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NYT has a great writeup on the East Side Access tunnel. In short, the costs work out to 3.5bn/mile (!), there's ~200 "ghost" workers, and the usual spot of corr

by Hasz 9y ago

NYT has a great writeup on the East Side Access tunnel. In short, the costs work out to 3.5bn/mile (!), there's ~200 "ghost" workers, and the usual spot of corruption and favoritism. It's a mess, and the MTA is deferring regular maintenance to pay for it. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

bsder 9y ago
Agenda much? Is anybody in this thread doing basic math? 200 ghost workers at $100K per year (probably a bit high, thanks) is $20 million per year. Um, so much for that causing the cost overrun. Project management is generally the failure. And, generally, it starts with the asinine "low bid" rules. Everyone successful at dealing with the government knows that you bid as low as possible to get the contract and then you charge them a fortune on the back end. Edit: Okay, even if I BELIEVE the $1,000 per day (and I don't) that's $300K per year and is still only $60 million. Edit2: I have read and searched the original article several times and cannot find that $1,000 number anywhere. Edit3: Oh, it's in an article linked in the comment. And the linked article says that they laid off those contractors once they found them. Project management and oversight failure--again.
- nostromo 9y ago
  $100k isn’t a high estimate at all. The article says they were costing $1k a day. > All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000 every day.
  - trophycase 9y ago
    Ok that's great and all but don't try to derail the major point which is that this pay is an extremely small fraction of the cost.
    - InitialLastName 9y ago
      You're doing that math wrong. Take $73mil a year. Make it $100mil a year, to cover other employment expenses (employees cost more than their salaries). The extension took 10 years, so call that $1billion. That sounds like about 1/7 of the cost of the 2 miles of track, not an "extremely small fraction"
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      Surely you don't think that's the only opportunity in the entire system to siphon off money?
- jonknee 9y ago
  > Agenda much? Is anybody in this thread doing basic math? 200 ghost workers at $100K per year (probably a bit high, thanks) is $20 million per year. Did you bother to read the article? Right at the start it says these 200 workers "were each being paid about $1,000 every day".
  - rco8786 9y ago
    That's still only $73mil/year. A small fraction of the billions.
    - jonknee 9y ago
      And it's just one example of the inefficiencies...
    - potatolicious 9y ago
      That's the tip of the iceberg - the linked article goes into much more detail. Procurement practice and staffing practice are huge contributors to the excessive cost. The projects are massively overstaffed contrasted with comparable projects elsewhere - the article: > "The staffing of tunnel-boring machines came up repeatedly in interviews with contractors. The so-called T.B.M.s are massive contraptions, weighing over 1,000 tons and stretching up to 500 feet from cutting wheel to thrust system, but they largely run automatically. Other cities typically man the machine with fewer than 10 people." > "It is not just tunneling machines that are overstaffed, though. A dozen New York unions work on tunnel creation, station erection and system setup. Each negotiates with the construction companies over labor conditions, without the M.T.A.’s involvement. And each has secured rules that contractors say require more workers than necessary." > "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." The fictional no-show jobs that are pure corruption make up only a small amount of the cost of projects - a much larger portion are jobs are real, but largely unnecessary. The other big practice cited in the article is that the unions do not negotiate with the MTA, but rather with contractors. Contractors, receiving a percentage of the total cost of the contract, have no incentive to reign in labor costs and staffing - and in fact have every incentive to do exactly the opposite. A cheaper, smaller contract employing fewer people is worth less to the contractor. Realistically the city or the MTA should be negotiating with labor unions directly.
- cryptoHash 9y ago
  Hacker news is turning into an Angry place. Why did this get down voted?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Johnny555 9y ago
  Um, so much for that causing the cost overrun. When there's such blatant fraud, like ghost workers, why do you assume that's the only fraud? That sounds s bit like the guy that carries a bomb onto the plane because the chances of a terrorist carrying a second bomb and having 2 bombs on the plane must be astronomical. But his reasoning is as equally faulty as yours -- if he finds it so easy to get a bomb on the plane, so will others.... likewise, if there's blatant fraud going on, it's likely that there's even more, hard to find fraud too.

by Hasz 9y ago

bsder 9y ago

Agenda much? Is anybody in this thread doing basic math? 200 ghost workers at $100K per year (probably a bit high, thanks) is $20 million per year. Um, so much for that causing the cost overrun. Project management is generally the failure. And, generally, it starts with the asinine "low bid" rules. Everyone successful at dealing with the government knows that you bid as low as possible to get the contract and then you charge them a fortune on the back end. Edit: Okay, even if I BELIEVE the $1,000 per day (and I don't) that's $300K per year and is still only $60 million. Edit2: I have read and searched the original article several times and cannot find that $1,000 number anywhere. Edit3: Oh, it's in an article linked in the comment. And the linked article says that they laid off those contractors once they found them. Project management and oversight failure--again.

nostromo 9y ago
$100k isn’t a high estimate at all. The article says they were costing $1k a day. > All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000 every day.
- trophycase 9y ago
  Ok that's great and all but don't try to derail the major point which is that this pay is an extremely small fraction of the cost.
  - InitialLastName 9y ago
    You're doing that math wrong. Take $73mil a year. Make it $100mil a year, to cover other employment expenses (employees cost more than their salaries). The extension took 10 years, so call that $1billion. That sounds like about 1/7 of the cost of the 2 miles of track, not an "extremely small fraction"
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    Surely you don't think that's the only opportunity in the entire system to siphon off money?
jonknee 9y ago
> Agenda much? Is anybody in this thread doing basic math? 200 ghost workers at $100K per year (probably a bit high, thanks) is $20 million per year. Did you bother to read the article? Right at the start it says these 200 workers "were each being paid about $1,000 every day".
- rco8786 9y ago
  That's still only $73mil/year. A small fraction of the billions.
  - jonknee 9y ago
    And it's just one example of the inefficiencies...
  - potatolicious 9y ago
    That's the tip of the iceberg - the linked article goes into much more detail. Procurement practice and staffing practice are huge contributors to the excessive cost. The projects are massively overstaffed contrasted with comparable projects elsewhere - the article: > "The staffing of tunnel-boring machines came up repeatedly in interviews with contractors. The so-called T.B.M.s are massive contraptions, weighing over 1,000 tons and stretching up to 500 feet from cutting wheel to thrust system, but they largely run automatically. Other cities typically man the machine with fewer than 10 people." > "It is not just tunneling machines that are overstaffed, though. A dozen New York unions work on tunnel creation, station erection and system setup. Each negotiates with the construction companies over labor conditions, without the M.T.A.’s involvement. And each has secured rules that contractors say require more workers than necessary." > "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." The fictional no-show jobs that are pure corruption make up only a small amount of the cost of projects - a much larger portion are jobs are real, but largely unnecessary. The other big practice cited in the article is that the unions do not negotiate with the MTA, but rather with contractors. Contractors, receiving a percentage of the total cost of the contract, have no incentive to reign in labor costs and staffing - and in fact have every incentive to do exactly the opposite. A cheaper, smaller contract employing fewer people is worth less to the contractor. Realistically the city or the MTA should be negotiating with labor unions directly.
cryptoHash 9y ago
Hacker news is turning into an Angry place. Why did this get down voted?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Johnny555 9y ago
Um, so much for that causing the cost overrun. When there's such blatant fraud, like ghost workers, why do you assume that's the only fraud? That sounds s bit like the guy that carries a bomb onto the plane because the chances of a terrorist carrying a second bomb and having 2 bombs on the plane must be astronomical. But his reasoning is as equally faulty as yours -- if he finds it so easy to get a bomb on the plane, so will others.... likewise, if there's blatant fraud going on, it's likely that there's even more, hard to find fraud too.