Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
Also, the costs seem exorbitant... $34 million for construction? Why can we build huge luxury homes in the suburbs for $1 million, but a new station with far less square footage and cheaper finishes costs 34 times that?
|
I wish/think that the CTA could do it for less money, too, but a $1,000,000 home is built with the expectation of at most a dozen people using it regularly with a few dozen on a really busy night.
A transit station has to be built to accommodate a thousand times that many people using it every day, so while the finish of the materials may be lesser, the bones of them are much, much higher-end. A station also has to be built to withstand the elements of nature, while a million-dollar home can put one roof over everything so the majority of things in a million-dollar home don't have to be able to stand being exposed to nature.
The price of both steel and concrete have skyrocketed in the past 10 years primarily due to the global building boom spiking demand. China's part of that, but the rest of the world is building a lot, too.
Then there's the simple fact of competition. Only a few companies even bother to bid on CTA projects, whereas if you're building a house you have probably hundreds of general contractors to select from and they have thousands of tradespeople to bid out to. While escalating costs for steel, concrete and wood hit homebuilders and public works projects more or less proportionally, the lack of competition in public works bidding makes it harder to control costs because there just aren't a lot of bidders willing to compete on price.
At least that's my take. I'm sure there are other factors, but in my opinion those are the most significant ones.