7 ms·

I may not understand the scope of this project, but when I read the $2 billion, my thought was "wow that's cheap!" Consider the Big Dig or the current Seattle t

I may not understand the scope of this project, but when I read the $2 billion, my thought was "wow that's cheap!" Consider the Big Dig or the current Seattle tunnel, at $14B+ and $3B+ respectively.

emodendroket 9y ago
To be fair, nobody would have undertaken the Big Dig if the true cost were known up-front. And a debt that's 200% GDP is a unique circumstance.
- Cyranix 9y ago
  Similarly, the cost of Seattle's tunnel was greatly inflated by the little mistake that halted Bertha.
- KGIII 9y ago
  The Big Dig may have been closer to the budget, except it kept getting changed. An example would be that they initially planned on shutting down certain routes until a politician decided to announce that traffic flow would not be disrupted. That's great if you're paid to model the traffic but probably not so great if you now have to pay the added expenses.
  - dghughes 9y ago
    But that indicates the project was not planned well since change requests for such a large project would have been expected.
    - jrieirjn8383 9y ago
      How does one plan around a politician making it up as they go?
    - KGIII 9y ago
      You can only plan on so much. Notably: I only modeled traffic. I am not to blame. ;-) (I have used that caveat so many times.)
      - dghughes 9y ago
        Maybe so, but I'm referring to the actual project management process group called Planning I don't mean plan in general but the actual official and formal steps of Planning. Then the Monitoring and Control process group will evaluate Planning again each time it loops back, so it makes no sense to me their plan failed, multiple times really for each loop. It's even worse knowing that each time they come back to Planning as part of the process they screwed up yet again.
    - vacri 9y ago
      Politicians will always find a way to promise changes to big ticket items. They're the ones that hold the purse strings. You can't plan for whomever is going to be in office next year ("a week is a long time in politics"). Case in point: it was only 17 months from Trump announcing his candidacy to winning the election - plus his party put up over 20 nominees.
  - RHSeeger 9y ago
    Just once, I'd like to see the people that planned something and signed the deals stand up to a politician. Just see the demand to make a huge, costly, unreasonable change (likely for political reasons) and say, "No, fuck it. We planned this, you already spent $3 billion on it, it's not changing now. If you want it changed, it's cancelled, the $3b goes up in smoke, along with your political career and everyone who's ever so much as had lunch with you." I know, it's not realistic... but it would be nice to see. I have this picture in my head of the entire government running like it did in The Pentagon Wars (that's billion, with a "b"...) and nobody can stop it.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      Oh, the things I could write... Let's do just that, shall we? Warning, this could take a minute. The Big Dig was pretty much my first project outside of the lab. I am not overly fond of admitting to my part in the project but it could be worse, much worse. Truth be told, we did our job just fine, but I digress. By the time I got involved with the project, it had been in planning stage for quite a while and had undergone a number of revisions and had many funding proposals. My involvement was because I was busy taking traffic modeling into the computer revolution stage. These various plans all needed to be modeled, of course. Even if there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell, it needed to be modeled. Even trivial changes will mean new modeling. It's lucrative work, if you can get it. Though, it's not much more than a fancy plugin today, it's based on some pretty complicated math and can be improved by adding more data points. Again, I digress... Now, being new to the world of working as a contractor for municipalities, I had great expectations from the government representatives. I was quickly disabused of such notions but, again, I digress. The Big Dig had many, many people working on it. It was in the public eye for a fairly short time, compared to the time it lumbered as a meandering project in the planning and pre-planning stage. Yup, they plan to make plans and call it pre-planning. This, of course, goes hand in hand with fact finding, feasibility studies, ecological impact studies, noise studies, and these may very well require constant revision as the plans change. Well, traffic modeling is just one of those things. At any point in time, any contractor, sub-contractor, or affiliate could have gone to the media to say just what you propose. In fact, if you examine the archives, I'm sure you'll find ample evidence of people doing just that very thing. Sure, the amount I made on the project was just a rounding error, but there were a lot of rounding errors. Then, you have people who will fight it, at every step of the way. They will tie it up in court for as long as they can, which means even more revisions. People sometimes wonder where I got my legal knowledge... Some was in academia but the majority of it was through experience. There is tons of waste in government, I think we know that. But, politicians will add more - so long as it gets them votes. Interestingly, in this case, the guy campaigned on prosperity for the local economy. The project must not disrupt local business. Got to make money, after all. Yet, it slowed the project down and probably added a good 10% to the overall budget. The lengths we went to were absurd. And so it goes... Sure, someone may stand up and tell the politicians that they are insane and that they are stupid but, frankly, we've been saying that for years and nobody actually listens. We can't opt out, because we have contracts. Oh, contracts? Yeah, every time you extended the project? I got a nice bonus to help grow my business. Every time I had to run the models again? Thanks... Every time I had to go get more data? Thanks... The Big Dig was what enabled me to get my business up and functioning. We had more contracts before the first year was over and that project seemed to last forever. I can see why people would just go along for the ride. If I'd had more insight and experience, I may have said something. I doubt it old have done any good, I'd have still had contractual obligations and the penalty clauses would have meant I was a poor man today. Well, there is a wall of text. Make of it what you will, I guess. It is summed up with contracts, politicians, municipal workers, and citizen expectations.
yborg 9y ago
Chicago metro Deep Tunnel : $3B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_and_Reservoir_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_and_Reservoir_Plan
- akgerber 9y ago
  Milwaukee, at well under 1/20th the size of Tokyo, spent $1B on a similar system: https://deeptunnelmke.com/impact/cost/ https://deeptunnelmke.com/impact/cost/
dageshi 9y ago
That's what I thought as well, $2 billion doesn't seem like that much for that kind of project?
flukus 9y ago
I don't know how they handle infrastructure, but whatever they do seems like something the rest of the world could learn from. A little while ago it made international news when they fixed a sink hole in a few days: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/15/asia/fukuoka-sinkhole-filled/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/15/asia/fukuoka-sinkhole-fill...
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  It should be noted that that sinkhole re-occurred shortly afterwards. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38129691 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38129691
  - Danieru 9y ago
    Th original sinkhole was caused by a collapse of a under construction subway tunnel. This second time is just regular settling, there was no second collapse.
- yread 9y ago
  There is also this: 1,200 Japanese workers convert above-ground train to subway line in a matter of hours. https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/2msfz2/1200_japanese_workers_convert_aboveground_train/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/2msfz2/1200_japanes...
mmanfrin 9y ago
Or the $3.5B approved for BART to upgrade some lights and wash more of the urine smell off the seats.
- danans 9y ago
  This is (intentionally?) false and misleading. $3.2B of that is going to replacing the system's electrical infrastructure, replacing 90 miles of track infrastructure, and on retrofitting all of the tunnels, including the Transbay tube, new train control systems, relieving crowding, and more. [1][2] BART has problems, but it's not spending 3.5B on lights and cleaning seats, and to suggest otherwise, especially without a citation, is arguing in bad faith. [1] http://www.bart.gov/better-bart/the-plan http://www.bart.gov/better-bart/the-plan [2] https://sfbay.ca/2017/05/11/bart-maps-out-plan-to-spend-3-5-billion-in-bonds/ https://sfbay.ca/2017/05/11/bart-maps-out-plan-to-spend-3-5-...
  - mmanfrin 9y ago
    I was being hyperbolic, and the bit about washing the smell of urine off the seats should have been a real loud indication of that. My point was to highlight that we've allocated them $3.5billion for repairs, essentially; we're getting no new track from that bond (where the comments I was responding to were talking about wholesale new constructions).
tzs 9y ago
I'd guess that part of it is that people tunnels need to keep water out, and drain tunnels want to let water in. Generally keeping water out is a lot harder than letting it in. There may also be extra safety requirements for people tunnels that could raise costs. A tunnel used for cars for example will need some way to deal with accidents. Imagine a big accident in the middle of the tunnel, perhaps with a fire, during rush hour. You'll need some way to get rescuers in even if the public traffic lanes are completely blocked both ways by the accident. If there is also a fire you might need a way for people on foot to quickly get out. These requirements could increase the space requirements for the tunnel, driving up costs. They might also cause limits on where the tunnel can go or how deep it can go, which may drive up costs.
samplonius 9y ago
The project is a number of years old now. The cost of construction projects tend to increase by 15% per year in western countries.

I may not understand the scope of this project, but when I read the $2 billion, my thought was "wow that's cheap!" Consider the Big Dig or the current Seattle tunnel, at $14B+ and $3B+ respectively.

emodendroket 9y ago

To be fair, nobody would have undertaken the Big Dig if the true cost were known up-front. And a debt that's 200% GDP is a unique circumstance.

Cyranix 9y ago
Similarly, the cost of Seattle's tunnel was greatly inflated by the little mistake that halted Bertha.
KGIII 9y ago
The Big Dig may have been closer to the budget, except it kept getting changed. An example would be that they initially planned on shutting down certain routes until a politician decided to announce that traffic flow would not be disrupted. That's great if you're paid to model the traffic but probably not so great if you now have to pay the added expenses.
- dghughes 9y ago
  But that indicates the project was not planned well since change requests for such a large project would have been expected.
  - jrieirjn8383 9y ago
    How does one plan around a politician making it up as they go?
  - KGIII 9y ago
    You can only plan on so much. Notably: I only modeled traffic. I am not to blame. ;-) (I have used that caveat so many times.)
    - dghughes 9y ago
      Maybe so, but I'm referring to the actual project management process group called Planning I don't mean plan in general but the actual official and formal steps of Planning. Then the Monitoring and Control process group will evaluate Planning again each time it loops back, so it makes no sense to me their plan failed, multiple times really for each loop. It's even worse knowing that each time they come back to Planning as part of the process they screwed up yet again.
  - vacri 9y ago
    Politicians will always find a way to promise changes to big ticket items. They're the ones that hold the purse strings. You can't plan for whomever is going to be in office next year ("a week is a long time in politics"). Case in point: it was only 17 months from Trump announcing his candidacy to winning the election - plus his party put up over 20 nominees.
- RHSeeger 9y ago
  Just once, I'd like to see the people that planned something and signed the deals stand up to a politician. Just see the demand to make a huge, costly, unreasonable change (likely for political reasons) and say, "No, fuck it. We planned this, you already spent $3 billion on it, it's not changing now. If you want it changed, it's cancelled, the $3b goes up in smoke, along with your political career and everyone who's ever so much as had lunch with you." I know, it's not realistic... but it would be nice to see. I have this picture in my head of the entire government running like it did in The Pentagon Wars (that's billion, with a "b"...) and nobody can stop it.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Oh, the things I could write... Let's do just that, shall we? Warning, this could take a minute. The Big Dig was pretty much my first project outside of the lab. I am not overly fond of admitting to my part in the project but it could be worse, much worse. Truth be told, we did our job just fine, but I digress. By the time I got involved with the project, it had been in planning stage for quite a while and had undergone a number of revisions and had many funding proposals. My involvement was because I was busy taking traffic modeling into the computer revolution stage. These various plans all needed to be modeled, of course. Even if there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell, it needed to be modeled. Even trivial changes will mean new modeling. It's lucrative work, if you can get it. Though, it's not much more than a fancy plugin today, it's based on some pretty complicated math and can be improved by adding more data points. Again, I digress... Now, being new to the world of working as a contractor for municipalities, I had great expectations from the government representatives. I was quickly disabused of such notions but, again, I digress. The Big Dig had many, many people working on it. It was in the public eye for a fairly short time, compared to the time it lumbered as a meandering project in the planning and pre-planning stage. Yup, they plan to make plans and call it pre-planning. This, of course, goes hand in hand with fact finding, feasibility studies, ecological impact studies, noise studies, and these may very well require constant revision as the plans change. Well, traffic modeling is just one of those things. At any point in time, any contractor, sub-contractor, or affiliate could have gone to the media to say just what you propose. In fact, if you examine the archives, I'm sure you'll find ample evidence of people doing just that very thing. Sure, the amount I made on the project was just a rounding error, but there were a lot of rounding errors. Then, you have people who will fight it, at every step of the way. They will tie it up in court for as long as they can, which means even more revisions. People sometimes wonder where I got my legal knowledge... Some was in academia but the majority of it was through experience. There is tons of waste in government, I think we know that. But, politicians will add more - so long as it gets them votes. Interestingly, in this case, the guy campaigned on prosperity for the local economy. The project must not disrupt local business. Got to make money, after all. Yet, it slowed the project down and probably added a good 10% to the overall budget. The lengths we went to were absurd. And so it goes... Sure, someone may stand up and tell the politicians that they are insane and that they are stupid but, frankly, we've been saying that for years and nobody actually listens. We can't opt out, because we have contracts. Oh, contracts? Yeah, every time you extended the project? I got a nice bonus to help grow my business. Every time I had to run the models again? Thanks... Every time I had to go get more data? Thanks... The Big Dig was what enabled me to get my business up and functioning. We had more contracts before the first year was over and that project seemed to last forever. I can see why people would just go along for the ride. If I'd had more insight and experience, I may have said something. I doubt it old have done any good, I'd have still had contractual obligations and the penalty clauses would have meant I was a poor man today. Well, there is a wall of text. Make of it what you will, I guess. It is summed up with contracts, politicians, municipal workers, and citizen expectations.

yborg 9y ago

Chicago metro Deep Tunnel : $3B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_and_Reservoir_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_and_Reservoir_Plan

akgerber 9y ago
Milwaukee, at well under 1/20th the size of Tokyo, spent $1B on a similar system: https://deeptunnelmke.com/impact/cost/ https://deeptunnelmke.com/impact/cost/

dageshi 9y ago

That's what I thought as well, $2 billion doesn't seem like that much for that kind of project?

flukus 9y ago

I don't know how they handle infrastructure, but whatever they do seems like something the rest of the world could learn from. A little while ago it made international news when they fixed a sink hole in a few days: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/15/asia/fukuoka-sinkhole-filled/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/15/asia/fukuoka-sinkhole-fill...

ceejayoz 9y ago
It should be noted that that sinkhole re-occurred shortly afterwards. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38129691 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38129691
- Danieru 9y ago
  Th original sinkhole was caused by a collapse of a under construction subway tunnel. This second time is just regular settling, there was no second collapse.
yread 9y ago
There is also this: 1,200 Japanese workers convert above-ground train to subway line in a matter of hours. https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/2msfz2/1200_japanese_workers_convert_aboveground_train/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/2msfz2/1200_japanes...

mmanfrin 9y ago

Or the $3.5B approved for BART to upgrade some lights and wash more of the urine smell off the seats.

danans 9y ago
This is (intentionally?) false and misleading. $3.2B of that is going to replacing the system's electrical infrastructure, replacing 90 miles of track infrastructure, and on retrofitting all of the tunnels, including the Transbay tube, new train control systems, relieving crowding, and more. [1][2] BART has problems, but it's not spending 3.5B on lights and cleaning seats, and to suggest otherwise, especially without a citation, is arguing in bad faith. [1] http://www.bart.gov/better-bart/the-plan http://www.bart.gov/better-bart/the-plan [2] https://sfbay.ca/2017/05/11/bart-maps-out-plan-to-spend-3-5-billion-in-bonds/ https://sfbay.ca/2017/05/11/bart-maps-out-plan-to-spend-3-5-...
- mmanfrin 9y ago
  I was being hyperbolic, and the bit about washing the smell of urine off the seats should have been a real loud indication of that. My point was to highlight that we've allocated them $3.5billion for repairs, essentially; we're getting no new track from that bond (where the comments I was responding to were talking about wholesale new constructions).

tzs 9y ago

I'd guess that part of it is that people tunnels need to keep water out, and drain tunnels want to let water in. Generally keeping water out is a lot harder than letting it in. There may also be extra safety requirements for people tunnels that could raise costs. A tunnel used for cars for example will need some way to deal with accidents. Imagine a big accident in the middle of the tunnel, perhaps with a fire, during rush hour. You'll need some way to get rescuers in even if the public traffic lanes are completely blocked both ways by the accident. If there is also a fire you might need a way for people on foot to quickly get out. These requirements could increase the space requirements for the tunnel, driving up costs. They might also cause limits on where the tunnel can go or how deep it can go, which may drive up costs.

samplonius 9y ago

The project is a number of years old now. The cost of construction projects tend to increase by 15% per year in western countries.