.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

That's much more intelligent. However it might be interesting to note that Seattle is actually spending significantly more per rider for their new light rail lines than the Second Avenue Subway is. Just goes to show you that with the density of NYC even these terribly expensive projects don't look relatively as bad as projects outside of New York where the costs may be much less but so is the density.

This is a good point. While the Second Avenue Subway is ridiculously, obscenely expensive, it will move hundreds of thousands of riders. It's undoutedly a much better "deal" for taxpayers than the random light rail lines springing up in every other U.S. city.

And the MTA now claims it can build the rest of the SAS at a cheaper per-mile cost, using a design-build model (where single firm designs/constructs the project). They claim lessons have been learned, and will build faster and cheaper going forward. We'll see. Not sure I would bet on cheaper costs (faster, I could see, though).

http://www.wsj.com/articles/mta-reth...way-1483035309

[mhays]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

That's much more intelligent. However it might be interesting to note that Seattle is actually spending significantly more per rider for their new light rail lines than the Second Avenue Subway is. Just goes to show you that with the density of NYC even these terribly expensive projects don't look relatively as bad as projects outside of New York where the costs may be much less but so is the density.

Seattle is spending a ton, but the per-rider figures will get way better as time passes, as has already been happening. Once you build the line, adding more trains is easy and cheap. Each new station makes each existing station more useful. And the system will help guide future population and job growth.

[mrsmartman]

UES deserves better transit infrastructure. It's where most of the taxes are from anyway.

Same for ESA.

[jmecklenborg]

This article misses all sorts of points. It should be pretty obvious to anyone who observed the Second Ave. subway construction that much of the expense can be laid on the few access points to the construction and the handful of staging areas. That meant most materials had to be stored off-site and brought in exactly when they were needed. No doubt that weeks worth of construction were wasted waiting around for a critical items to physically make it onto the island. Meanwhile a bunch of dudes were sitting around making high-dollar union wages with nothing to do while waiting for an item stuck in a traffic jam on the cross-bronx expressway.

Also if you look on Google Earth you can still see the images of staging areas on Second Ave. stretching up to 102nd street, a quarter mile north of the line's new terminus. Construction stretched far north of 96th with non-revenue track used for storing trains that used to be stored in the now-active Central Park tunnel. There is no place in the world where more expensive non-revenue track could be constructed than Manhattan. The convoluted character of the NYC system means non-revenue track such as storage yards and junctions doesn't follow the logic that would be created in an all-new system.

[Leo the Dog]

California's bullet train is hurtling toward a multibillion-dollar overrun, a confidential federal report warns
LA Times