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this is classic example of how U. S. infrastructure projects are slower and more costly than other countries. Other countries would shut this down and build th

this is classic example of how U. S. infrastructure projects are slower and more costly than other countries. Other countries would shut this down and build then reopen, inconveniencing many. We will spend more and keep this going longer instead. Another great example is on 101 freeway in california they just finished replacing a bridge in palo alto. They did not shut the freeway down while it was literally replaced from underneath the cars. It took 3 years and caused horrendous traffic daily. I wonder how fast it could have been done if they shut down 101 entirely on that stretch. i know it’s easy to complain about how long these things take, but what would you rather have?

luckydata 8y ago
Is that what they were doing? OMG that's pure insanity. Traffic in the South Bay and going to the east bay through Dumbarton SUCKED because of that.
jjeaff 8y ago
I'm not familiar with the alternate routes there up north. But I know in Los Angeles, shutting down the 101 essentially shutters the doors of many businesses. Employees simply can't get to work. So I'm not sure it is desirable to shut a road down rather than cause huge delays.
drugme 8y ago
Let's just say there may be other factors to consider besides net project cost. Like, say: - The economic strangulation of entire neighborhoods - Disrupted access to health care and educational opportunities - Disrupted access to one's place of employment (for a great many people) - All of these disproportionately affecting, you know... lower income folks (and not so coincidentally, communities of color). - The spillover affect of all of the above on the regional economy as a whole (and hence -- on tax revenues available to the same governments who need to fund this construction in the first place). Stuff like that.
- ng12 8y ago
  But that's exactly the problem -- local governments are powerless. They can't fix the BQE due to opposition from Brooklyn Heights community groups. Can't build skyscrapers south of Atlantic Terminal because they'd be too close to the community gardens. Can't redevelop lower Manhattan because everything between Houston and 30th is a "historical building". These are all valid concerns but taken together and they prevent anything from getting done. Good intentions, bad results.
  - jermaustin1 8y ago
    >Can't redevelop lower Manhattan because everything between Houston and 30th is a "historical building". Are we now considering "lower Manhattan" to be south of 30th?
    - berbec 8y ago
      That's actually a bigger definition that I usually use. I typically cal 14th or Houston the cutoff.
      - jermaustin1 8y ago
        I'm a Houston and below kind of guy. Once the streets lose their numbers, its lower Manhattan (and I get lost).
        berbec 8y ago
        I find that argument compelling, but I still vote 14th. That's where the west side starts to curve in and the streets stop being rectangles.
        bradleyjg 8y ago
        It's true that there are numbers between Houston and 14th but they no longer necessarily make any sense. Consider the corner of W 4th St and W 13th St for example--that shouldn't exist.
melling 8y ago
The proposed border fence with Mexico is $23 million a mile. China can build a mile of high-speed rail for $30 million. China will have 25,000 miles of HSR before the first part of the California HSR is completed.
- bumby 8y ago
  How much of that price comparison is driven non-direct factors? In other words, is it a function of efficiency in project management or cost-of-living? Simple comparisons can hide a lot of confounding factors.
- pkaye 8y ago
  China is beating all other countries in high speed railway construction. And they really need it too. With the massive population they have, cars and planes are not enough for people to travel/work in their economic centers.
- ac29 8y ago
  Keep in mind the median Chinese income is under $2700 (and average a little over $3000) [0]. That's a huge part of why its cheaper to build things there - labor is an order of magnitude less expensive than in the US. [0] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2018/january/income-living-standards-china https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2018/january/incom...
  - melling 8y ago
    I’m simply pointing out the world’s second largest economy is able to do things that the world’s largest economy can’t. I’m sure there are lots of reasons. I doubt the salaries are the only explanation. With these advantages it’s quite likely that their ability to build infrastructure will enable them to take the number one spot in the world
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      It's one of the advantages of an all-powerful government. The project itself benefits from labor+scale. They are able to scale manufacturing by declaring the size and scope of the project. Similar to what the US did with road-construction... hundreds of contractors appeared to manage interstate projects as it was a well-known, decades long effort. The other factor is that the political environment in China allows for cheap, low friction seizure of land and homes. The US is capable of doing the same thing -- we did it for 50 years to build the interstate system. What is missing today is the will at the Federal level to invest billions. States lack the ability to borrow/print sufficient funds to build like this at scale.
redwood 8y ago
Other countries would just build a new tunnel
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  Is there an example of another country undertaking a project like this? Also, "just dig another tunnel" is not a simple proposition in Manhattan, ridiculous cost of the Second Avenue tunnel aside.
eumenides1 8y ago
You are dammed if you do, and you are damned if you don't. It is a political time bomb no matter who is in charge regardless if the damage was done by an Act of God (Hurricane Sandy). The L Train's shutdown was going to occur for 15 months. That's a long time. I don't doubt that it was necessary, but i'd be livid if i lost my main commute for 15 months. On the flip side, if its going to take 15 months with a full shutdown, it's going to take forever with a partial/slow service. What do people think about a slow of service, then going into a full stop of service with significant communication? People would be nudged to find alternates and spill over isn't going to overwhelm alternate routes.
- guelo 8y ago
  The article says the new plan will take 15-20 months. Sounds like a big win to me.
- noer 8y ago
  One thing to remember is that the Canarsie Line had years of partial shutdowns between 2004 & 2010 to install new signalling & operations technology.
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  > What do people think about a slow of service, then going into a full stop of service with significant communication? People would be nudged to find alternates and spill over isn't going to overwhelm alternate routes. At least in the Brooklyn part, they previously shut down the M to beef it up to be able to handle the new riders. There has been ton of advertisement of the whole process, and descriptions about what to do instead. People have been planning around this for a while. In other words, that's what's already happened.
Gibbon1 8y ago
> I wonder how fast it could have been done if they shut down 101 entirely on that stretch. I worked with a contractor for Cal-trans 25 years ago. I'll give you an answer. One month. That's how long they said an overpass takes if you pre-stage everything and then shut the freeway down and work 24/7 till done. They also say everyone just deals and local businesses don't go under when business slips for a month. But there is a lot of economic damage when construction goes on for years. Edit: Old SF native mentioned to me that West Oakland went under during the BART construction because people couldn't get to their jobs for years. And the Castro switched from a working class neighborhood to a gay neighborhood because workers had trouble getting across Market. Workers left, gays moved up from Polk St.
- cure 8y ago
  They've been replacing highway bridges in MA in much less time. They prefab and build up the new bridge next to the highway, then shut the highway down for a weekend, tear down the old bridge, roll the new bridge in place, anchor, and the highway was ready for use the next Monday morning. Rinse and repeat for the other direction. They did 14 bridges in 10 weekends, cf. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/12mayjune/03.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/12mayjune/...
  - hinkley 8y ago
    Wasn't there an overpass over I-5 in Seattle that got replaced, maybe ten, fifteen years back, due to fire damage from a truck fire? (please don't stop under an overpass if your vehicle is on fire!) I think that took a month or two to replace but the actual bridge work I thought only took about a week and a half. Can't seem to find it on Google. Anyone remember when that was?
    - flomo 8y ago
      Something like that happened in Oakland, CA in 2007. Took 26 days to repair. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/30collapse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/30collapse.html https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/A-MAZE-ING-His-reputation-on-the-line-2592154.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/A-MAZE-ING-His-reputa...
hinkley 8y ago
It sounds like some software war room meetings. Everything is oversubscribed and if you have to take one thing down for maintenance (even a redundant thing) turns into the apocalypse. One system starts emitting 50% more traffic and everything else falls over because everything is running at 80% of capacity all the time. We're trying to combine our multi-region and failover efforts and I just know it'll take about a week for us to have all data centers running at more than 1/n of capacity. And then instead of having no war room when one data center goes offline we'll have one when anything hiccups.
- aaronblohowiak 8y ago
  You should have 1/(n-1) capacity in each region to support any region going down, if n is number of regions. https://youtu.be/q1klRdPh-V8 https://youtu.be/q1klRdPh-V8 Or hit me up if you wanna chant more about this stuff - it is a passion of mine. (And we’re hiring...)
mattynice 8y ago
Is this really a classic example when the article states: The alternative plan was recommended by a panel of experts convened by Mr. Cuomo, who called the new design a “major breakthrough’’ that had been used in Europe but had not been tried in this country. “What these people have designed is the first of its kind in the United States of America,’’ said the governor who was joined by the engineering experts who had come up with the plan.
jseliger 8y ago
If you want some semi-reasonable and informed commentary, the Twitter account 2nd Avenue Sagas is good: https://twitter.com/2AvSagas https://twitter.com/2AvSagas. It's more honest and direct than most overly deferential media coverage.
chrisfinazzo 8y ago
If you're up for an additional dose of stupidity, consider the fact that London shuts down the Underground completely (with a few exceptions) every single night for maintenance and repairs. Every inch is inspected each 48 hours. Why the MTA can't do this kills me and partially explains why people screamed bloody murder about a complete shutdown. The signaling system alone is held together by the equivalent of tape and chewing gum. https://ny.curbed.com/2018/3/29/17176200/new-york-subway-signal-repairs-timeline https://ny.curbed.com/2018/3/29/17176200/new-york-subway-sig... If I was in his shoes I would have just said, "Either deal with the loss of the L line, or agree to tolerate a less than 24/7/365 operating schedule." Alas, the L is the only line I know of which uses PTC, which is designed to alleviate some of these issues. There is no third option.
- pinot 8y ago
  BART gets shut down every night for maintenance inspection, everyone complains about how you can't ride BART at night. You can't win.
  - baddox 8y ago
    The winning condition isn't to get zero complaints.
- rst 8y ago
  NYC has been shutting down particular lines for maintenance on nights and weekends (as needed) as a regular thing over the past few years. (And while I can't speak for London, the US systems that take night-time breaks hardly use them to inspect every inch every night -- they include DC, where negligence has been chronic enough that partial shutdowns to deal with it are stretching into weekdays.)
  - chrisfinazzo 8y ago
    Because it was done on an 'as needed' basis, the distinction I would make is that these shutdowns (IIRC) were to deal with acute issues. A more regularized schedule, where shutdowns are part of normal operation and are documented well in advance might lead to a situation where problems (like those on the L) are less frequent to begin with.
psadauskas 8y ago
In 2003, Indianapolis completely closed the major Interstate artery through downtown over the summer to replace all the bridges at once[1]. It went pretty smoothly, faster than expected and under budget (the contractor was awarded a bonus of $1MM for every day it reopened ahead of schedule). I-65 and I-70 are pretty major arteries across the country, luckily Indy has a convenient ring interstate, 465, that most through traffic was able to utilize, as well as plenty of alternative highways for locals to use to get to and around downtown. I don't imagine something similar would work all that well in the Bay Area, though, since there's really only two routes to take up and down the peninsula, and both are near capacity already. Looks like they did it again last summer, to a lesser extent [2]. I no longer live in the area, so don't have any firsthand knowledge of how smoothly that went. [1]: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/04mar/01.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/04mar/01.c... [2]: https://www.in.gov/indot/3687.htm https://www.in.gov/indot/3687.htm

luckydata 8y ago

Is that what they were doing? OMG that's pure insanity. Traffic in the South Bay and going to the east bay through Dumbarton SUCKED because of that.

jjeaff 8y ago

I'm not familiar with the alternate routes there up north. But I know in Los Angeles, shutting down the 101 essentially shutters the doors of many businesses. Employees simply can't get to work. So I'm not sure it is desirable to shut a road down rather than cause huge delays.

drugme 8y ago

Let's just say there may be other factors to consider besides net project cost. Like, say: - The economic strangulation of entire neighborhoods - Disrupted access to health care and educational opportunities - Disrupted access to one's place of employment (for a great many people) - All of these disproportionately affecting, you know... lower income folks (and not so coincidentally, communities of color). - The spillover affect of all of the above on the regional economy as a whole (and hence -- on tax revenues available to the same governments who need to fund this construction in the first place). Stuff like that.

ng12 8y ago
But that's exactly the problem -- local governments are powerless. They can't fix the BQE due to opposition from Brooklyn Heights community groups. Can't build skyscrapers south of Atlantic Terminal because they'd be too close to the community gardens. Can't redevelop lower Manhattan because everything between Houston and 30th is a "historical building". These are all valid concerns but taken together and they prevent anything from getting done. Good intentions, bad results.
- jermaustin1 8y ago
  >Can't redevelop lower Manhattan because everything between Houston and 30th is a "historical building". Are we now considering "lower Manhattan" to be south of 30th?
  - berbec 8y ago
    That's actually a bigger definition that I usually use. I typically cal 14th or Houston the cutoff.
    - jermaustin1 8y ago
      I'm a Houston and below kind of guy. Once the streets lose their numbers, its lower Manhattan (and I get lost).
      - berbec 8y ago
        I find that argument compelling, but I still vote 14th. That's where the west side starts to curve in and the streets stop being rectangles.
      - bradleyjg 8y ago
        It's true that there are numbers between Houston and 14th but they no longer necessarily make any sense. Consider the corner of W 4th St and W 13th St for example--that shouldn't exist.

melling 8y ago

The proposed border fence with Mexico is $23 million a mile. China can build a mile of high-speed rail for $30 million. China will have 25,000 miles of HSR before the first part of the California HSR is completed.

bumby 8y ago
How much of that price comparison is driven non-direct factors? In other words, is it a function of efficiency in project management or cost-of-living? Simple comparisons can hide a lot of confounding factors.
pkaye 8y ago
China is beating all other countries in high speed railway construction. And they really need it too. With the massive population they have, cars and planes are not enough for people to travel/work in their economic centers.
ac29 8y ago
Keep in mind the median Chinese income is under $2700 (and average a little over $3000) [0]. That's a huge part of why its cheaper to build things there - labor is an order of magnitude less expensive than in the US. [0] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2018/january/income-living-standards-china https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2018/january/incom...
- melling 8y ago
  I’m simply pointing out the world’s second largest economy is able to do things that the world’s largest economy can’t. I’m sure there are lots of reasons. I doubt the salaries are the only explanation. With these advantages it’s quite likely that their ability to build infrastructure will enable them to take the number one spot in the world
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    It's one of the advantages of an all-powerful government. The project itself benefits from labor+scale. They are able to scale manufacturing by declaring the size and scope of the project. Similar to what the US did with road-construction... hundreds of contractors appeared to manage interstate projects as it was a well-known, decades long effort. The other factor is that the political environment in China allows for cheap, low friction seizure of land and homes. The US is capable of doing the same thing -- we did it for 50 years to build the interstate system. What is missing today is the will at the Federal level to invest billions. States lack the ability to borrow/print sufficient funds to build like this at scale.

redwood 8y ago

Other countries would just build a new tunnel

vonmoltke 8y ago
Is there an example of another country undertaking a project like this? Also, "just dig another tunnel" is not a simple proposition in Manhattan, ridiculous cost of the Second Avenue tunnel aside.

eumenides1 8y ago

You are dammed if you do, and you are damned if you don't. It is a political time bomb no matter who is in charge regardless if the damage was done by an Act of God (Hurricane Sandy). The L Train's shutdown was going to occur for 15 months. That's a long time. I don't doubt that it was necessary, but i'd be livid if i lost my main commute for 15 months. On the flip side, if its going to take 15 months with a full shutdown, it's going to take forever with a partial/slow service. What do people think about a slow of service, then going into a full stop of service with significant communication? People would be nudged to find alternates and spill over isn't going to overwhelm alternate routes.

guelo 8y ago
The article says the new plan will take 15-20 months. Sounds like a big win to me.
noer 8y ago
One thing to remember is that the Canarsie Line had years of partial shutdowns between 2004 & 2010 to install new signalling & operations technology.
steveklabnik 8y ago
> What do people think about a slow of service, then going into a full stop of service with significant communication? People would be nudged to find alternates and spill over isn't going to overwhelm alternate routes. At least in the Brooklyn part, they previously shut down the M to beef it up to be able to handle the new riders. There has been ton of advertisement of the whole process, and descriptions about what to do instead. People have been planning around this for a while. In other words, that's what's already happened.

Gibbon1 8y ago

> I wonder how fast it could have been done if they shut down 101 entirely on that stretch. I worked with a contractor for Cal-trans 25 years ago. I'll give you an answer. One month. That's how long they said an overpass takes if you pre-stage everything and then shut the freeway down and work 24/7 till done. They also say everyone just deals and local businesses don't go under when business slips for a month. But there is a lot of economic damage when construction goes on for years. Edit: Old SF native mentioned to me that West Oakland went under during the BART construction because people couldn't get to their jobs for years. And the Castro switched from a working class neighborhood to a gay neighborhood because workers had trouble getting across Market. Workers left, gays moved up from Polk St.

cure 8y ago
They've been replacing highway bridges in MA in much less time. They prefab and build up the new bridge next to the highway, then shut the highway down for a weekend, tear down the old bridge, roll the new bridge in place, anchor, and the highway was ready for use the next Monday morning. Rinse and repeat for the other direction. They did 14 bridges in 10 weekends, cf. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/12mayjune/03.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/12mayjune/...
- hinkley 8y ago
  Wasn't there an overpass over I-5 in Seattle that got replaced, maybe ten, fifteen years back, due to fire damage from a truck fire? (please don't stop under an overpass if your vehicle is on fire!) I think that took a month or two to replace but the actual bridge work I thought only took about a week and a half. Can't seem to find it on Google. Anyone remember when that was?
  - flomo 8y ago
    Something like that happened in Oakland, CA in 2007. Took 26 days to repair. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/30collapse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/30collapse.html https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/A-MAZE-ING-His-reputation-on-the-line-2592154.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/A-MAZE-ING-His-reputa...

hinkley 8y ago

It sounds like some software war room meetings. Everything is oversubscribed and if you have to take one thing down for maintenance (even a redundant thing) turns into the apocalypse. One system starts emitting 50% more traffic and everything else falls over because everything is running at 80% of capacity all the time. We're trying to combine our multi-region and failover efforts and I just know it'll take about a week for us to have all data centers running at more than 1/n of capacity. And then instead of having no war room when one data center goes offline we'll have one when anything hiccups.

aaronblohowiak 8y ago
You should have 1/(n-1) capacity in each region to support any region going down, if n is number of regions. https://youtu.be/q1klRdPh-V8 https://youtu.be/q1klRdPh-V8 Or hit me up if you wanna chant more about this stuff - it is a passion of mine. (And we’re hiring...)

mattynice 8y ago

Is this really a classic example when the article states: The alternative plan was recommended by a panel of experts convened by Mr. Cuomo, who called the new design a “major breakthrough’’ that had been used in Europe but had not been tried in this country. “What these people have designed is the first of its kind in the United States of America,’’ said the governor who was joined by the engineering experts who had come up with the plan.

jseliger 8y ago

If you want some semi-reasonable and informed commentary, the Twitter account 2nd Avenue Sagas is good: https://twitter.com/2AvSagas https://twitter.com/2AvSagas. It's more honest and direct than most overly deferential media coverage.

chrisfinazzo 8y ago

If you're up for an additional dose of stupidity, consider the fact that London shuts down the Underground completely (with a few exceptions) every single night for maintenance and repairs. Every inch is inspected each 48 hours. Why the MTA can't do this kills me and partially explains why people screamed bloody murder about a complete shutdown. The signaling system alone is held together by the equivalent of tape and chewing gum. https://ny.curbed.com/2018/3/29/17176200/new-york-subway-signal-repairs-timeline https://ny.curbed.com/2018/3/29/17176200/new-york-subway-sig... If I was in his shoes I would have just said, "Either deal with the loss of the L line, or agree to tolerate a less than 24/7/365 operating schedule." Alas, the L is the only line I know of which uses PTC, which is designed to alleviate some of these issues. There is no third option.

pinot 8y ago
BART gets shut down every night for maintenance inspection, everyone complains about how you can't ride BART at night. You can't win.
- baddox 8y ago
  The winning condition isn't to get zero complaints.
rst 8y ago
NYC has been shutting down particular lines for maintenance on nights and weekends (as needed) as a regular thing over the past few years. (And while I can't speak for London, the US systems that take night-time breaks hardly use them to inspect every inch every night -- they include DC, where negligence has been chronic enough that partial shutdowns to deal with it are stretching into weekdays.)
- chrisfinazzo 8y ago
  Because it was done on an 'as needed' basis, the distinction I would make is that these shutdowns (IIRC) were to deal with acute issues. A more regularized schedule, where shutdowns are part of normal operation and are documented well in advance might lead to a situation where problems (like those on the L) are less frequent to begin with.

psadauskas 8y ago

In 2003, Indianapolis completely closed the major Interstate artery through downtown over the summer to replace all the bridges at once[1]. It went pretty smoothly, faster than expected and under budget (the contractor was awarded a bonus of $1MM for every day it reopened ahead of schedule). I-65 and I-70 are pretty major arteries across the country, luckily Indy has a convenient ring interstate, 465, that most through traffic was able to utilize, as well as plenty of alternative highways for locals to use to get to and around downtown. I don't imagine something similar would work all that well in the Bay Area, though, since there's really only two routes to take up and down the peninsula, and both are near capacity already. Looks like they did it again last summer, to a lesser extent [2]. I no longer live in the area, so don't have any firsthand knowledge of how smoothly that went. [1]: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/04mar/01.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/04mar/01.c... [2]: https://www.in.gov/indot/3687.htm https://www.in.gov/indot/3687.htm