There's another factor that's not mentioned here: the US has some bonkers expensive station design.
Take the newish Hudson Yards station. Its platform is about twice as wide as the original subway station platforms, and it's far longer than it needs to be too. On top of that, it has a full-length underground mezzanine above the platform, which is unnecessary. Overall, the effect when I first used it was "why is this so unnecessarily massive?"
Oversized stations are even more problematic when you consider that the MTA wants to build all of these by mining rather than using cut-and-cover, because cut-and-cover has too much disruption to surface tenants. And mining is far more expensive than cut-and-cover, so the extra volume you need to dig out for excessive station sizes hits your purse even faster. For as high as the actual tunneling costs are, it's the station costs that truly make the subway extensions stratospherically expensive.
Hi there! I started and ran Seattle Subway - I’m a bit of a transit nerd, and would love to chat about this.
The MTA is planning on a 100 year horizon. It is ALWAYS cheaper to build capacity now than to retrofit later, even inflation adjusted. If you’d like to challenge their methodology, first go read the planning report!
This sounds fairly similar to "Why Many Cities Have No Money" [0]. In short, building massive infrastructure for the future is worth very little when the promised future never comes and you're stuck paying the maintenance cost.
That article is from Strong Towns. Strong Towns' entire premise is that growing outward is inefficient. They would make the same argument I am about planning for the future in a place like Hudson Yards, where millions of square feet are under construction.
It's already there. Hudson Yards is the largest development currently in progress in NYC (maybe the US), and phase 2 will build another million-ish square feet next to it. That is the closest subway station to all of it.
Yes, NYC is planning for at least two meters of sea level rise. Much of the subway works going on now are to handle more frequent and larger storm surges.
You can actually see how it will look like by watching The Expanse - it takes place in ~2350 and there is a huge wall all around Manhattan including in front of the still standing original UN building, as most terrestrial glaciers are long gone.
But this is actually a much less pressing issue than the couple gigaton nukes the Mars Congressional Republic has targeted on Earth, the ever more emancipated belters and some very shady deals by secretive yet very dangerous corporations.
But this is simply not true. Maintenance costs are rarely significant part of city budgets, they are almost always below 10-15%. I don't want to say that Strongtowns is lying, because that presumes intent, but what they claim simply has little bearing with reality.
Their premise is that governments build infrastructure during their growth phase, but don't budget for maintaining or replacing it at the end of its lifecycle, 30-50 years later when their growth phase is past.
" It is ALWAYS cheaper to build capacity now than to retrofit later" As Washington, DC has come to learn with their subway. Decided to cut the third track to save cost and now any minor maintenance causes all kinds of issues and has made the system basically unsustainable without continual bailouts from the taxpayers.
I don't mind building extra capacity. I do mind politicians sticking their nose where it doesn't belong.
I can't believe more people are not angry about the World Trade Center Path station. They managed to spend twice the original budget at four billion dollars and all this time there were signal problems between Newark and Harrison because Path didn't have money to fix it.
How do we do huge infrastructure projects when we can't trust the bureaucrats and the politians who are supposed to oversee these things?
Part of the problem here is misaligned incentives.
In the aftermath of 9/11, a lot of federal money was made available for the reconstruction of all the stuff that was destroyed. However, it was only usable for things in the Ground Zero area. So to maximize the utility of all this money, the Port Authority created an insane train station dressed up to the nines to soak up $4B of free federal cash. They also lumped a bunch of other unrelated things into the station that raised the sticker price but would still be covered by the feds.
For what it's worth, this station was also at one point supposed to serve a LIRR extension from Atlantic Terminal to WTC, but kind of died after Pataki could not convince the feds that this was a reconstruction project and he left office. The project was never downsized in scope to match the new reality.
What 100 year horizon? Manhattan has a 30% smaller lower population today than it did in 1920. Even pre-Covid, Manhattan was one of the slowest growing major counties in America.
Population is not very relevant metric here. What matters is not so much how many people actually live in Manhattan, but rather how many people are commuting into it every day. In fact, commuters double the island population every day, and exceed the number of residents in 1920 by 50%.
What happened with Manhattan was that tenements were replaced with office buildings, and these use more, not less commuting.
Manhattan commuters peaked in 1946. The train system was able handle that level of demand without falling apart. All of the messaging from MTA about increasing ridership causing delays is a disingenuous lie.
Considering the fact that much of the same infrastructure they used in 1946 is still in use today (with 74 more years of wear and tear) its not surprising that its falling apart. This would be true even if the MTA wasn't staffed by dishonest, incompetent political cronies. When you regularly do things like spend $600 million dollars on trains that don't work, its not hard to see how you end up billions in debt very quickly.
Absolutely. Mezzanines are critical in flow management during peak. You know how if you go to a Disney ride, most of the line is inside the structure? Same concept. Get people out of the rain/snow/heat and normalize flow.
But a mezzanine is sort of silly considering no one lines up for an hour for a train like they do on a disneyland ride. All the stations in LA have these massive mezzanines too and they are just dead space. They are absolutely empty during rush hour aside from people charging through them to get to the actual platform, because it might take you several minutes to go from above ground, down the escalators, through the mezzanine, down a second set of escalators, and to the platform, at which point the train might be gone and you will sit there twiddling your thumbs for another 10 minutes, clogging up the platform for the next train since you should have made that first one. It's a huge problem at stations like 7th street in downtown LA, where the light rail platform is below a mezzanine but above the heavy rail platform, which bottlenecks transfers due to a lack of thought put into how many stairs and escalators should be made. Probably 1/5 days a week commuting in the before times would I actually make that transfer, the other times you are jammed up by people bottlenecked by the limited stairs and escalators and you watch the train go away without you.
Take out the elaborate mezzanine and make it a simple single level multitrack platform directly under the surface, and you might make the first train and be out of the station in less time, lowering the needed capacity of the station structure in the first place.
London Bridge Station has recently been rebuilt to have a mezzanine style area. It's the 4th busiest in the UK with 61 million entries and exits.
St Pancras and Kings Cross were similarly rebuilt.
It is a bit complex to describe London Bridge to non-Londoners, but simply put, it was 15 or so platforms that were about 20ft wide and 12 carriages long, with nowhere to queue and trains every few minutes, on every platform (and it's a terminus, not a through-station).
A mezzanine in a central city for passengers to wait is an absolute necessity. Doubly so if the station is a terminus, which all of the major stations in London are (I'm not counting Blackfriars or St Pancras).
For the non-English readers, there is only one North-South through railway line in London (Thameslink), and only one East-West (-ish) (Crossrail) and that hasn't opened. All mainline stations in London terminate, and then you have to use the tube to connect to another.
That’s a bit different though, as at London Bridge one is generally waiting for timetabled rail services whereas the New York City subway is turn up and go. A mezzanine is rather pointless if the same service is showing up every 2-5 minutes.
London Bridge tube station had to be rebuilt as well (not too add a mezannine per se but just to have enough space to hold the passengers waiting for trains), in the late 90s to house Jubilee Line but also to expand the Northern Line platforms. Even this 20 years later looks too small. Both these lines operate every 2 minutes (Jubilee slightly more than every 2 mins in peak).
To add to what the other commenter said - Bank station (the busiest on the London tube network) is getting rebuilt too, to add a "mezzanine" type area for the Northern line. Through-trains, all to the same destinations, are every 2 minutes and the platform is frequently closed due to overcrowding. To the point, in fact, where there's often a one-way system enforced in the station, or people are kept at street level.
Ultimately it's usage levels and capacity. UK stations don't have the capacity for the passengers, and often the capacity on the trains either.
I know this station and don't believe the mezzanine is the problem. There are two trains running perpendicularly. The "mezzanine" is the first floor with the blue line platform. Yes, additional stairs/elevators could help, as well as timing changes.
It's simply one of the busiest stations due to its location.
The huge mezzanine in the other stations such as at Pershing is mostly wasted space however.
In LA, you're going to be happy about those mezzanines once Measure R construction fills in your network. In infrastructure projects, what you see today is a small part of the plan.
Traveled a lot in the developing parts of asia and their subway stations even when massive are very plain and utilitarian. They deal with much bigger crowds than anything we could reasonably face in the west.
Comparing US infrastructure to infrastructure in the developing world requires a pile of caveats.
The biggest reason for the difference you’re pointing out is safety. A mezzanine creates safety in two directions. First, as a gathering area with likely positive pressure ventilation in case of a train fire. Second, a refuge for incidents on the surface.
The developing world generally isn’t planning for either in their infrastructure.
Japan, S Korea, China, Hong Kong, and the rest of Asia operate world class rail systems. The idea that they don't care about safety is ignorant and racist.
What are the costs involved in "retrofitting via cut-and-cover" as opposed to "building more capacity by mining" that makes the second option more palatable for the 100-year timeline?
"... Oversized stations are even more problematic when you consider that the MTA wants to build all of these by mining rather than using cut-and-cover, because cut-and-cover has too much disruption to surface tenants. And mining is far more expensive than cut-and-cover..."
Your response:
"... It is ALWAYS cheaper to build capacity now than to retrofit later, even inflation adjusted. ..."
The implication of your response is that on a 100-year timeline, the way that the modern stations are apparently being built (by mining) is cheaper than building them by the way the parent commenter says (cut-and-cover).
I was just curious why it's "always" cheaper. Is "mine and build big" the cheaper method only when there's a ton of density on top like Hudson Yards, or is it also the case in places with less surface density?
I think that you’re probably always better off building bigger if you expect growth in the next 100 years. How big you should build is just a matter of how much current and future traffic you expect to have.
Apologies - I may have skipped over something when reading. I was responding to the implication that a smaller station now is an appropriate cost savings.
I think what they're looking at is over-sizing rather than right-sizing. Think of it as cost=size*method. Future-proofing increases the size, not the method.
Capacity for what? The line could theoretically be extended by a tunnel to Secaucus but even then only a fraction of the ridership will take that branch and get off at the first stop. The West side is already serviced by two lines so where else can the 7 go?
Bookmarking this thread. I’m interested in getting involved in transit advocacy in NYC. I think Seattle Subway might be a good place for me to start my homework
I knew we had light rail in a few places, one monorail and lots of buses, but after living here for 1.5 years now, this is the first I've heard of Seattle Subway. I don't think I've ever heard anyone make reference to it in conversation.
The Seattle has 79% more area than San Francisco and San Francisco has 17% more people. How does it make economic sense to have a Subway when so much of the city is zoned for detached single family homes and there is acknowledged seismic and flooding risk?
In 2020, wouldn't it be far more future proof and likely cheaper to plan on smart streets with self-driving pods like Dubai is doing with its Next platform? The moment autonomous on-demand P2P system is viable, it's going to turn subways in less densely populated cities into albatrosses.
You have $50 billion in mostly grade separated transit coming, largely due to the work of a lot of volunteers from 2011-2012 setting Sound transit up for the ST3 vote in 2016.
What Sound Transit calls "light rail" is as high capacity as some subway systems. I named the nonprofit that led a lot of this organizing Seattle Subway because it got attention when we needed it, and it's true anyway. :)
I think your other questions are interesting, but it seems like you have an opinion and you're looking for a way to defend it. If you're actually curious about why we're building a subway network and aren't just looking for a way to disagree, let me know!
I'm not particularly married to an idea here but it is 2020 and I remember exactly what happened with the Coliseum–Oakland International Airport line. It was planned and designed pre-ridesharing and instead of making $2 million in the first two years, it cost $860 million to operate.
Now if technological progress in transportation were to completely stall, I'd agree that it likely would make sense, but the last thing I want as a taxpayer is a very expensive project that is eventually outcompeted by advances in ridesharing in the time it takes to build out the network. Given that there is no lack of public transportation boondoggles that have left taxpayers holding the bag, it's not unreasonable to ask questions and exhibit some skepticism, especially when the population density is below 8000 people per square mile.
In places like NYC, I would be in complete agreement with you as the population density would dictates that only a subway would ever make sense because you simply don't have the road system relative to population density for a ridesharing solution to ever make sense.
Lastly, I commented in good faith, but this condescension, "but it seems like you have an opinion and you're looking for a way to defend it", doesn't exactly help you garner support for what you're trying to achieve. That's also the kind of accusation that comes from someone accusing others of doing something they are guilty of. Perhaps it's you that has an opinion that you're looking for a way to defend?
Generally the people who bring up pod transit will argue you to death. If those systems ever exist (and they’ve been used as anti-transit hobby horses for almost 50 years now) they can’t scale to serve urban environments.
Engaging with them generally just creates visibility for people who can’t tell what’s bullshit.
I cited one very high profile example of ridesharing making a public transport project completely unviable within a few short years leaving taxpayers stuck with the bill and you call such skepticism bullshit even when there is clear evidence for voicing concern? If there is any bullshit here it's more likely to be the person who "hitched their online persona to being an expert with an opinion on the topic" than the person who was raising legitimate concerns supported by evidence.
You've just lost any chance at my support and gained someone who is now more extra dubious of this Seattle Subway project than I was previously all because I now believe it is you that isn't engaging in good faith. It's going to take someone knowledgeable and acting in extra good faith to undo the animosity you're directly responsible for creating.
Whenever Seattle Subway comes up in any discussions, I'll be sure to reference how Ben Schiendelman responded when someone raised legitimate concerns. Good job.
> and they’ve been used as anti-transit hobby horses for almost 50 years now
Because there is so much in common with 1970 vs 2020. Ridesharing only became a thing 10 short years ago. Waymo has been providing autonomous rides in Arizona for a few years now. Companies like Segway and LIT motors have pioneered the use of gyroscopes in transportation such that a completely enclosed motorcycle sized vehicle is nearly viable. The possibility of autonomous pods has never been more viable than is is now. It may have been a bullshit argument 20 to 50 years ago, but it's certainly not a bullshit concern in 2020. Sorry if the future is finally catching up with a career you're heavily invested in, but that's not an excuse to behave as you have here.
The problem with Seattle is that while it isn’t that high population of a city, the geographic chokepoints are rather extreme.
There is, quite frankly, not enough capacity north-south or across Lake Washington for people to be in vehicles at the low density of a comfortable car, which is what light rail is for. Already much of the commuting mode share in the Seattle area is people using buses to get downtown, in some cases driving to a park and ride lot to catch a bus there. Seattle has mostly exhausted the limits of this approach, so now there is a huge light rail construction project.
North/South can be pretty painful, but across Lake Washington isn't nearly as bad. I have a view of the entirety of the I-90 bridge which I see every day all day and it doesn't get nearly as bad as coming into Seattle via I-5 or Aurora.
Whether you go with roads or rail, you still have the problem of building across those geographic chokepoints. Either way, you've got the cost of building bridges/tunnels regardless of the mode of transportation.
The issue at hand is capacity. Free-flowing highway lanes move people at ~2000 people per hour per direction per lane, and the Seattle light rail has a capacity closer to ~30000 pphd. So light rail is 15x more space efficient than car travel; you might need to build a bridge, but you will generally need to build less bridge. Autonomous cars may improve road capacity but not 15x. More importantly, roads have a very noticeable capacity curve as they become congested and become less efficient; trains don't really get slower with crowding, they mostly just get more crowded inside.
And I don't know, I-90 is kind of a crapshoot (especially on weekdays) when it comes to congestion. Even worse, it's bad both ways, because you have both heavy inflows to jobs in Seattle and jobs at the various Eastside centers like Redmond and Bellevue. 520 is much better, but it's also tolled, which is also why I-90 is so much worse.
pphd was a new metric for me so I did some googling because I wanted to know more.
From that searching I came across the following article. Now this article has a clear bias (but so do the people advocating for rail), but bias doesn't mean that there aren't valid points being made even if exaggerated. Curious what your response is to their counter claims:
I can respond to some of the statistics used in this article.
> The problem is that Sound Transit officials are comparing 16,000 humans to 2,000 vehicles.
This is actually not that bad of a comparison; most Americans drive alone. The FHA, hardly some anti-car agency, estimates car occupancy at 1.54 persons a vehicle, and overally light-vehicle occupancy at 1.67 persons a vehicle. Unless American social mores are going to change significantly, I don't see why self driving cars would really change the fact that people like being in a car alone.
> Light rail is, by definition, light capacity transit. The theoretical 16,000 people per hour requires a “target max load” of 200 people per car on four-car light rail trains at three-minute headways for a full hour, a concept unheard of in the United States.
This is not unheard of at all. We have bigger light rail systems running smaller headways, to say nothing of very large traditional rail systems. New York City is running 600 foot trains every 2 minutes with an ultimate capacity of >60000 pphd.
Also, this article is a bit dated; we now know that Sound Transit is purchasing the Siemens S70. The identical Portland model carries 240 people per car. And while the current service plan calls for trains every four minutes in the busiest segments, the signaling system actually supports trains every 2 minutes so long as you have the vehicles. (This is not the lower limit for rail signaling systems; trains every 90s are run on many systems around the world.) Buying new trains is cheap compared to building more tracks or lanes.
> Sound Transit officials also claim that they will carry 561,000 to 695,000 unlinked daily trips by 2040 if ST3 passes. Let’s assume Sound Transit carries its highest projection of 695,000 daily trips with their estimate that most (91%) will be trips taken by existing transit riders. This means that only 62,550 will be trips taken by new transit riders.
This assumes the only utility of a transit project is new trips or new riders. This isn't true; there is also value in speeding up existing commutes. The bus gets caught up in the same highway traffic and has very high labor costs per trip; moving bus passengers to a light rail train free from traffic will increase reliability and reduce commute times. And every person on a light rail train is a person not taking up space on a road. Which isn't to say that it relieves congestion, but rather it frees up space and provides an alternative to congested roads.
It's also worth noting that Sound Transit's recent record shows that it is most likely underestimating ridership: in 2016, the brand new University Link extension had already doubled initial estimates of its first year ridership, and the line well exceeded its 2020 ridership goals in 2018. https://www.historylink.org/File/20720
> This means that under ST3, each new transit rider will cost over $1 million dollars.
It's worth noting that this figure is not qualified by how much road projects cost per road user, because this is not meant to be a comparative talking point. Roading projects are just as expensive, if not more due to higher land requirements; yet they are not scrutinized to the same degree.
If you were to even try and match half of the capacity in a road expansion, it would be prohibitively expensive. The SR 99 tunnel we just built cost $3.2B for two lanes in each direction with no exits. This is double the cost of the aforementioned University Link, which is nearly a mile longer than the road tunnel to boot. The reality of the situation is any additional capacity in the transport system is going to cost a lot of money now that the city is rapidly growing and densifying, and roads cost more because they require more land.
Thanks for the response. Lots of really good points.
In a vacuum, I'm actually totally fine with either option (public transportation or cars) and not particularly married to see either one built or against either one being built and both have their utility. Personally, I think both need to be built. My main concern is really about who is going to pay for it.
Such projects really disproportionately benefits those that will be commuting into and out of Seattle and those people in Seattle that live in parts of the city where they don't have parking and are likely to live near a station.
I'm a huge proponent of people paying for those services they use and for services to be financially self sustaining.
People who take the train should fund the train. People who drive cars should fund the roads and the DMV.
Furthermore, the same argument for greater throughput of a system should also support the argument that such a system should generate greater revenue and be naturally self sustaining. But for this to be true, all calculations shouldn't be based on theoretical limits but actual predictions of how many more people will be moved per hour per direction and that needs to be compared to the revenues and the costs to figure out if the current design of the system is sustainable (a lesser more modest design might be warranted once faced with the reality of how many riders are actually expected).
> It's worth noting that this figure is not qualified by how much road projects cost per road user, because this is not meant to be a comparative talking point. Roading projects are just as expensive, if not more due to higher land requirements; yet they are not scrutinized to the same degree.
They should get the same scrutiny. One proposed system getting this scrutiny isn't an argument that neither should get the same scrutiny.
> The SR 99 tunnel we just built cost $3.2B for two lanes in each direction with no exits.
And it has tolls, but the tolls should probably be 3x higher than they currently are. Every system, roads or rail, should pay for itself. Any system that isn't priced appropriately is distorting the market and making it harder to figure out the true cost and plan effectively.
One thing I would love to see adopted in the US is a public transportation tolling system like they have in Japan where you pay for distance traveled and the cost of your commute in general.
In the interest of stating my biases, personally, I purchased a home in a part of Seattle that is unlikely to ever see much if any benefit from a subway system. I'm familiar with the geotechnical concerns where I live and the only public transportation which will ever serve my home and my neighborhood is likely to be a bus (this is not too dissimilar to the reason why Beacon Hill will also not benefit). I am, however, in favor of buses and would also like to see investment long term in smart streets that provide a foundation of an autonomous vehicle system.
Lastly, thanks for engaging in good faith discussion unlike other commenters here.
> They should get the same scrutiny. One proposed system getting this scrutiny isn't an argument that neither should get the same scrutiny.
It is a statement about the bias of the linked piece though, which is quite clearly right-wing.
> One thing I would love to see adopted in the US is a public transportation tolling system like they have in Japan where you pay for distance traveled and the cost of your commute in general.
Roads also work like this in Japan. But I wouldn't call the Japanese system much better; Japan allows companies to subsidize 1000USD per month for each employee, in a manner similar to how American employers subsidize healthcare. This has the effect of making travel relatively pricey in general (because people with subsidy can afford to pay more), and also the effect of concentrating employment in major urban areas, because if you live in a small city with low transportation costs you are essentially leaving most of that 1000USD off the table.
In the West we treat travel as a public good, but it's really only an American thing that we tilt so much funding in favor of just the car.
> the only public transportation which will ever serve my home and my neighborhood is likely to be a bus (this is not too dissimilar to the reason why Beacon Hill will also not benefit).
There's nothing wrong with buses. The major problem is that Seattle has relied too much on buses; pre-COVID, public transit funds were being unspent because the ability to allocate money to transit has exceeded the capability to actually spend it for such a purpose. They literally could not find enough drivers to run the service already being funded because of how tight the employment market was.
One major reason why light rail is being pushed so heavily is because it is both more labor efficient in general (a driver can either operate a 40/60 foot bus or a 380 foot train), and because the major speed and reliability increases of the rail system will allow less vehicles to serve the same frequency. The long-term plan (at least before COVID took a sledgehammer to public finances) was to redirect bus resources from long, infrequent commuter routes to short, frequent feeder routes to Link.
Also your comment about Beacon Hill is strange, because Beacon Hill does have a light rail stop, today. Even if you're not next to it, the 36 bus runs straight through Beacon Ave every ten minutes throughout the day.
I think they're describing it as the "Seattle Subway" for the benefit of non-local audiences.
The subway they're referring to is almost certainly the Link light rail, which runs through the bus tunnels, and has other extended stretches underground. It's probably the same light-rail that you're referring to.
Yes. And we called it Seattle Subway for the local audience, to get attention to the fact that we could significantly accelerate construction of the system with an additional ballot measure. Most of what Sound Transit calls "light rail" counts a a subway anyway.
And increasing the construction speed is the major thing we need to do here! Otherwise many of us working in seattle from outside will be retired or dead by the time it gets to us. I'm very eager to spend more of my own tax money to construct the system faster. Plus we should do it before Tim Eyman eventually takes away our ability to tax ourselves.
That’s what we did in 2016. Instead of plodding along with one line at a time, we funded an entire generation to get started at once.
In the US you can’t really make each line’s development faster, but you can start earlier. We cut at least a decade off Ballard, West Seattle, Everett, and Tacoma extensions.
You should see the plans for the BART station in San Jose. There will be pointless mezzanine, of course. The excavation will be the size of an airport. It's completely ridiculous.
There are S-Bahn stations in Switzerland with 10 times the daily riders of BART that are nothing more than a signpost and a place to stand. The American obsession with gargantuan stations serving a couple thousand daily riders costs a lot of money.
> There are S-Bahn stations in Switzerland with 10 times the daily riders of BART that are nothing more than a signpost and a place to stand.
Do you mean a specific BART station? The average total BART daily ridership (400k weekday, 100k weekend) is roughly comparable to the total daily Zürich S-Bahn network ridership (400k-450k in one figure I found).
I'm not sure that Zürich has the most popular network in the country but I would assume it's up there. Bigger stations here are definitely smaller than that SJ monstrosity, and I really like how efficiently they're laid out, but which popular stations are you thinking of that are just a signpost and a place to stand? Even the most popular space-constrained ones in the city (Hardbrücke, Stadelhofen) are way more than that, and the only I can think of in the city that are basically just a signpost are those with relatively infrequent service (Seebach, Friesenberg, etc.).
In any case, I think Caltrain feels a lot more like the S-Bahn equivalent, and most of the stations aren't much bigger either. This seems to hold for several other commuter train services in the US, such as NJ Transit.
I was admittedly thinking of a place like Friesenberg, but also stations along the Sihltal like Manegg. There's literally nothing to Manegg beyond a sidewalk[1]. Compare and contrast the monstrosity of the Warm Springs BART[2], which is one of the least-used stations.
Switzerland benefits from having POP ticketing, whereas US planners insist on faregates. The only reason the US builds mezzanines is to manage the faregate queues.
Interestingly, Caltrain uses POP, and indeed it has some stations that amount to a sidewalk next to the train tracks. So this isn't quite a "US planners" issue; Caltrain and BART serve different halves of the Bay Area.
Caltrain manages to be much more dysfunctional than BART, sadly.
The obsession is not just with stations;everything is bigger over there. My first visit to the US, I was traveling from Japan. The difference in size of things in the two countries is uncanny. From people to cars to food;my impression was Americans like it bigger.
People living in Japan are used proper train boarding and exiting - they stand on the correct entry markers and the train doors will be on these markers once it stops. In the same manner no one blocks the exit markers and people stand in the queue behind the train door ready to disembark quickly.
Only this makes the 90 second Shinkansen stops possible as well as the 3 minute cadence between trains we saw in Hiroshima station possible. Not only is the platform used very efficiently, there is even a small Soba restaurant in the middle of the platform! :)
In comparison here in Europe (CZ) the trains are usually late and you migh only lern the platform couple minutes before the train arrives - and it might even change at the last minute! There are no door markers and trains stop preatty much at random somewhere at the platform. Most traincars still have stairs and people are not used to proper queueing, so they form a fan around every door that blocks people from quickly getting eiter in or out.
The trains are also slow (160 km/h max on parts of track and on a good day) and mostly not EMUs, so you have platform space used up by the locomotive. Oh well.
Please don't generalise all of Europe based on circumstances in a single country.
In the three European countries I'm most familiar with, at least some types of train stop in a consistent position, with platform markings and queuing.
Isn't that because of the obvious - Americans generally are bigger than Japanese people and America is bigger than Japan? I'm not sure it's a preference as much as an adjustment.
I suppose I'm destined to wander around my small(er than most other places in the world) Japanese flat, with fittings made for someone much shorter than I am even though I'm average height in my own country, and ponder on the existence of downvotes for a fairly innocuous musing.
Perhaps I should leave comments like "Japanese people just like things smaller because when I was there everything was so small" and not notice that they have a lack of space and are on average, smaller, hence the need for space saving measures and smaller fittings, or is that just one more, in my opinion, fairly innocuous musing that must not be stated… maybe it's just me? Maybe.[1][2]
No offense, but this sounds like the reaction of someone who doesn't actually use the subway to get around. The older stations in NYC are cramped and _dangerous_ because they're too small to handle the foot traffic heading through on a good day without delays. The new 2nd avenue subway stations are similarly large, and I can personally attest that this scale, which seems frivolous to you, makes life tangibly better for the commuters who rely on this infrastructure every day.
It really goes either way. The IND stations are great with their trademark full-length mezzanines. Sometimes, the mezzanine wasn't needed, though; a lot of them are just flat-out abandoned on the G.
My takeaway from this is that careful planning and analysis is necessary to decide what sort of station design is required. There is no one-size-fits-all answer, as many replies suggest there is, so it's not obvious to me that the MTA screwed this up.
Hudson Yards is Manhattan's newest office submarket and probably best-in-class modern office space in town. There were estimates that Hudson Yards would become the largest station by entries and exits. (MTA's station usage stats do not count transfers within a station's paid area.)
You have to include transfer density to account for platform load factors, and Times Square's situation of having 5 of the 7 Midtown Manhattan lines transferring there, all of them having both express and local platforms, on top of the massive local draws for boarding, and the location of the Port Authority's bus terminal virtually guarantees that it's going to the busiest station complex in perpetuity.
By contrast, the Hudson Yards station is a terminus station of a single line. That means traffic is largely going to be directly from the single platform entrance (there's only one bank of escalators to the surface) to the waiting train, or vice versa. Even if it's potentially going to be busy, there is very little need for platform loitering, and certainly not for the massive overbuild of platform and mezzanine that exists today.
The argument for Hudson Yards (I don't actually agree) is that while Times Square is certainly a very busy station, most of the movement that happens there is transferring. And Times Square has nearby stations that other people also use for exiting and entering; Hudson Yards is a long hike from the next closest subway station, and 34th St is not a particularly great walk, with all the Lincoln tunnel traffic and whatnot.
Hudson Yards is also the only station next to the Javits Center, so it has the massive traffic from large convention events like the Auto Show and NYCC.
Every fantasy subway map I've seen has extended the 7 into New Jersey. Extending the 7 down into Chelsea makes no sense, because you already have 4-track subway trunks on 8th and 7th, and the island is narrowing as you head downtown. If you need another Midtown N-S trunk, the logical choice is the 2nd Ave, as the east side is underserved (and that side of the island bulges out as you head downtown instead of disappearing). Even then, the return on investment for the southern portions of the 2nd Ave Subway is kind of shaky.
The Chelsea plan is mostly to link up 7+L, though preferably you'd bring the L up and through the Far West Side. The L's higher capacity and it could use a new, higher throughput terminal.
Linking the 7 and L is an even more ??? idea, because the 7 and L are different loading gauges, and the fact that both originate on the east side of the East River means anything that now becomes a 1-seat ride takes too long to be worth actually sitting in 1 seat for that long.
I think he's suggesting linking them for a transfer. Which doesn't actually make sense either, because the only new destination this opens up that saves a transfer is Hudson Yards.
Hudson Yards is the second or third largest office submarket in Manhattan, the one with the newest spec towers, and on top of that is bigger than most American downtowns are.
Long term the L should be extended north, at least to Columbus Circle if not beyond; the Far West Side lacks subway service, and currently the 7th Avenue Express (2/3) is also considered to be above capacity. Or it was in a pre-COVID world, anyways.
Yeah, I'm aware that ARC was cancelled. The fact that a trans-Hudson subway extension is not really viable anytime in the next few decades doesn't mean that the extension to Chelsea is an alternative worth building, though; it just means that the reality is going to be that Hudson Yards will be a terminus for quite some time.
They have to dig two new tunnels in the next 20 years. Just sweeten the deal and make it three. The new guy could make it happen sooner. The bigger deal is that MTA will have to implement zoned fares to keep from undercutting NJT. That is the unspoken feature that OMNY will be bringing to the city.
The other big deal is that the MTA is not fully funded by fares, and getting bi-state coordination on dedicated taxes is a fool's errand (see: WMATA in DC)
If New Jersey needs a subway tunnel across the Hudson, PATH would probably be a better place to start.
> You have to include transfer density to account for platform load factors, and Times Square's situation of having 5 of the 7 Midtown Manhattan lines transferring there, all of them having both express and local platforms, on top of the massive local draws for boarding, and the location of the Port Authority's bus terminal virtually guarantees that it's going to the busiest station complex in perpetuity.
Don't forget the shuttle to/from Grand Central Station. Times Square St has to be the most trafficked station.
> and certainly not for the massive overbuild of platform and mezzanine that exists today.
Better that than an oversized Jets Stadium where subpar football gets played 8 times a year.
I always assumed that Hudson Yards would serve as a terminus for future lines to new jersey. But I guess political will and federal funding is required for that.
A mezzanine level is expensive and only serves to delay people. It doesn't get more people into more trains. Only more frequent and longer trains can do that, and that is dependent on the length of the platform and how many trains can move through a given tunnel an hour, the mezzanine is extraneous. It makes people not want to take the train by introducing bottlenecks by making you go through another set of stairs or escalator. But I'm sure the expenses associated with the mezzanine lines a bunch of people's pockets, so I wouldn't expect sensible design to come into fold anytime soon in our contractor-graft based country.
In London (where I commute), without 'mezzanine levels' or their equivalent, there's nowhere to queue and everyone would squeeze onto the platform which is a safety issue and then the police and/or the railway staff would close the station. This happens frequently when we have problems with the track or trains.
London has terminus stations - the platform the train arrives on is where the train stops, and then starts on its return journey. Trains to your destination are therefore limited by signalling and traffic, typically a 10-15 minute turn around time. On average, in London during rush hour, you have a train to your home station every 20 minutes.
Perhaps in the US all major stations are through stations, but in the UK, especially London, we just don't have that, and mezzanines are at the very minimum, a safety requirement, because the platform your train leaves from, has other passengers waiting for other trains before your one.
Platforms are not large, and trains are very, very busy, and frankly, if you've only ever caught a train in the US you are in for a huge surprise commuting in the UK.
If the US ever adopted trains like the rest of the world has, the best time for building mezzanines, and huge stations is "yesterday".
Don't get me wrong, people do take the train in LA. The red line before the pandemic was packed full of people during my morning commute, transporting 130,000 people a day. Standing room only for the entire subway train. That being said, you'd never have people waiting on the mezzanines at these stations. The platform is already big enough to hold like 3-4 trains worth of people, and a train comes every 10 mins (every 5 mins where the line is staggered with another subway line downtown) and it is cleared out of people waiting when the train comes (sardines squeeze well).
To expand capacity beyond that would require reengineering the tunnels themselves. They go as fast as they can turn around and vent air as it is. You'd have to bore parallel tunnels to increase capacity, which would just mean adding more platforms and still wouldn't require a mezzanine.
130k/day is not that much, Stockholm's tunnelbana has 3 main lines: red, green and blue, in total they support 1.1 million passengers/day with the current expansion of the blue line planning to add another 170k/day.
This in a city of around 2 million inhabitants for the whole metropolitan area, which is also served by busses, trams, local trains, ferries and so on.
You're comparing regional rail terminal stations, which serve many lower-frequency lines, to subway platforms, which typically serve a single higher-frequency line. (2-10 minutes between trains.) That's the scenario where a mezzanine is less useful.
In Sydney, Australia's original underground rail system, the "City Circle", which began construction in the 1920s, they built "stub tunnels" at one of the stations, St James. St James station is actually built with two island platforms, to support being an interchange between two lines. However, only one of those lines was actually built. The other line, they covered it over to turn the two platforms into one big platform, and that line's tunnels go off some distance and then they abruptly end. The idea was, when the second line (Eastern Suburbs line) was later built, they could do it with minimal disruption to the operations of the station.
Great thinking ahead, except plans changed and when (decades later) they eventually decided to build the Eastern Suburbs line, they chose a completely different alignment. So they just had these stub tunnels sitting underground, disused. During World War II they were converted to being an air raid shelter. They've seen some other random uses over the years, such as being used to film TV shows, part of them is used as a maintenance train siding, etc. Now the government is seeking proposals for the private sector to redevelop them into something useful.
When the Eastern Suburbs line was finally built on a different alignment in the 1970s, they did something similar – it has two underground platforms at Central Station, but they actually built four underground platforms. Two of them active, the other two with stub tunnels not going anywhere. Once again, this was to support another planned railway line, the Southern Suburbs line, which has never built either. For many years, the never-used platforms were used as archival document storage for the government rail authority. Now, Sydney is building a new metro line. The Metro line is not going to use these platforms, it is using newly constructed underground platforms. But these never-used platforms are going to be converted into utility rooms for the Metro line.
Similarly, at Redfern station, there is a big pit in the ground which holds half-constructed platforms for the Southern Suburbs line. I doubt those platforms will ever be used for that purpose.
So anyway, planning ahead is a great idea, but often it just turns into a waste.
Station overcrowding can be fixed. Stuff that never gets built because it's too expensive can't. It's important to not let perfect be the enemy of the good, no more so than public infrastructure.
Yeah, usually by totally rebuilding the station. Easier said than done when you already have a skyscraper built over top of you. NYC is trying to revamp a lot of its current stations that see magnitudes of traffic more than they were designed to on a daily basis, and that's a massive undertaking.
The 7 is already projected to run at peak frequencies in the existing plan; signal upgrades help a bit but not a lot at a terminal station. The rest of the 7 isn't capable of running trains much more often.
the 7 train only runs at 24 trains per hour. Other systems, even ones in the US, run upwards of 30 trains per hour. For example, the Red Line in Chicago runs every two minutes during rush hour and that is capped due to the Belmont junction. It has the same terminal station layout at 95th street as Hudson Yards.
For 2.5 billion dollars, I bet they could have extended the system, not built some insane labyrinth 150 feet underground and improved signaling to run 30 trains per hour and maybe even built that 2nd station they had to cut due to cost.
The NYC Subway had a yearly ridership of over 2 billion in 1946, higher than it is today (pre-covid). One could say that we should be building a subway that can transport 5 billion riders per year and have six tracks on every line but that would be silly and there's no legitimate reason why that would be the case.
Re-evaluate the future you're building for if it's unreasonably expensive to build for it. Sometimes it's cheaper to destroy demand or otherwise not build for density you don't need. This is way different (massively over budget and/or behind schedule public projects) then dropping extra fiber in a trench because you're there already ("Dig Once").
For example, Strong Towns [1] seems to champion the whole "the suburbs are unsustainable" perspective, but never the "public works projects in HCOL metros are too expensive for the resulting density" thesis. Market forces will likely work it out in this case though (people leaving HCOL locations for lower density locations where per dollar quality of life is higher, with major cities having to do more with less, or do less with less [tax revenue] [2]).
Have you been at the current Penn Station, in NYC? That's how a 'build for now' station looks like. It is a total shitshow during rush hour, and especially during holidays.
Everyone in NYC hates it and we are currently building an extension at the old post office, as it is not fit for usage anymore.
The old one (the one that got demolished in the 60s) was miles ahead in both space and aesthetics. Also, almost nobody hates the Grand Central Station, even though it gets overran with tourists as it is a beautiful peace of work.
That's not why Penn Station is a shitshow. Penn Station basically has three main problems:
1. Amtrak insists on trying to do an airplane-like boarding situation for trains, rather than the traditional practice of telling people what track their train will be on several minutes in advance and letting them wait on the platform. This means you have boarding lines and expectant crowds in places that aren't designed to handle that kind of capacity.
2. Each of the services that call at Penn Station has its own segregated platforms, mezzanine, and ticketing areas, and the connectivity between these is poor and confusing. Although, this is probably driven in large part by...
3. Madison Square Garden was built on top of Penn Station, and a substantial portion of the above-ground infrastructure is dedicated to supporting that tenant rather than the transportation infrastructure.
Penn Station used to have a more normal major-station layout when it was still part of the Pennsylvania Railroad, but that was ruined by the building of Madison Square Garden on top of it.
Everything below ground level is original, save for the relatively newer Central and Western corridors.
Penn Station's major issue was that when it was designed and built, intercity traffic was a big deal and commuter traffic was not, and it was designed accordingly. Today the central platforms Amtrak uses are massively oversized and the commuter-rail only platforms to the side take 3-5 full minutes to clear a train.
The platforms by the tracks in Penn Station are narrow, dank, and poorly lit. I think that's why you see the boarding method there. Better platforms would make a huge difference.
I haven't been to the Hudson Yards stop, but many NY subway platforms are very cramped by modern transit standards (compared with even, say the DC metro). I'm sure they're not accessible and hard to make so, and some sections are so narrow as to be positively dangerous.
Building new platforms that were just "as wide as the original subway platforms" would be the bonkers thing.
Sure it's more expensive to build it big, but I bet its more expensive still (if not totally impossible) to build it small then _re_build it big a few decades later.
Sounds a little like American healthcare. Either super expensive but shiny care or either nothing or subpar care. No reasonable middle. I always wonder why all hospitals have to be super new with new devices.
We choose which hospital to go to (barring an emergency) but aren't able to know what the cost of services will be; most human nature in that case will prefer to go to the one that looks better, as a proxy for more likely to get the right outcome.
A recent executive order by the president will force hospitals to reveal their pricing, but I'm not sure if that applies to actual negotiated prices for various insurance plans, or only to the phoney prices that they use for negotiating and noone actually pays.
Either way, a small ray of hope that things will change for the better soon.
One thing I've always wondered about was SFMTA's giant underground stations that could fit six actual Muni trains on the platforms, or the giant Caltrain+BART station at Milbrae that could fit about 2.5 times as many trains as it actually ever does.
Muni's very long platforms at underground stations are largely a coincidence of history. The Muni stations on the Market Street Subway are simply the same length as the BART platforms because they were built at the same time in a single cut-and-cover operation. At 710' BART operates some of the longest transit trains in the world, but due to the construction process making the Muni platforms shorter probably wouldn't have netted significant savings. The underground stations between the Market Street Subway and the Twin Peaks Tunnel, like Castro, were built similarly to the Market Street Subway stations since the length would allow for double-platforming or possibly longer trains - although they are not quite as long (Castro incidentally has an unusual curved platform just because of the practicality of squeezing it in between the older Twin Peaks tunnel and Market St).
Like many surface lightrail systems, the total length of Muni trains is limited by the intersection spacing of the surface streets it operates on, among other factors - the train needs to be able to stop without blocking adjacent intersections.
Full double-platform operation of Muni trains on the Market Street Subway has been on and off over the years with changes in station operations and controls, I believe it is currently on at least at Embarcadero. There have been technical (related to the ATC) and procedural problems (people waiting at the wrong position and having to run) that have made double-platform operation tricky. I also think the gains in efficiency by double-platforming are fairly modest since the throughput of the Market Street Subway has long been limited by signalling considerations.
My Dad used to like telling a story about how when BART first opened, none of the trains had overhead bars because the trains were supposed to run so often nobody was going to have to stand.
It's kind of wild that that wasted space for MUNI underground is not a bigger complaint in the main. My fantasy is that the last 20 years of tunnel computerization for MUNI was going to result in multiple trains per station, or hooking multiple lines together at the entrance of the tunnel (IIRC they did this with the Boeing trains until the Meltdown and Bredas) in order to utilize the whole station length.
Or shrink and simplify the MUNI parts, there's no (apparent to a rube like me) reason MUNI stations have to be the same length as BART stations. Make 'em a single block long with NYC style foyers: attendant, turnstiles, ticket machines. No flowers, no coffee, no Jehovah's Witness tables.
in the earliest days of the BART, I believe I saw the BART train doors open on the wrong side of the train, at the Rockridge station. Also those dumb LED destination signs by DAKtronics lasted decades; some may still be in place.
Moscow metro builds now with cheaper but less artistic stations, to build as much as possible as fast as possible. Nevertheless, even these new stations are practical enough since the Moscow metro can be quite cramped at times.
> After 16 months in July 2019, a report was produced but it did not provide the comparisons requested by Congress. Rather, the GAO in its report said making the comparisons was too difficult to obtain meaningful results [...]
As an outsider from Europe, let me try.
1. It always seemed to me that the litigious nature of doing business in the US must be costly to society. The thinking of "If anything ever happens to you, someone owes you money". Lawyers are needed in anything of consequence, and it leads to lots of overhead, distraction and unnecessary work to avoid the possibility of being liable for anything.
2. Then there is corruption. The US ranks lower than most european countries on corruption (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index). The article hints at that, mentioning "politicizing" of infrastructure projects. That also costs money to society.
3. Then there is lack of competition. Because antitrust laws have not been enforced for decades in the US (not anywhere else too btw), I suspect that big infrastructure projects are getting distributed among a few large companies, who don't actually compete; they'll all make good money and pay their C-level execs well.
There may be other factors like healthcare costs, and unions adding to costs, etc, but those seem to be a result of the above, rather than a root cause.
Speaking as an American who has been to Europe, used their mass transit (and mostly liked it), but has skepticism about a lot of European political processes working here: yes, absolutely. All 3 of your points are spot on.
Healthcare does have an impact, in that the comparison of labor costs btw US and Europe often doesn't account for the fact that the cost of labor in the US includes health insurance, generally, whereas the cost of labor in Europe does not. This is the flipside of comparing tax rates between US and Europe, where Europe's rates look very high, but include healthcare generally, so the same cost is booked as labor in the US but as general government spending in Europe.
> The real difference is that it's 2-3 times as expensive in the US.
Yes. Which may be caused by the same three issues:
1. Doctors afraid of being litigated by patients, doing unnecessary treatments and paying costly insurance.
2. Corruption and bribery leading to things like Medicare being unable to negotiate drug prices and doctors prescribing addictive opioids to the tune of billions of dollars.
3. Inverted competition: Hospitals run a for-profit business while patients will prefer the best and most expensive service they/their insurance affords them. Who chooses a treatment based on price when your health is at stake? Also, somehow, drug prices are much higher than anywhere else, even completely generic stuff like insulin.
That is, for sure, a big difference, BUT...whether or not that cost is considered "labor cost" or not, i.e. whether or not it's part of the cost of digging tunnels, is different. The healthcare is being paid for out of general taxes, not as part of the budget for that tunnel, so it doesn't get accounted for as part of the cost of the tunnel. And probably shouldn't, but in the U.S. it is.
It's part of labor cost in many other countries too, since it's a percentage of the wages, so if health care is very expensive wages have to be high. (As a first order guess.)
But simply the problem is that the US economy is brutally productive, so the price of every input (labor, raw materials, capital) is priced according to their opportunity costs. If the same labor could make something that would then lead to a lot of profit in some other sector, then construction has to pay that high labor cost too.
Never mind who pays what ultimately, the marginal costs are borne differently so you could in principle spin up some temporary construction labor for cheaper.
(Other laws make employment less liquid, somewhat reducing this benefit. IMO those laws should be changed, but only with the non-work-related benefits increasing commensurately (UBI). (Definitely not trying to bolster the Macrons here.))
So whose opinion are we supposed to consult? The local governments whose corruption we are trying to measure? Asking the local people seems like the best way to do it to me.
You're going to get extremely biased answers based on how any local group defines corruption. People from Western countries are highly sensitive to corruption, even soft corruption (e.g. some politician introduces his kid to a constituent who is a business person in order to get an internship). Ask people in highly corrupt countries if that's corruption and you'll get a very different answer (my sister-in-law, who is from a developing nation, would call that leveraging your network).
Add on top that it's perception. In western countries how many people have direct experience with political corruption? Their views are going to be heavily influenced by media coverage.
And then add on top anti-corruption measures. If your gov't prosecutes corruption aggressively, it will seem like there is more of it, versus a country that just ignores it. If it's not in your face, you'd probably say your country is not that corrupt. When in fact the country that more aggressively fights corruption is probably less corrupt than one that doesn't.
3 of you already strawmanning that user. He didn't say they were the only reason, nor anything about Europe's unions. They are making the same point the article you 3 clicked at the top of this page:
>Although the material and equipment costs are similar (within 10%) for projects in the United States and in Europe, labor costs are substantially higher in the United States as outlined above. For example, in California the average billing labor rates for qualified tunnel workers is about $70/hr and the average New York labor rate of qualified tunnel workers is at over $100/hr, whereas in Germany (one of the high labor rates countries in Europe) the comparable labor rate is about $30/hr."
You add up all these inefficiencies, including Union labor, and it starts to bloat infrastructure projects. Unions can do wonderful things, but they no incentive to fix things when they're benefit. Or in the words or Upton Sinclair:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
The question is are labor unions stronger in Paris or New York; London or Chicago?
It's not an obvious answer. If you just looked at pay, you'd probably come to the conclusion that unions in blue state metros in the US are much more powerful than any of their European counterparts.
"If anything ever happens to you, someone owes you money" -- genuinely curious what happens in Europe. There must be malpractice laws that would make someone liable for something if they mess up big time, no? Is it simply that the payouts are smaller?
There are “nippers” to watch material being moved around and “hog house tenders” to supervise the break room. Each crane must have an “oiler,” a relic of a time when they needed frequent lubrication. Standby electricians and plumbers are to be on hand at all times, as is at least one “master mechanic.” Generators and elevators must have their own operators, even though they are automatic. An extra person is required to be present for all concrete pumping, steam fitting, sheet metal work and other tasks.
In New York, “underground construction employs approximately four times the number of personnel as in similar jobs in Asia, Australia, or Europe,” according to an internal report by Arup, a consulting firm that worked on the Second Avenue subway and many similar projects around the world.
These jobs are not actually real, they are used to pay off the mafia. Nobody ever actually shows up, they just mail a pay check to some guido in New Jersey, and in exchange their construction site doesn't have any "accidents".
>Although environmental regulations and requirements in most European countries are as elaborate as U.S. regulations, the environmental review processes are generally better streamlined, and approval is obtained faster than in the United States.
The idea that U.S. regulations are simply administered more poorly than European ones reminds me of the U.S. tax system. For years, anti-tax people in the U.S. (and the tax prep industry) have blocked changes that would simplify filing taxes. They think (correctly imo) people will like taxes less if they're hellishly complicated to file. Is something similar has been happening with other regulatory requirements?
I would be interested to read about it if anyone has any sources.
I know nothing about the tunnel boring industry in particular, but in some cases this is a form of regulatory capture. A large established industry player can afford to navigate the difficult regulations (either through scale, expertise, backdoor connections, etc), but a smaller upstart competitor can't.
I had a conversation with someone professionally familiar with the planning process for metro transit in LA and this is pretty much what they told me. The process is so complicated that even if metro themselves wanted to hire labor in house and save due to being able to run things at cost rather than for profit, there wouldn't be any talent available that is able to navigate the regulatory process as those brains have long since been hired by companies like Tutor Perini. Even if metro wanted to do things in house, they wouldn't even know where to start with what is necessary for regulatory approval as that ground has been covered by private contractors for two decades.
It's such a screwed up situation and is perfectly designed to enrich shareholders at the expense of the public purse, just a perfectly oiled machine. Metro doesn't even accept the cheapest bids, they continually turn to Tutor Perini because that is the only contractor with people familiar with the regulatory process. I'm not sure how you ever right the ship in this case. Pretty depressing.
The economy the last four years speaks for itself. And even more shocking - the world didn't end, air is still breathable, water is still clean - amazing!
> They think (correctly imo) people will like taxes less if they're hellishly complicated to file.
Their actual argument is that we should simplify the code itself, not try and hide its complexity from the payers using some computer system only available to the IRS.
They do think that you should have to file every year though, that is correct. That forces a bit of visibility and accountability on the government in that it shows people just how much they're working for the government before working for themselves.
This is similar to how the US makes sales tax visible to the payer, rather than hiding them behind an invisible VAT. It's about transparency.
There is zero difference in transparency between my calculating what taxes will be added to the sticker price, or my calculating what taxes were added to the sticker price (here in Aus). In fact the latter is easier.
> This is similar to how the US makes sales tax visible to the payer, rather than hiding them behind an invisible VAT. It's about transparency.
Here in Germany, and I believe in all of Europe, every single invoice and receipt I’ve ever received includes both the gross and the net price. It has to because of how VAT can be deducted for business expenses.
Similarly my monthly pay slip spells out exactly how much I’ve paid this month for income tax, church tax, solidarity tax (this one is related to the German reunification), health insurance, retirements insurance and unemployment insurance. It also includes how much I’ve in the year up to today.
Nothing is hidden and most folks know very well how much they’re paying at least in aggregate. We just don’t make it difficult to pay.
> They do think that you should have to file every year though, that is correct. That forces a bit of visibility and accountability on the government in that it shows people just how much they're working for the government before working for themselves.
People would know this if they'd just get a tax bill sent to them.
Believe me, people who live in countries where filing your taxes occupies ~5-minutes of brainspace per year aren't ignorant children. They know how much they are paying.
One of the points he makes is that Anglosphere countries (and the USA is worse than others) refuse to learn from other countries that have better cost and performance. He has a lot more to say - it's good reading.
Is it really "refusing to learn" or is it that things are always far more complicated than you would like?
In the UK, planning rules are often blamed for large project delays but you can't easily just throw the rules out of the window without causing concern that you will end up with a different problem.
The Shinkansen was/is a successful project but it had certain "costs" involving not just the demolition of lots of property but also the "eyesore" of above-ground railways. If you want to import that success, you import all of the problems at the same time.
I think perhaps governments would spend better quality time really asking and answering "what do we want this country to be about", then maybe they could start knocking the old walls down.
> The Shinkansen was/is a successful project but it had certain "costs" involving not just the demolition of lots of property but also the "eyesore" of above-ground railways. If you want to import that success, you import all of the problems at the same time.
Sure, but the alternative is usually highways, which need to be wider, and tend to louder and more of an eyesore. I'd take a Shinkansen over I-75/I-85 any day. (looking at you, Atlanta)
I tried to fit into a tweet-length summary what Alon has spent hundreds of thousands of words summarizing synthesis of man-years of research. His thoughts on that are spread across many posts over years, but here's one from March of this year that's a good example - https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/03/16/who-do-you-lea....
+1 Pedestrian Observations is great reading for infrastructure nerds. Really digs into the details and trade-offs related to city transportation and regional transportation design.
> Understanding the extreme tunnel costs in New York compared with other places in the United States is an enigma that is difficult to comprehend and cannot be controlled without major industry and government practice changes.
Is this their way of saying corruption is an X factor they didn't account for?
The construction labor rate difference between the US and Europe is surprising, especially given the stronger unionization rules in Europe.
"Although the material and equipment costs are similar (within 10%) for projects in the United States and in Europe, labor costs are substantially higher in the United States as outlined above. For example, in California the average billing labor rates for qualified tunnel workers is about $70/hr and the average New York labor rate of qualified tunnel workers is at over $100/hr, whereas in Germany (one of the high labor rates countries in Europe) the comparable labor rate is about $30/hr."
It'd be interesting to see the what percentage of the labor billing rate trickles down to the actual workers in the US vs elsewhere.
If the trickle down percentage is equal then the problem in the US is extractive labor unions; if US workers get a smaller percentage of the billing rate then the problem is extractive behavior by contractors. These problems require different solutions, so any attempts at cost control would need to determine which of these possibilities is in force.
US healthcare costs will also almost certainly feed into higher employee compensation for American workers. European employers will be paying into health care in some form or other (either through taxes or private insurance) but overall healthcare costs in Europe are far lower than in the US.
If there’s Federal money involved, most of it does trickle down to the worker.
Each contractor has to report what they paid to each employee so that nobody is screwed. The idea was that the government didn’t want jobs to be done by cheap labor and they set a wage floor that corresponds to local union labor rates.
The wage difference can be quite drastic - floggers pay jumps from $15 Pernod to about $32 per hour where I live.
When one talks about the percentage of labor costs that trickle down to the worker. I include the workers expenses in that as well. If you are paying a worker you are also paying his rent, health insurance, and transportation costs. Those are high by world standards.
Remember a bitch by a VC that tech workers weren't benefiting from the high wages he was paying so much as land lords.
That. Financialization and rent seeking in the US acts as a privately imposed tax on real economic activity. That shows in in things like why my company has moved every five years since the early 2000's. Our lease expires. The rent doubles and we move.
Want to fix this; prune back the finance and healthcare industries.
I believe in NYC the underground work is controlled by the labor unions, so hourly wages are actually very high. I believe getting one of those tunneling jobs is like winning the lottery to middle class people in the area.
The more surprising point was the disparity in staffing levels which multiplies the cost differences:
“For example, in New York, the number of workers at the face of the tunnel can be up to four times the number of workers required in Germany or Austria for similar projects.”
The article then also highlights the difference in overtime pay of 2-3x (for the rate) in the US and 'as time' compensation in Europe.
I appreciate 2-3x overtime as a means of encouraging fully filling out the workforce at single rate. Overtime should be for true need, not a factored in norm.
More people get well paying jobs, fewer people are overworked, and we pay less overtime? Sounds like killing three birds with one stone.
Inefficiencies like this should be the enemy of both political parties. They’re why Republicans complain about Government inefficiency and waste, and they’re holding progressives back from accomplishing everything they’d like the government to do.
This feels like it’s basically a matter of labor NIMBYs enriching themselves at the general public’s expense.
I expected the downvotes of course, but there's no error in the logic. The role of the union is to advance the interests of it's members. In this case, if the city or transit authority was foolish enough to make a contract so easily gamed, that's on them.
Although to the extent that labor unions finance local political campaigns, one wonders if it isn't perverse incentives all the way down...
Actually, you find that almost all of this stuff is transferral of future cash to current time.
Any multiyear project has political ramifications and your funding could get pulled. Better to be short on staff and bill overtime now rather than have have lots of staff and then get your funding pulled later.
> Any input on the impact of guarantees? Is this not something we do? Is it irrelevant because if funding isn’t there, they evaporate?
A lot of government contracting is about the process of extracting the money. Multi-year contracts can be particularly fraught with risk--Can a lawsuit shut you down? Will some Senator come shake you down to score "See how much money I just saved us?" points. Did some other project supersede your priority? Did a budget shortfall take 15% out of everybody?
It is simply smart behavior to front load payments and back load execution if you are a company dealing with the government. If you get really lucky, you bank a bunch of money, don't do anything, and then the project gets canned. If you get really unlucky, you bank the money, don't do anything, and then the project flares up in importance and you get slammed by the now looming deadline (see: the original ACA government website debacle).
Some if it is also that companies will optimize to the rules. Do bids go to lowest bidder always? Okay, then the companies will optimize to low bid and charge through the roof for change orders. Is the company responsible for maintenance? If not, then you can be sure that the project will be built to the absolute minimum quality that can be countenanced and leave the maintenance nightmare to somebody else.
You get what you actually incentivize even if it isn't what you necessarily wanted.
Speaking without evidence from the frozen wastelands of Canada, it seems that US trade unions are every bit as powerful - if not more so - in specific areas of the economy. But, oddly, worker pay and protections are weaker on average.
Could this strange state of affairs be the result of a political system that is highly polarized and less fundamentally democratic than the Canadian and European system?
Can you clarify your comment? It reads to me as ambiguous whether you're saying that worker pay and protections are weaker in Canada or weaker in the US.
Yes which is why the United States is not a democracy. There cannot be a law in the United States that suppresses or compels speech no matter how many people want it. The us is a country of freedoms not mob rule.
There is more to democracy and freedom than one (or two if you choose to include guns) sets of freedom.
Practically speaking, there is no differences in the freedom Canadian and European citizens have regarding expression compared to Americans even though EFFECTIVELY certain types of speech are restricted (e.g. holocaust denial)
That is because the list of restricted speech is incredibly miniscule, and there are strong protections in place otherwise that prevent a "slippery slope" situation from occurring. ("First you ban me from freely speaking about the holocaust not happening, next you ban me from criticizing the president!")
Practically, non-US democracies have demonstrated a stronger commitment freedom of assembly and freedom of the press than the US has over the last 4 years.
The only difference is that in the US these protections are guaranteed by an effectively "sacred document" that supercedes all laws (The constitution)
But it is more and more clear that that is a bug not a feature of the system, and is causing legitimate harm as your supreme court is getting stacked with "textualist originalists" who think that the wisdom of slave-owning cotton farmers applies unquestionably to 21st century technology and societal concerns.
And this is before we even get into the question of what it means for something to be "democratic", which is to say there is a "Democratic electoral process", which we're about to find out just how much the US process has been degraded as seemingly HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people's votes will either be not counted, or will be denied the opportunity to vote. What is happening in the US would be impossible in any other Western Democracy.
Point of order: the US is far from unique in having a written constitution. Most developed countries have a written constitution that, among other things, guarantees (on paper) basic rights to their citizens. The only exception is the UK, which does not have a single written constitutional document.
As you say, the commitment to basic democratic rights is considerably stronger in other western countries than in the US. The kind of abuses the Republican party habitually conducts with the aim of disenfranchising Democratic voters would not be tolerated elsewhere; this is reflected by the fact that the US constitution only explicitly prohibits certain forms of electoral discrimination (i.e. it's a blacklist policy) but does not explicitly grant a right to vote.
In Croatia, which is in Europe (and part of EU), you will get fined if you:
1) Post an approving image of weed on Facebook
2) Write ACAB on Twitter (this one also got a journalist arrested)
3) Have a shirt that says "ruling party - thieves" (which,
as an aside, is pretty accurate)
4) Are a journalist and publish an article which the court rules has caused "mental pain" to suing party (usually politicians and judges - this happens all the time)
Well as long as the press doesn't mention any of the banned topics and people only gather to support things that aren't banned they are free. All people are free you see but some are more free than others
How can you claim the press is free when you already claimed there are certain topics you cannot broach? Meanwhile the us press is so free they can publish completely anonymous articles critical of the president (the atlantics unsubstantiated veterans comment) and the most they get 'punished' is a critical tweet.
You are delusional to think the European media is freer.
This infamous clip from The Newsroom might shed more light on how the U.S. is actually doing in comparison to other democratic countries (all statistics quoted are easily verified if you want to look into it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTjMqda19wk
There's no question that the US has more voter suppression issues than Europe, but it's foolish to behave as if it's something that isn't to be worried about.
Part of it has to do with the fact that unions have to negotiate for health benefits. In other jurisdictions, primary health insurance isn't a thing, so the union can focus on getting better wages.
Less fundamentally democratic? As in you mean that most views are subsumed into the two big parties? I sympathize with the view that large parties eliminate diversity in political thought but I'm trying to understand what "less fundamentally democratic" means here.
The Canadian constitution is not designed to grossly overweight the views of rural areas over those of populated areas. Canada doesn't have an institution like the US senate, where voters from the least populous state have over 80 times more power than those from the most populous state.
The spread in riding (electoral district) size in Canada only varies by a factor of 4.5 if the (mostly unpopulated) northern territories are included (the three territories have one MP, each, to represent populations of less than 30,000) and a factor of 1.5 among the populated provinces.
Canadian federal governments are generally comprised of whichever party received the largest share of votes nationally. This is not always the case in the US.
> Canadian federal governments are generally comprised of whichever party received the largest share of votes nationally. This is not always the case in the US.
I'm going to disagree with you on this. In Canada, the general votes usually result in 1/3-1/3-1/3 split between the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP. It's our first past the post system for MPs that results in the uneven split at the final tally. The only reason that the system hasn't succumbed to gerrymandering as badly as elsewhere is that district changes must be prompted by a change in the number of provincial seats from the census. The changes themselves are proposed by an unelected third-party with members chosen by the judiciary of the province and the speaker of the house (who is chosen by the MPs through a secret ballot vote). Otherwise, it would be all too easy to gerrymander an election in Canada and end up in the same situation as the US.
A vote in the US matters significantly more or less depending on what state you live in. California has approximately 40 million people living in it and yet it still has only 2 senators which means that in California 1 senator represents 20 million people. Wyoming has approximately 600,000 people and still gets two senators meaning that 1 senator represents 300,000 people. Given that senators are needed to pass laws, your vote has significantly more weight if you live in Wyoming than if you live in California. What this means is that even though republicans have a majority in the senate they represent a minority of the American population. I mean even the president was voted into office with fewer votes than their opponent.
Contrast this with countries that use proportional representation which means everyone's vote basically means more or less the same as anyone else's vote.
The US is currently ranked 25th in the world by "democracy ranking"
It's worth pointing out that having a Senate based on states not population is not unique to the US, Australia does the same thing. In Australia, the 6 states get 12 senators each, and the two self-governing territories get 2 senators each. This means that Tasmania (with a population of 539,590) gets 12 senators – 1 senator per 44,966 people – whereas New South Wales (with a population of 8,157,735) also gets 12 senators – 1 senator per 679,811 people. So a Tasmanian's Senate vote is worth 15 times as much as that of a New South Welshman such as myself.
On the other hand, we do use proportional representation (single transferrable vote, STV) to elect the senators for each state, which is different from the first-past-the-post method the US uses. In a normal election, half of a state's senators are up for re-election; exceptionally, the government may call a special "double dissolution" election, in which the whole Senate is re-elected, if the Senate repeatedly refuses to pass legislation sent to it by the House of Representatives. Our use of STV means that minor parties (Greens on the far left, One Nation on the far right, various centrist/populist independents and other small parties) end up controlling the balance of power in the Senate. Some people don't like that because these minor parties end up sometimes extracting all kinds of concessions from the government in exchange for letting government legislation through.
I think some kind of unequal representation – like the Australian and US Senates – is essential for a federal system to work. Look at the United Kingdom – England has almost 85% of the population, so a big enough majority in England can always overrule the other three smaller constituent countries (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland), and there are no constitutional mechanisms to prevent that from happening. That's a large part, I think, of why the UK looks like it isn't going to last, with Scotland likely to break away sooner or later, quite possibly followed by Irish reunification some years further down the track, and once its just England and Wales, maybe even Wales will eventually decide to follow Scotland's example. If the British House of Lords was more like the Australian and US Senates, and gave the smaller constituent countries the ability to block an English-dominated majority, then the UK would be more likely to survive.
Sure, but compare the relative power of a CA state representative or the governor to those of Wyoming. CA environmental or privacy regulations for instance often function as de facto national law because the consumer market is so large. Rectifying the imbalance of senators would almost certainly see CA lose that overwhelmingly undemocratic power (~12% of US population - democrats who write the laws are maybe 60% of that subset so 7 million voters).
No, it is just another form of minority rule. Why should 7% of the country get to set its environmental policy in exchange for less voice in the national government?
Europe, especially Nordics, are funny like that. Menial jobs are costly and they are automated ASAP since human personnel costs are too high. On the other hand experts are quite cheap. No doubt these two effects feed eachother: easier to hire cheap experts to automate expensive menial jobs than to hire expensive experts to automate cheap jobs.
Europe controls wages by keeping the supply of housing high and the price of housing low. Most American cities have an acute shortage of housing and this raises wages. It has nothing to do with unions and their powers.
My experience in Hamburg, Germany was that getting an apartment in the city was waiting for someone else to die. Getting an apartment in Boston took me two weeks. In Germany, it took two months.
Germany, at least, keeps costs low by using the common market to depress wages. Housing supply in the dominant cities is very tight vs. wages. See Berlin and Munich.
Where on earth do you find someone who's qualified (and prepared to take the risk!) of constructing a tunnel that people to go in... for $30/hr? Surely a professional like that can get a better job anywhere else?
That's such an interesting observation. The US has tons of poor places full of millions of people -- the Deep South comes to mind -- who could fill many lower-skill construction jobs, putting downward pressure on the industry. But the distance between Mississippi and New York City is much larger than the distance between Poland and Germany -- both in miles and in ease of transit.
Not to mention I think these days Poles and Berliners get along better than Mississippians and New Yorkers. It's depressing to type but it's probably true.
Are there really many qualified tunneling engineers coming in from Eastern Europe? If there are then good for them, but I still don't get why qualified people would accept so little. Surely private engineering works pays much more than that.
> Are there really many qualified tunneling engineers coming in from Eastern Europe?
Yes, why wouldn't be there? Speaking strictly for Romania (from where I'm from) the Bucharest underground in the 1980s and almost all of the big hydro-dams projects (which also require extensive tunneling work) were carried with Romanian engineers only (we received the help of the Soviets in the early 1960s for the hydro works, though). And to be honest that question in itself is a little "orientalist", but I'll just pass over that part of the post.
> If there are then good for them, but I still don't get why qualified people would accept so little
Because wages are still pretty low in countries like Romania (and I guess in Poland and Bulgaria too, to give just a few examples), $30 per hour is more than enough. Plus the engineers themselves alone are no good, the project is based on the people who actually have to dig the stuff out, for them $30 per hour is double more than enough.
> Yes, why wouldn't be there? Speaking strictly for Romania (from where I'm from)
Great specific question! Because Romania isn't a signatory to the Washington Accord, which is the mechanism by which these engineering degrees get recognised for chartership by other countries.
It's a simple fact that chartered engineering societies don't accept many overseas degrees! It's very hard to get chartered from overseas unless you've been to a few very notable universities. Even being listed on the European Engineering Education Database isn't accepted.
Parts of Eastern Europe have had an industrial base since the 1800s. Indeed, the Czechs have been making cars since 1905. Of course Eastern Europe trains qualified construction workers.
They don't need to be, because their exist mechanisms to recognize degrees from other countries inside the EU. Remember they are probably getting jobs in Germany or Spain and not "overseas".
I don't believe that everyone who is working on a tunnel needs to be a "tunneling engineer". Like with construction, there's an engineer with a degree planning overseeing stuff, and then there are other guys actually doing the work.
Requiring everyone to have a degree, even to do simple stuff, would be absurd. If you do in the US, then that is the reason for high costs.
The number seems extremely low, especially considering this is completely before taxes, health insurance and retirement ('Arbeitgeber brutto'). The actual net salary after everything is roughly half of that.
The few unions that do exist in the US are surprisingly powerful.
European unions are either dying with dwindling influence (France, Britain, Italy), or just a proxy for social welfare and compensation negotiation (Germany, Netherlands, Northern countries).
The employees in the US are probably making closer to $30/hr than $70/hr, but their time is being billed at the higher rate, with the difference going into "overhead."
I regular work with and PM projects using union labor in NYC. The rates here are about what I would expect for take-home pay. I.e. they take home (pre-tax) closer to $70/hr than $30/hr. One thing not made clear in the article is if the hourly rates they quote are pre or post benefits. When I budget out projects, my spreadsheets have two columns, hourly wage, and hourly + benefits. Depending on the particular union, the benefits can be as high as 60%. So the real cost to me, the PM, is $70+$42 = $112/hour straight time.
It can certainly be painful from a management standpoint. But actually the biggest pain point isn't the hourly wages -- we all love to earn money, after all. The biggest pain point is labor minimums. If you need to hire from Department A, you need to hire a minimum of 3 people even when only 1 is needed. Or if you need to hire from Departments A and B, then you're required to also hire Departments C, D, and E (all with their minimum crew requirements).
It makes for accomplishing smaller projects near prohibitively expensive. And typically you can't gang together multiple projects in order to optimize labor usage.
Honestly, I have very mixed feelings about the arrangements I have to work with.
Thanks. What would someone who utilizes this union labour actually end up paying? A little more than this? I'm sure it varies but I'm curious about ballpark. Like 50% more? 250% more?
That sort of overhead should frankly be illegal. It's exorbitant. To pay the worker $30/hr, and charge a $70/hr overhead on top of it is daylight robbery.
Is it really? In my experience the overhead for salaried software developers working for contract shops is greater in both raw amount and percentage that that.
This was 10 years ago but I knew developers making $60/hour in salary while being contracted out for 3 times that amount.
> making $60/hour in salary while being contracted out for 3 times that amount
Those devs should have listened to patio11 (Patrick McKenzie)'s advise, and directed built a relationship with the companies they were being contracted out to.
Unfortunately both California and can the contracting companies are opposed to this. Most companies are not interested in working with sole proprietorships due to the legal liability.
I personally found it very suspect but looking in Denmark it seems to be correct - https://www.studentum.dk/job-loen/byggearbejder it's in Danish, but roughly comes out to slightly higher than 30 dollars an hour (and Denmark generally has higher wages than lots of countries)
I believe that is probably has something to do with what the state provides vs what the labor has to get for themselves. Cost of living is also expected to affect the rates that are charged.
The question is whether it's fair market value. So if there were competent people willing to do the work for $60 an hour, then $70 would no longer be fair market value.
The laborers don't make $70 an hour, that's what the project bills their rate as. They make closer to $20, the difference accounts for management salaries, times when the buisness has to pay the employees when they don't have work but don't want to lay off (because they are expecting work) and benefits (sick time, pto, parental leave, training etc.)
> What does a software developer make in California?
Yeah, not the best example to go with. If the numbers on HN are at all accurate, it's not uncommon for a FAANG employee to make more than a DOCTOR in North Carolina.
that's why I chose it as an example to compare with the wage of somebody who does hard physical labor underground with a significantly higher chance of injury https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4667042/ - relevant quote:
"However, there is still a relatively high incidence of labour accidents during tunnel construction when compared to incidence rates in the construction industry in general. During tunnel construction, rock fall events at the cutting face are a particularly characteristic of the type of accident that occurs."
I would. It's a racket similar to police unions: upward pressure on $ and benefits because not to do so will result in a collapse of the larger operation (company, society), or so the rhetoric goes.
Sentences like these are fascinating wedge issues.
A conservative/republican commentator would take this as evidence/proof of the indisputable superiority of the American system - truly it is a land of opportunity where people can make 2-3x more than in supposedly rich Europe.
A progressive/democratic commentator would instead point out that the LIFESTYLE a laborer can have in Europe at 30$/hour is in many ways superior to that of the equivalent American worker - they have full healthcare coverage, a prolific public transit system, and free university tuition for their children.
Then the counter-counter argument would be that the American worker could have a full house, 3 cars, and the FREEDOM to choose to spend money on their healthcare vs something else for their lifestyle, whereas the European laborer is in a system where a lot of choices are made for them.
Germany isn't a high labor rate country, they have one of Europes largest low wage sector thanks to the Hartz IV laws implemented by the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a Non-profit foundation to evade taxes.
There is some European fantasy that exists in the United States.
Anyone who travels to Europe is shocked at home, food, and car sizes. Sure there is beauty and history, but the standard of living seems significantly worse off.
There may be something to be said about safety nets, but it sure was a wakeup call for me.
Edit- don't get hung up on the sizes comment, it's merely an expression of wealth differences.
I find it very American to define living standard by the size of the car, size of drink and home size. I much rather do it by the quality of entertainment and culture I have easily accessible, while choosing to live maybe a little bit smaller but much more connected at any time of day.
To be fair to Dallas[1], the city itself has begun to rapidly densify and build up rather than out – it looks like a real city in many more parts than it once did (I grew up there).
Would I move back there in the near future? No. Is it comparable to any first-class European city? Definitely not. Is it on par with NYC/SF/DC? Not really. Los Angeles (where I currently live)/Seattle/Atlanta? Somewhat. Heading in the right direction? Definitely.
[1] Unless you're talking about DFW suburbs. In which case, once you cross the city line, try not to lose your soul in all the cookie cutter subdivisions.
I’d wager that the average HN reader already doesn’t worry much about healthcare; health insurance at high end tech employers tends to be pretty good. Of course many people in tech want universal healthcare for the benefit of others, but it’s not a compelling argument to e.g. personally move to Europe.
> Anyone who travels to Europe is shocked at home, food, and car sizes
I'm trying to understand this comment. I'll flip it the other way as a European Brit visiting the US.
Homes: You have an entire continent, with only 400 years of (European) habitation, so you have a lot of space. Your home building is also largely after the invention of the motor car. In Europe we have, are, and will, walk everywhere. So everything is closer together, and so are the houses.
Food: not quite sure what the issue is with European food, but as a European in the US, I'm astonished at how little fresh food and meat there is. If it's wrapped in plastic, I have no idea how old it is. Ugh. If I ask a butcher for a cut of meat, I know that meat has only been hung for a certain time, and on display for a certain time. Similar fruit and vegetables, and fish, and bread and so on. A massive bag of chips, or a gallon of high fructose corn syrup is not an achievement.
And then car sizes. European roads are historically dictated by horse and cart. In the US, you have Eisenhower and the freeways... after the invention of cars.
Don't get me wrong, I like the USA. I've spent about 5 years of my life, cumulatively in the USA. I think the European fantasy, is seeing America, and realising (from a European perspective), how much the USA could benefit from doing some European things. I want to just walk to the shops, or cycle down the road.
High speed rail would be an absolute game changer for you guys. Connecting up SF and LA, or NY and Phili, but you (or rather your politicians) just don't get it.
>Anyone who travels to Europe is shocked at home, food, and car sizes. Sure there is beauty and history, but the standard of living seems significantly worse off
It's not the first time I've talked about it on HN, but from an EU point of view making a connection between house/car/food size and standards of living is baffling.
>>>from an EU point of view making a connection between house/car/food size and standards of living is baffling
Humanity has probably spent ~5,000 years with the aristocracy upgrading their dwellings to something larger and more permanent than a closet-sized hovel. Same for possession of personal conveyances larger and more capable than one's own two feet. We can debate whether it is healthy, or philosophically ideal, but it certainly isn't a uniquely American phenomenon, and shouldn't be baffling, when viewed in the context of human civilization's habits of material acquisitiveness.
Yeah nothing screams high standards of living like driving a gigantic 4x4 (hint: those are pretty useless in most European cities) and the size of the portions at Taco Bell.
As for the housing... you can buy a cheap big house in bumfuck nowhere or a smaller place in the city. I guess just like in the US.
>Anyone who travels to Europe is shocked at home, food, and car sizes. Sure there is beauty and history, but the standard of living seems significantly worse off.
Did you live somewhere in Europe, or did you just visit on a holiday?
I'm euro and I agree, it seems people who never set a foot here fetishize it. Americans have insane amount of disposable dollars compared to Europeans and they also spend like crazy :)
> I'm euro and I agree, it seems people who never set a foot here fetishize it.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
> Americans have insane amount of disposable dollars compared to Europeans and they also spend like crazy
That's the other side of the fence. Most Americans you noticed had insane amount of disposable income, the ones you don't register possibly don't.
In average the disposable income is higher in the US than in Europe, but so is the income inequality.
There are up-sides and down-sides to each systems.
> In 2018, Congress asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to report within 9 months on the cost of rail – transit infrastructure projects across the United States compared to similar projects worldwide. After 16 months in July 2019, a report was produced but it did not provide the comparisons requested by Congress. Rather, the GAO in its report said making the comparisons was too difficult to obtain meaningful results and instead reported on improvements to be made by the FTA for better cost estimation. It appears even the GAO did not have the ability to identify measures for cost reduction of transit tunnels that have impacted the taxpayers by billions of dollars over the years.
Also, here in NYC, it isn't just tunneling that's expensive [0], we pay dearly for most of our infrastructure. As this article points out, the elephant in the room is labor costs.
Is this mentioned? It's crazy complicated underground in large old American cities. Been putting pipes etc under there for a couple hundred years. A Seattle tunnel got stalled for months when they hit an old service main iron pipe that'd been put there a century before and forgotten.
My sister worked for a pump company, been in business for 150 years. Got calls all the time for replacement pumps that had failed after a century etc. One was 6 stories underground in NYC. Had to dig a tunnel down through a maze of services (electrical, tunnels, drains, water, gas) to get to it. Then had to have exactly the same pump to fit exactly into the geometry it used to have (no problem; they still had the drawing for the pump in a drawer and made an exact copy). Pulled the old one up, dropped the new one down, hooked it up and then buried it for maybe another century.
The pipe that stopped drilling in Seattle was 10 years old, not 100. It was meant to measure the seismic stability of the viaduct that was eventually removed. The tunneling firm was found to be aware of the pipe and liable for delays.
Mh, many other non-american cities are older => I don't think that "age" matters directly in the context of the cost-comparison shown by the article.
If complications caused by conflicting stuff that you mention is one of the factors that drive up the cost, then I guess that general panning for all kind of infrastructure is just constantly done better (for whichever reasons) in non-amerian cities?
Its the frantic rebuilding and updating that makes it complicated. The largest industrial centers in the world (at the time) were built and rebuild countless times, each adding another layer of services. City centers are particularly complex, and everything seems to go through there.
Are these American cities that unique in this regard, or for that matter, even that old? Probably this is a genuine difference between a novel development in a new Chinese city, but the fact is these major infrastructure projects are done much more cheaply in places like Paris and London.
_In some ways, M.T.A. projects have been easier than work elsewhere. East Side Access uses an existing tunnel for nearly half its route. The hard rock under the city also is easy to blast through, and workers do not encounter ancient sites that need to be protected._
_“They’re claiming the age of the city is to blame?” asked Andy Mitchell, the former head of Crossrail, a project to build 13 miles of subway under the center of London, a city built 2,000 years ago. “Really?”_
No. What you say seems true, but this is a comparison. I would expect other nations to also have pipe etc underground for a hundred years too (probably longer).
Well, infrastructure for 5,000,000 people built in surges over a century, one that saw unparalleled advances in technology and industry results in every kind of wire, pipe, conduit, pump, tile, fill and foundation conceivable. All built on top of one another in a big hurry.
If you have 1000 years to do it and grow slowly enough, maybe you have 2 or three layers.
Interesting read. The cost in New York of $1.5 – $2.5B per mile is just amazing. They ask "What Can Be Done to Manage Underground Construction Cost?" and list a bunch of recommendations. The conclusion?
"If these recommendations are implemented, would the U.S. costs match the European tunneling project costs? Unlikely."
The reasons make sense, at least to me, someone who knows very little of this subject.
Come on freaking Switzerland where the minimum wage is around 4000$ per month was able to construct the longest tunnels (one for each direction) in the world for 1/10 of this cost. Even in my small city they are building an extension to a train tunnel in the middle of the city 1.4km -> 150M$.
Not to nitpick. But there's technically no minimum wage in Switzerland.
That said. Some localities (notably Genève) introduced a minimum wage. Also, a lot of employees are covered by a collective employment contract, which usually stipulates a minimum wage.
What is true is that few employees make less than 4000 Francs a month (~ $4000).
And the "unlikely" is followed up with a couple sentences that are basically a polite way of saying "even if we do everything else right the cost of NYC union labor is just too damn high".
It's paid out of the taxes on wages of laborers like these engineers working on tunnel construction; when you estimate the expenses for building a tunnel, that's included in the list price - it's just that in USA invoice that line might be labeled "union-agreed benefits" and in Switzerland invoice the same thing might be labeled "government-mandated social security tax" which covers things like "government sponsored" (i.e. taxpayer-paid) pensions.
Of course that line item is massively larger in the US than in Switzerland because it has to line the pockets of union bosses, lawyers, negotiators, administrators, and health insurance companies.
To a first approximation, the table at the head of the article looks like "Why Tunnels in New York Cost Much More Than Anywhere Else in The World".
But anyway, what's to be done? According to the article:
* Streamline the environmental and approval processes.
* Establish an equitable risk sharing mechanism between the owner and contractor and properly implement it.
* Establish unified contractual terms and conditions for underground work similar to the FIDIC Emerald Book.
* Be fair and equitable in dealing with changes, disputes and claims.
* Reevaluate the need of all soft costs: Owner, PM/CM, EIS/EA, Engineering, etc., lower bonding limits, less litigation, lower insurance cost, etc.
* Revisit labor laws, rates, and union regulations and establish equitable Project Labor Agreements.
* Pay for public amenities and community and stakeholders’ provisions through other funds rather than transit funds. There is no doubt that community improvements and services are needed, but infrastructure projects should not be the vehicles to fund such services or improvements.
* Transportation Alternative Program is essential for sustainability and environmental benefits, but their costs should not be funded through transit project costs.
* Better management of stakeholders’ approvals, public expectation, ROWs, and utilities owners.
I just think that anything "big" can be used as a tool for political fight in the US. Political filibuster costs time but infra-filibuster costs tax money (massive). Really feel sad about this.
I'm wondering when this began to happen. I don't think this was the case from day 1.
For what it's worth, I briefly looked into why we don't construct more above-grade track. There's actually quite a lot in the outer boroughs of New York (and of course one such mostly-freight track was converted in the High Line). It's cheaper to upkeep, and actually possibly cheaper to buy (compared to cost of drilling), and of course gets built much faster. The problem is essentially noise. Light is also a concern but not quite as large.
I wonder if anyone is working on making these trains more silent. It seems hard but might be quite valuable.
The elevated portion of the expo line in LA is remarkably quiet. Imo it's far quieter than a highway or even an arterial road. The problem is concrete supports are a lot more expensive and take more time to build than cheap creaky squeaky steel girders that you see in chicago and nyc. Plus, somehow, people were still pissed as hell about that train in LA and managed to dilute the plan from being a fully grade separated line into a mixed grade mess, where it might take you 15 minutes to travel through certain 2 mile stretches (on a train capable of 75mph).
Isn't this literally the reason that Elon Musk found the boring company? He sees that there is a tech AND price arbitrage between existing and feasible tech for tunneling technology. Granted, one of the Boring Company's "Tricks" is that their tunnels are smaller due to only currently wanting to support electric vehicles, so you don't need quite as big tunnels due to less CO2, but still...
They bought a commercial tunnel boring machine and decided to build their own. The first one is named Prufrock and it is going to be helping do the huge project in Los Vegas they've already completed the first phase of:
I read somewhere, in a reference I cannot find right now, that litigation between the government and private contractors is an important factor in high US public infrastructure costs. If there is a dispute between the government and the private contractor, the contractor is much more likely to have the upper hand in US courts than elsewhere.
These comparisons appear to miss the biggest issues. The NYC Second Avenue subway involves extremely complex construction in a location surrounded by other subway lines and infrastructure. The Los Angeles subways examined are extremely deep underground in a rocky and seismically unstable situation. In all of these cases there were extreme challenges unlike those found in other cases.
Note that the Second Ave subway had been proposed and discussed for around one hundred years and was consistently considered too challenging to be practical. Doesn't it make sense that a situation like that would be extremely expensive to eventually deal with? Does finally building a subway line that for one hundred years was considered out of reach really compare directly to the construction currently or recently happening in other countries?
London's Jubilee and Elizabeth lines were extremely complex and threaded through other subway lines and infrastructure. They too were on the drawing board for decades, and in the case of the Jubilee line, did not start until a new boring technique called the bentonite shield was invented. London should be in the same ballpark as New York but the article suggests it is 3-5x cheaper per mile.
Complex projects in places other than NYC don't seem to have the same extreme level of superfluous labor that drives up the costs.
"The unions and vendors declined to release the labor deals, but The Times obtained them. Along with interviews with contractors, the documents reveal a dizzying maze of jobs, many of which do not exist on projects elsewhere.
There are “nippers” to watch material being moved around and “hog house tenders” to supervise the break room. Each crane must have an “oiler,” a relic of a time when they needed frequent lubrication. Standby electricians and plumbers are to be on hand at all times, as is at least one “master mechanic.” Generators and elevators must have their own operators, even though they are automatic. An extra person is required to be present for all concrete pumping, steam fitting, sheet metal work and other tasks.
In New York, “underground construction employs approximately four times the number of personnel as in similar jobs in Asia, Australia, or Europe,” according to an internal report by Arup, a consulting firm that worked on the Second Avenue subway and many similar projects around the world."
Europe has pretty strict environment rules, but they are not normally abused to stop a project by just delaying and litigating it forever.
In the US, the actual care for environment is lower I think BUT you can just drag out a project forever on enviro issues.
SF bike path was sued for not doing enough of an enviro study, took another $1M, maybe 1-2 years to get it going again.
This is one (small) factor.
Another - in the EU most folks are part of unions, but the unions are not such a political machine. So in the US you can get total nonsense in staffing, no show / low work jobs - the EU puts up with a lot less of that from casual observation (at least germany, maybe Italy / Greece have more of an issue here). Unions seems reasonably productive in Germany - does someone have more data here? I don't know the details, just my impression.
In Europe, I think people know that you are unlikely to stop a project due to environmental reasons, but you might get a Judge to rule that the contractor has to move some wildlife or put tunnels where there was just going to be a cutting. It costs more money sure but in the scheme of it, probably not much in terms of %.
When I saw this headline, my first thought was: "Have they considered the Noord-Zuidlijn in Amsterdam?" That was a line that went way over budget, way past deadline, caused damage to historical buildings it tunnelled under, so I expected it to be way more expensive than other metro lines. Especially considering the massive sprawling metro systems that many other cities have; surely they can't build those if they cost tens of billions?
So I was quite surprised that this article is entirely correct: US metro lines really are way more expensive even than our way over budget line through our muddy, unstable soil.
The unionisation is being misunderstood. The US seaports were unionised, but conversion from stevedore to container was achieved, by negotiation. The motivation was high: continuance of the work on site demanded it, for a 24/7 function which was relocatable (and did, to prove it). This altered negotiation positions.
The tunnels are different. its periodic work, not continuing (across the years) and there is no "substitution" of moving to another place. There is only dig the tunnel or not dig the tunnel.
In this article, they bring in the guy in charge of Crossrail (which runs right through Central London, at one point going between two existing transit lines with about a meter clearance on each side.) His first reaction was, perhaps, much like the first reaction of any casual observer would be: "What are all these people doing here just standing around?"
NYC union rules still require oilers on cranes (because it's still 1930 or something and our cranes all need the constant attention of someone resupplying their oil) and the union is paid a big fee for every tunnel boring machine, to compensate them for all the jobs lost (relative to half a century ago).
Of course, the MTA station design principles (mentioned elsewhere in this thread) do not help, excavating large caverns via mining, and the MTA doesn't know how to run a large program effectively and maintain good relations with its contractors, and of course there are a variety of exciting reported cases where the MTA doesn't even know why a person on the construction site is there or getting paid to begin with, so there's plenty of disaster to go around. Either way it works to the same result: we can't have nice things in this town.
I'm not saying your comment is wrong, but you don't seem to have understood my point: the unions for the dockside workers in new york were strong, but ultimately a rational negotiation worked. The huge advantage the shipping companies had, was relocation. But, the fact remains a rational negotiation worked. This single fact (relocation) does not explain why.
For some reason, rational negotiation with the workers in the US tunnel boring community doesn't work. Given the amount of excess cost, I think it is very likely better negotiating could work. The question would be, why there hasn't been a rational negotiation. I would argue, the highly intermittent nature of tunnelling, and tunnel work, has made the entities involved (the employers, the state, the city, the corporates) reluctant to do the negotiating.
You talk to consequence: behaviour on the job. That doesn't have a lot to do with negotiating. Negotiating is done behind closed doors.
@jseliger - TIL that there is a tunnelingonline.com website. Thank you! I'm a little disappointed it's an industry publication and not a fan project, though, I was hoping to discover a whole new internet community of tunneling enthusiasts.
It’s an ownership problem primarily - cities can blame states and states can blame the fed and the fed can blame the contractors. By the time anyone can figure out who’s really at fault it’s election time again.
Swiss cantons have virtually complete authority over their territories - it’s not surprising to me their large projects go much more smoothly: there are a single entity in charge and at blame.
In American society we deal constantly with our division of power: funding comes from all levels and therefore a single hiccup can break the entire chain. Suggesting that a city or state have authority over its own systems makes one persona-non-grata in most conversations - even in SF where our Mayor doesn’t have the authority to even replace the MTA director. The failure of American politics isn’t that we’re all federal or all local - it’s that the buck stops nowhere. Fascism and confederacy have their obvious issues: but inability to build a subway is not one of them.
When SpaceX was talking about reusability for years prior to the first F9 stage 1 landing and reuse existence proof, industry "experts" wrote all sorts of conventional wisdom that was very much like this article.
The work-at-home cultural change makes the pressure on mass transit less. Remember we had to do work at home with current, somewhat neglected technology. Just wait.
>Basically saying Europe's not corrupt, America is.
The construction business is prime real estate for corruption in Europe just as it is anywhere. And it's especially bad in some countries (Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, all of the Balkans).
While I wouldn’t be surprised if the average corruption was higher in the USA, I would be very surprised if the standard deviation of corruption was lower in Europe.
For all that Americans say how diverse a nation the USA is, the EU alone [0] is a mixture of Common Law states and Roman Law states, where the laws are written in 24 languages that collectively use 3 character sets. Heck, despite the Euro it still has 10 non-Euro currencies in use.
[0] I’ve seen “Europe” used to mean “the EU” in the same way I’ve seen “America” used to mean “the USA”; and while the EU is definitely not a country, it is about the same size as the USA.
The relationship in question is mostly not criminal, but rather involves the unions in question supporting the political career of their people in Albany. For instance, when the governor suddenly changed the plan for the L-Pocalypse tunnel repair over the holidays, after chatting with some of his buddies, undermining the MTA chief (who, if I recall correctly, first heard about it from the press conference?) The new plan involves fewer outside contractors and more union labor.
(Yes, Albany, because the MTA is run by the state instead of the city, mostly to limit accountability.)
CA transit agencies should really just bite the political bullet and contract mexican agencies to shuttle workers north and build transit networks. What they've done in Mexico City over the last 50 years is remarkable compared to the last 50 years in any American city. It's already done for seasonal farm labor so the mechanisms for this sort of temporary immigration are there.
The CCP BRI programs do the same thing. For BRI, they ship excess Chinese steel rebar (lowering their per-unit cost) to a country, then fly burly Chinese peasant labor to the country, then bill the country for both. Win-win! (if you're the CCP.)
What's funny is that I talked to Bali drivers about the two new underpasses. They said it reduced traffic for one month, then everybody increased driving so it was back to the same gridlock. Just like strongtowns readers would predict. :)
The PA and MV underpasses would be beneficial since the purpose is a direct route from downtown across Central, rather than escalating gridlock remediation. But the numbers don't work at $1 billion per underpass for towns with around 40,000 residents.
Sources: I read the local SV rags about the tunnels. I went to Bali to see the 2 underpasses there and rode a taxi through them. I saw the BRI/related workers in the Jakarta airport.
That is a resasonable question, but I think it would have been mentioned if it is a significant issue.
Tunnelling through the Alps is also bedrock tunnelling, and not near-surface bedrock, either. The Gothard Base Tunnel, completed in 2016, cost $12 bn and is 35.5 miles long [1].
The London Crossrail tunnels are not in bedrock, but there was some significant engineering in threading around and between existing infrastructure, and in protecting it. For all I know, bedrock tunnelling may be easier.
Presumably tunneling through a mountain is much easier than underground because either end is just open. Very easy to get your boring machine into position / service it when needed (by just pulling it back out into the open air). Also probably less issues with damp, etc.
Tunnel boring machines (TBMs) bore a gross diameter hole that's then lined (often with concrete segments) for support. The net diameter of the hole behind the TBM is less than the diameter of the TBM, particularly the shield, which is the business end. Maintenance is done in place.
Fun Chunnel fact: when the TBMs driving from England and France met, they drove one below the other and abandoned it in place. The other was dismantled and removed in pieces.
Sure, bedrock would slow a project down but it wouldn't explain the higher level of labour. If you are moving more slowly, you need less people to keep the supply chain moving, not more.
I saw a TV show with a standard Tunnel Boring Machine and it was about 5 men operating it (plus the automated materials feed). Even if they were paid $1M a year, it would still be loads cheaper than these tunnels are costing New York.
As far as I'm aware, it actually kinda is (at least compared to other major cities with lots of tunneling).
London for instance is built on sedimentary rock (mostly limestone?). The metamorphic bedrock (mostly mica?) Manhattan is on top of is obviously much harder than that.
If you are referring to the actual Manhattan Schist type of rock, then yes that can have an effect on the cost of tunneling, but that wasn't really what your original post said - you just said "all the bedrock".
Switzerland recently completed the Gotthard Base tunnel which is almost all hard rock mining.
I'm no geologist, but I was under the impression that "bedrock" generally refers to this harder type of rock. It is not just a word for any rock that things are built on. Maybe I'm wrong though.
I've never heard London referred to as being built on top of bedrock in the same way I've heard it of NYC.
The geologic nature of Manhattan probably adds a small amount of cost premium to Manhattan versus more geological uniform countries. However, bedrock isn't the hardest thing to tunnel through I believe (I think it's soft-soil landfill, since the ground has far less inherent rigidity).
this is a submarine piece by industry insiders to pin the blame squarely and solely on labor, rather than the myriad corruptions that funnel money to executives and shareholders. for instance, labor rates are likely high, not because workers are being paid so well, but because administrative costs are opaquely tacked onto the labor rates.
that's not to say all of the recommendations are bogus (e.g., the environmental review process being subverted to inflate costs), but rather that that particular conclusion is highly suspect.
the regulatory environment needs to incentivize smaller, leaner, more nimble contractors, rather than oligopoly, if we want a competitive market that will drive down costs and foster innovation.
The first table lists Asian regions such as UAE (Doha), Korea (Seoul), PRC (Hangzhou), and India (Mumbai), and the author has classified examples as Middle East, India, China, and Southeast Asia.
South Korea belongs to East asia, not a Southeast Asia by all means, i.e.geopolitically or ethnically or culturally.
In South Korea, it is considered offensive and rude to treat Korea as a Southeast Asian country. It's like treating Japanese as Koreans and Vietnamese as Chinese.
Also, the NATM method that Koreans have used on the Sin-Bundang Metro Line is much more cost-effective than the open cut method.
- Streamline the environmental and approval processes.
- Establish an equitable risk sharing mechanism between the owner and contractor and properly implement it.
- Revisit labor laws, rates, and union regulations and establish equitable Project Labor Agreements.
These are just typical pro-corporate power talking points weeping about costs to the public so they can wreck the environment, externalize risk, and pay people that actually do work less.
I care deeply about protecting the environment, but environmental protection laws are being weaponized to prevent projects that would markedly improve the environment. That's rather perverse.
For one recent and on-going example, look at the San Francisco Van Ness BRT project. This project merely adds dedicated bus lanes and center median boarding/unloading. Along with that work, there's some utility relocation, and sidewalk improvements.
This route is entirely along an existing major thoroughfare in heavily-urbanized San Francisco. The entire route is already entirely paved. Anyone can look at this and conclude there is no risk to the environment from this project. Yet the CEQA process for this project took ten years to complete.
The project would improve public transit, reduce traffic, reduce pollution. It's really ironic that laws meant to protect the environment are what held up this project for a decade.
There needs to be a way to short-circuit laws like CEQA for certain categories of projects, like transit in heavily-urbanized areas.
note that ceqa covers more than just trees and fields. it includes views, soundscapes, air quality, and more, which is why it's so productive when used to slow or deny development. the variety of potential challenges is staggering.
that wouldn't be such a big deal if reviews took days rather than years, but bureaucracies aren't designed to handle unbounded variety. that makes the process excruciatingly slow and expensive (bureaucrats are risk averse so are loathe to take responsibility in more than small chunks at a time).
That's interesting thank you for sharing. However, this is just environmental laws being used to serve the same monied interests that I was complaining about. Private industry doesn't want mass transport, they want to sell cars. Landowners will always use their property rights to enrich themselves at the public expense.
Take the newish Hudson Yards station. Its platform is about twice as wide as the original subway station platforms, and it's far longer than it needs to be too. On top of that, it has a full-length underground mezzanine above the platform, which is unnecessary. Overall, the effect when I first used it was "why is this so unnecessarily massive?"
Oversized stations are even more problematic when you consider that the MTA wants to build all of these by mining rather than using cut-and-cover, because cut-and-cover has too much disruption to surface tenants. And mining is far more expensive than cut-and-cover, so the extra volume you need to dig out for excessive station sizes hits your purse even faster. For as high as the actual tunneling costs are, it's the station costs that truly make the subway extensions stratospherically expensive.