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Why American Construction Costs Are So High

204 points by cocoflunchy 8y ago

lukewrites 8y ago
Funny that the article doesn't once mention unions as a factor that drives up cost. It's almost as if attacks on unions for making public works slow and expensive are disingenuous.
- magissima 8y ago
  Indeed, the author even wrote another article explicitly refuting the anti-union argument. https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/01/08/meme-weeding-unions-and-construction-costs/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/01/08/meme-weeding-u...
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    It's an interesting refutation. The author explicitly claims the following: 1. Construction unions in New York, specifically, cause horrific and unjustifiable cost increases. 2. But unions in most of the country aren't in New York, and don't have the same power that NY unions do. 3. The problem is that New York is responsible for a lot of construction, and more sensible areas unthinkingly copy New York's awful, union-driven policies -- those other areas don't need to do things New York's way, but they don't have enough construction experience to know better. The author goes on to say that union-busting politics as they exist in the US won't solve the problem, but obviously believes that unions are responsible for significant parts of it. (And in fact says in so many words that in the absence of particularized US politics, union-busting would be somewhere from neutral to productive.) An immediate implication is that if you're worried about getting things built in New York, you should be trying to break up the unions there.
  - vonmoltke 8y ago
    That post has a few problems: - His line about the DART Orange Line is mixing three different projects (the actual Orange Line, the Trinity River Expressway, and the Dulles (VA) Metro extension) - He is mixing actual project costs with projected costs, as if the comparison is equivalent - The biggest problem, though, is that he is using "Right to Work" to mean "no unions", which is ridiculous. He even doubled down on that in the comments with the asinine statement "But in places with zero union density, like Texas". Those are just the problems I saw from ~10 minutes of research on the subject. Considering that, I don't put a lot of faith in his arguments.
    - abduhl 8y ago
      I noted similar issues as well. Particularly for the Silver Line (which he later calls the Orange Line) the guy neglects the fact that this is a government job, despite being in a Right to Work state, and is a federally/publicly funded project and so falls under Davis Bacon Act provisions which are strongly driven by union rates within the region. Especially for Silver Line, union rates in MD/DC have a large impact on the greater DMV area, including the Silver Line.
- dmode 8y ago
  While union can be a factor compared with Asian countries, aren't our costs higher than European countries that have stricter labor laws ?
  - turbinerneiter 8y ago
    Granted, I only know Horror-Stories about US-Unions, but it seems that the Europeans are much ... saner. With some hyperbole, I once read this story about how for a simple job someone had to get three different unionized workers, because each one only can do certain work. At our company we are currently building an automated machine to do quality control on a manufacturing line - we had to deliberately design it in a way that doesn't actually reduce the number of people needed for the job. In i.e. Germany this doesn't seem to be so weird. Here, the unions are way more involved in running the company, it's way more about partnership, doing good for the company, then in making sure to keep privileges. Obviously it's also not perfect, there are other problems for sure.
    - yardie 8y ago
      They're saner by the fact that their media speech laws only extend so far. The US, you can call yourself unbiased news, lie on-air, and then if confronted on it just declare it free speech. There, inventing or grossly embellishing stories will get you sued and fined.
      - chii 8y ago
        Free speech only pertains to citizens when the govt is trying to shut it down. News outlets calling themselves unbiased is not invoking free speech at all. Anyone can declare themselves anything - it's called lying.
  - ska 8y ago
    In my limited semi-personal experience, (some) European countries have stronger labor laws but a much less adversarial model of union & management collaboration, which can include creative ways of reducing costs (so long as the benefit of same is distributed equitably).
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paulddraper 8y ago
> Politicians in the United States do not have an incentives to control costs. Do any other politicians have systemic incentive to control costs? If so, how?
- addicted 8y ago
  Let’s take the UK for example. Grayling, the transport minister, is currently getting pressure from all sides and definitely from the public to quit his post because of his poor decision making that led to a 33m pound out of court settlement. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, is facing questions and tremendous public pressure on a daily basis for her austerity led decisions to cut the police budget (something that would be unheard of in the US). They have tremendous incentives to cut costs. In fact, the UK, which was also booming (growth which has slowed since the Brexit vote, however) over the past 5-6 years, continues to be engaged in austerity measures. Clearly something there is incentivizing UK politicians to pay attention to costs. I think part of the reason is that in the UK you have (a) a populace that believes that government should be providing services where it is effective, and as a result, considers reductions in services a major negative against the government, and (b) you have actual ministers who ar directly responsible for specific areas, such as transport, who can be held accountable by the public. Not being able to control costs means not being able to provide services effectively, which in turn leads to the government failing in elections. In the US, there isn’t a transport minister to point to when the California HSR fails, which means responsibility and blame is diffused. Maybe that’s where the difference lies. Also, contrary to what some believe, most people who believe in government providing certain services don’t believe in the government being inefficient in doing so, and will hold that inefficiency against the government since it means they get less, or substandard services.
chanakya 8y ago
It'll be useful if the title could clarify that this is about metro/subway construction costs in large cities, rather than all construction costs in America.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  Indeed, residential/commercial construction costs are actually relatively low historically speaking. (The land that you build it on is another matter.)
  - the_economist 8y ago
    https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/whats-up-with-construction-costs https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/whats-up-with-construction-co... Real construction costs are 50% higher than they were in the 1950s, according to our analysis.
    - lainga 8y ago
      Off topic, what led you to snag "the_economist" for BuildZoom?
      - the_economist 8y ago
        This is not a company account.
    - clairity 8y ago
      yes, that's probably about right (based on my remembrance leading product for cost estimators widely used in appraisal & assessment). construction costs tended to beat inflation by a bit, enough to compound to 50%-ish over 60-70 years.
    - paulddraper 8y ago
      That is attributed entirely to increased labor costs and almost all of that in increasingly large urban centers (which also have a lot of construction). So basically.... Apples to apples it hasn't gone up. It's simply that people are buying more construction in urban areas.
jonawesomegreen 8y ago
News that the Transbay Terminal is something like $300 million over budget should not come as a shock to anyone. We always knew the initial estimate was way under the real cost. Just like we never had a real cost for the Central Subway or the Bay Bridge or any other massive construction project. So get off it. In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in. - Willie Brown (former SF mayor) I think the inability of politicians to have a real conversation about costs is a big part of high construction costs. Without this sort of difficult conversation it's hard to plan and try to mitigate things that might cause ballooning costs because you need to pretend that don't exist in the first case.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  The politicians can’t have a real conversation about costs because the legal and political complexity of our society has reached such high levels that it is impossible to accurately project costs multiple years into the future.
  - pas 8y ago
    It's possible, to a degree that would be enough. But doing a feasibility study that gives an estimate is much different from doing a full plan, which is still quite diferent from having fresh surveyed maps and ready to build blueprints, and all of that is just before doing the first strike with a backhoe. And it's no wonder everything seems so complex, because the people who are able to cut through the bullshit are usually ignored, because people don't like to accept the fundamentals. They cling to their biased beliefs about costs, project management, design, estimation methods, etc.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  Thats purely corruption. I always explain to my argentinian friends, used to the petty corruption of putting friends and family in public positions, that the us does corruption at a much bigger scale: at the legal one. The transbay terminal is one of the biggest rip-offs ever. It cost the revenue of sales taxes of the city for years. And it doesn't even work, while the "transient" station that must have cost almost nothing works perfectly fine.
bluedino 8y ago
One of my first jobs in IT was for a big general contractor. We built schools, hotels, restaurants, you name it. Whenever we had a government project, like a building for the county, a jail, new secretary of state/dmv office...we went way over budget and way over schedule. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. We'd have a 'groundbreaking ceremony' and then not be able to actually dig at the site for 12 more days because permits got tripped up. How can the government not approve their own permits on time?
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >How can the government not approve their own permits on time? I'd wager that "internal customers" aren't buying donuts to accompany their permits and doing all the other borderline corruption type things you need to do in order to get government do work with you in a timely manner. Edit: Having the person at the desk remember your company as "the one that brings donuts" and the mid-level manager remembering your company as "the one that sponsored my son's little league team" don't has the potential to make a massive difference. For a company that does a lot of business with government spending a few grand a year making sure the people of government see you in a positive light is well worth it.
- jimktrains2 8y ago
  "the government" is more a loose confederation of public agencies. They're not a monolith that has the ability to know everything about everything, especially at the local and county levels. I don't know the specifics of that case, but last minute citizen protests or protests that weren't able to be resolved quickly enough are another issue. It's also not like this doesn't happen in the private sector. A company bough some land on the main road where I am, razed the building, graded, and then stopped for almost 2 years now because the board won't change the zoning for them. (Which is the right decision imho.)
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    What are they putting in, a slaughterhouse? Maybe a brothel? What horrible business can't be accepted on "the main road"?
abduhl 8y ago
I haven’t had time to read through the entire article in detail but my skimming indicates that the article fails to identify what I believe is the true reason for tunneling increases in the USA: third parties and their ability to sue projects. This increases costs due to risk of lawsuits/challenges and excessive amounts of money put towards mitigating this risk. This continues from procurement through design and through construction. Environmental concerns have ironically been coopted into this category by NIMBY folks.
- abduhl 8y ago
  Also just as a point on High Speed Rail: this job was put out to bid and awarded before the owner had secured property access for the contractor (Tutor) and Tutor sought damages for this legitimate delay. Shame on Tutor for being good at playing the game that California has set up I guess?
- mcphage 8y ago
  > the article fails to identify what I believe is the true reason for tunneling increases in the USA: third parties and their ability to sue projects Why do you believe that's the true reason? I have no idea if it is or if it isn't, I'm just wondering where you got that from.
  - abduhl 8y ago
    I have worked in the tunneling industry for nearly a decade designing, building, and procuring these jobs. Tunnels are generally the last option chosen when third parties are the concern. They are the most expensive option, by far, unless other factors (environmental, public impact, political perception, etc.) are considered. Therefore, once you arrive at the decision to use a tunnel, it becomes clear that third party impacts are a driver. From that point it becomes a battle of easement/property acquisition during procurement and with each easement or third party agreement comes promises that must be made to that third party. This translates into design mandates which need to be held and designed around which translates into additional design costs and then additional construction costs. If we don't hold to these agreements then litigation ensues, and so we would rather overdesign to reduce the risk profile and position the project better for the inevitable lawsuit. Other countries do not have similar litigation risks. Or at least, that's what my European contemporaries tell me when they come to work in America.
vuln 8y ago
Regulation.
- cortesoft 8y ago
  Yeah, wanting building not to fall down really slows down construction.
sct202 8y ago
The point about the size of the stations is very obvious in Chicago. Most of the stations were built 100 years ago, and are roughly the same size. A handful of stations have been rebuilt--at great cost. At some of the older stations, you can't barely walk 2 people side by side on the platform without feeling like you're about to fall on to the tracks. The new stations by comparison are 4 times as wide and have gigantic entrances.
- perardi 8y ago
  Can't wait to see how fantastically expensive the Uptown and Edgewater station reconstruction ends up being. (They should have thrown in another billion to rebuild the Sheridan stop. Now that's a narrow platform.)
- secabeen 8y ago
  The interesting question is, do we need the huge stations? If that's a the difference between a $80mil project and a $400mil project, could we build the smaller ones?
sys_64738 8y ago
I found this article really fascinating. 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-...
burlesona 8y ago
Ok, this is worth reading for the section on “Incuriosity” alone. It’s worth quoting in its entirety but too long to paste here, so I’ll just say if you do nothing else, click through to the article and read that section.
- Camillo 8y ago
  That part stood out to me, too. It's a phenomenon I've been noticing for a long time when talking to Americans (even here on HN), but I think this is the first time I've seen an American recognize it.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    That's because most Americans have never traveled overseas, let alone lived and worked there. The few of us who have, often notice the same thing.
- meej 8y ago
  Agreed, though I was surprised it didn't point to a cause, which I might identify as American Exceptionalism. No need to be curious about how other countries do things when you're operating under a mythology that your country is the best.
  - mattlondon 8y ago
    +1 to this. As an outsider it appears to me that this "we're the best in the world!"/"our unique freedoms" propaganda is drummed into people from a young age without anyone ever questioning it. Its no wonder there is this pervasive "what could we ever learn from them? We're the best." mentality. The other common excuse is size. "Oh no, we can't have trains like that! We just such a big state that won't work here!" Japan is roughly the size of California. EU is roughly 10x the size of California. Both are criss-crossed by high-speed rail.
dashundchen 8y ago
Regarding point 9 about the inability to look outside North America. I always wondered why it seems transit agencies haven't looked to bring in teams of people who have managed/built successful projects in Europe, Asia, or even closer like Mexico City. California HSR for example went to solicit bids from foreign operators and selected Deutsche Bahn/German Railways. But AFAIK the initial design work/RFP/proposals were done by California and domestic engineers, who obviously wouldn't have much, if any, experience in designing or managing HSR construction. Would an experienced team be able to overcome a very different regulatory and political environment to make a difference in cost and time?
- wil421 8y ago
  I think you’re confused about what these projects really are. They are not construction projects they are job creation programs. Both the unions and politicians use them as such to bolster their own interests.
  - pas 8y ago
    That's natural. Unions and politicians will always act in their best interest. And a HSR project seems to be in their best interest. Unions see it as good jobs, politicians see it as something for their constituents. Of course this backfires when the NIMBY folks don't want anything built, and those who are okay with the idea want it done cheaper. (So the unions are not going to be happy.) So the project stalls.
- dashundchen 8y ago
  Replying to myself to add- I wonder if it extends down to the construction itself (not that a project would hire the workers abroad, but maybe mixing up supervisors/foreman/leads or sending them for training). Orders of magnitude smaller in scale but in my observations, even things like urban sidewalk, sewer and road construction seem to be conducted entirely differently in Germany, for example, vs North America. Is the difference in construction specs? Formal vocational education of trades and apprenticeships vs the US? I don't know, but the final products seem to be much higher quality than public projects in the US and I doubt they're spending multiples more.
alwaysdoit 8y ago
> In Paris, as well as Athens, Madrid, Mexico City, Caracas, Santiago, Copenhagen, Budapest, and I imagine other cities for which I can’t find this information, metro stations are built cut-and-cover... There is extensive street disruption, for about 18 months in the case of Paris, but the merchants and residents get a subway station at the end of the works. The cost of using a more expensive method ($750M per station vs $110) of building in order to prevent disruption to car traffic is almost always attributed to the cost of public transportation. But it seems to me like it at least partially should be considered a cost of maintaining car infrastructure.
- vinay427 8y ago
  I'm actually curious: how do those businesses, particularly smaller ones, survive 18 months of highly impeded traffic?
  - lostapathy 8y ago
    If parent poster's numbers are even in the right ballpark, we could just directly subsidize the small businesses that are disrupted and still come out money ahead.
    - sitkack 8y ago
      Some transit could pay for itself by not being built and paying the people who would ride it to stay home. There is a lack of total system optimization.
  - bregma 8y ago
    It turns out small businesses make money from customers who stop in, not people driving by in automobiles. I had no problem walking into shops at metro station construction sites in Copenhagen or Budapest.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Many of them do not. I know the owner of a business who is really struggling for this reason.
deleted 8y ago
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objektif 8y ago
NYC MTA is a great example of why. We need to put blame on all parties involved politicians, corporations and labor unions. Anyone who unconditionally defends labor is naive at best. NYT reports: “Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show.” Source: 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-...
- rjkennedy98 8y ago
  I am certainly of the left, but Labor Unions have been a huge contributor to so many problems in the United States. I'm not against people getting a living wage, ect but Labor Unions have always been about getting "theirs". A huge reason the US doesn't have universal healthcare is Labor Unions who preferred that they got good healthcare benefits from their work. A huge reason we have major infrastructure problems in the US is because of the absurd cost of labor. Nothing gets built in most big cities unless Labor Unions are involved and they rip everyone off. This makes public transit unworkable, cities unlivable and unaffordable, ect.
  - objektif 8y ago
    I also stand at the far left of political spectrum and in my experience labor unions completely abuse their positions. I think it is way past time to find another way to provide decent wages to workers.
    - ams6110 8y ago
      Why are unions even permitted on public infrastructure projects? All municipal projects that I have heard about in recent years had extensive work rules, safety, "living wage" requirements, etc. as conditions of the bid.
    - Thlom 8y ago
      I don't know much about unions in the US, but it seems like they are organised very differently than in Europe. We don't have these kinds of problems over here.At least not that I'm aware of.
3pt14159 8y ago
I actually have a reasonably large amount of knowledge on this topic. I took a break after the dot com bubble burst through structural / construction engineering[0] before returning and my brother has been and continues to be in charge of some mega projects for EllisDon. It is certainly worse in America, but it's not great in Canada either. The issue is this: There is no incentive alignment at multiple levels of these projects. For example, I've worked with a couple great unions[1] but overall unions slow things down. There have been times where I've been reprimanded for lending a utility knife to open a pallet to a unionized worker. It's too adversarial here and it really does slow things down. I've seen countless work-arounds to the rules just so employers can pay people that work harder more. For example, only valued employees are offered snow plowing work in the winter when construction is slow, but these tactics don't scale. Then, on the other side, we do not pay our public servants enough and nor do we have high enough standards for their work. There are good public servants, to be true, but that's essentially random chance. It isn't because we've intentionally created a culture of achievement or excellence in our public works departments. In both cases firing someone is too difficult. I'm not saying it should be easy, but I've known people that show up for work at 10:30am and leave, no joke, at 2:00pm. It's completely ridiculous. Then there is the issue of building for the first time versus expanding or maintaining. First time construction is much easier. Standards are lower, there is less stuff in the way, everyone in the city is excited for the new thing so people make sacrifices. A new subway or sports stadium brings in business to the surrounding area, so part of the cost can be pushed on to local property owners in the area. Thirty years later when the soffit is cracked because subsurface water wasn't as expected there is none of that stuff. Just some angry commuters and shop owners wondering why it is taking so long. I'm starting to think that capital projects, especially subterranean ones, are inherently worse than smaller alternatives. They're so expensive to maintain and once they're in there is no going back. I'd rather have lots of bike lanes or streetcars than subways. We could build a lot of bike lanes for the same cost of a subway, and even have them covered so snow and rain wouldn't be annoyances. [0] I worked on lots of stuff for the TTC, including subway stations, and some stuff for the City of Toronto. [1] Electrical worker union IBEW Local 353 was especially great because they pushed their employees to work hard. In exchange, they were able to negotiate default conditions like nine-hour, four-day work weeks. It fostered a sense of pride in their trade and work.
dreamache 8y ago
Government. I didn't read it, but that's the reason.
- bsder 8y ago
  And you are wrong, so go read the article.
thisisweirdok 8y ago
The Big Dig in Boston was originally estimated to cost $8 billion. People were upset about this. There were multiple problems along the way. It ultimately ended up costing $22 billion. People were also upset about this. At the end of the day? It was an awesome project. They completely buried a highway that cut through the city, and added a ton of green space downtown (The Greenway). The city is better for it. Taxpayers would never have allowed it if they had their way. We need a similar program to revitalize the MBTA. It should be done regardless of the cost. I will happily pay more real estate taxes and highway tolls for the rest of my life to support it.
- acomjean 8y ago
  It is a great project and allowed the city to expand into places that were very inaccessible (south boston). Having a second tunnel to the airport is actually the best part in my opinion. People here are VERY untrusting of any government projects because of this project. See the Olympic bid that was supposed to have all sorts of public sector improvements rejected (well who rejected who is another story) But traffic on 93 (the tunneled highway) is back or worse than pre-upgrade levels (some of the worst traffic in the country here in Boston), the public transit promised as part of the project is finally being worked on (green line extension) but it all seems like its not enough. Housing prices in the Boston area are at SanFran/NYC levels. We need more infrasturure in boston. We have good proposals (North-South rail link, south shore rail) but lack a governor /politicians who will be honest and tell people they need to pay for this stuff. Public transit is so bad here that a running club raced one of the green line trolleys (I'll let you guess who wins) https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/04/race-pits-runners-against-green-line-trolley/Ist6AENvUdt71FdIkFtaGN/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/04/race-pits-runne...
- aero142 8y ago
  But is it $22 billion better?
  - eropple 8y ago
    Profoundly, yes. Downtown Boston was a dismal place when I was a kid. It was dark. The overheads sucked so, so hard. I've worked downtown for years now and it's a pleasant place to be.
MarkSweep 8y ago
The part about mezzanines struck me. BART has huge barren mezzanines. There is not one shop in the entire station. The other subways I've visited in the US (Boston, DC, NYC) also don't have any shops except in some of the largest like Grand Central or Penn station. Compare this with subways and train stations in Japan which often have shops in the mezzanines and sometimes at the platform. There are always at least vending machines at the platform. I don't think this is unique to Japan, I recall there being shops in the station in Korea, Taiwan, and London too. Why do the stations in our supposed capitalistic society not have any shops?
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Perhaps because other local interests don't want competition?
- bane 8y ago
  I think part of it has to do with how the lines are financed and built. In Japan and Korea for example, individual companies own the lines and stations and basically use them to funnel customers to shopping areas where they actually make their money. In the U.S. they are built as public works projects and owned in the end by some local municipal authority. Since they are public property, there's no incentive/ability to conduct commerce there. It would be like having a McDonalds inside of a library.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    As far as I know, stations in Western EU are also mostly public works, and they do have shops. As an example, Brussels-Central has multiple coffeeshops (including a Starbucks), a waffle kiosk, a fast-food joint, a newsstand, and even a small supermarket. And funny you should mention libraries; my local public library has a private café inside (not in the reading area, of course).
    - bane 8y ago
      Ha! I stand corrected! In the U.S. at least it's pretty rare to see shops of any kind inside of subway stations or libraries. There's a few news stands in some NYC subway stations, but not many. I've been throughout much of Europe and don't recall seeing many stores in most of the subway systems -- but maybe I wasn't paying attention. But there will be some kind of place to get a bite in many train and even bus stations.
strangemonad 8y ago
“That said, having spent the last nine years looking at topline costs and a few itemized breakdowns does let me reach some initial conclusions, ones that I believe are robust to new data.“ So... a hypothesis?
ghobs91 8y ago
Those who blame it squarely on unions, explain how Europe has strong unions and yet construction there is orders of magnitude cheaper than in the US? It's because there isn't a proper bidding process. Politicians just give sweetheart bloated contracts to the same contractors every time, and those contractors then "donate to their campaign". If they instead used things like sealed bids and had contractors compete against eachother, it wouldn't cost $1B per mile for NYC's 2nd avenue subway, absurd. NY Governor Cuomo surprisingly called this out recently, describing it as a "transit industrial complex": https://nypost.com/2019/01/04/mta-officials-are-fuming-over-cuomos-brazen-blindsides/ https://nypost.com/2019/01/04/mta-officials-are-fuming-over-...
- pas 8y ago
  Unions do what unions can. It's amazing that NYC MTA uses unionized labor for things that could be easily outsourced/contracted. This strange example of market failure points to us having insufficient information to understand the real transactions. MTA must get something else too from the unions to abide by their rules. (Allegedly it's Cuomo himself who benefits, thus he pressures the MTA.)
- Nitramp 8y ago
  There are unions, and then there are unions. In Germany, labour unions are strong, but things like union security agreements are unheard of (and I was amazed something like that would exist when I first heard of it). The stories you read about corruption in US labour unions (admittedly subject to selection bias) are unheard of over here. There are strong laws and customs around arbitration processes, and a culture of unions considering survival and success of the business above pushing through maximal demands. E.g. in a prolonged strike, if employers and union are unable to resolve the conflict, after some time arbitration by a generally respected elder statesman kicks in. They hear both sides, and then make a binding decision, which usually is generally accepted. It all seems a bit more balanced. I'm not sure how much that transfers to other European countries. France famously has a different culture around strikes and unions, but doesn't seem to be representative (https://www.etui.org/Services/Strikes-Map-of-Europe https://www.etui.org/Services/Strikes-Map-of-Europe).
drpgq 8y ago
Interesting about the stations. My Ontario city is close to starting an LRT system and the station costs for just those seem kind of high. We recently added a new station for the GO regional railway transit system that currently has two trains a day and I think it was something like $50 million Canadian. I can understand needing an elevator for disability, but it could have started as something simple besides that.
sitkack 8y ago
This is refreshingly low level and candid. I would welcome this kind of analysis in more places. Please emulate this document!
charliebrownau 8y ago
If you consider cost of living and cost of construction is high in USA Go live AU or NZ or CA for 6-12 months
stevespang 8y ago
The title should include the words MASS TRANSIT, or SUBWAY
pimmen 8y ago
Americans not wanting to learn from other countries is just so puzzling to me. If I ever get an answer to why it's often "the US is much bigger than Sweden, it wouldn't work here" to which I reply "then why don't your states look at the European countries? Germany and France have way more people than any US state" to which I get some defeatist drivel about that too. Meanwhile in Brazil, China and India curiosity reigns.

204 points by cocoflunchy 8y ago

Funny that the article doesn't once mention unions as a factor that drives up cost. It's almost as if attacks on unions for making public works slow and expensive are disingenuous.

magissima 8y ago
Indeed, the author even wrote another article explicitly refuting the anti-union argument. https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/01/08/meme-weeding-unions-and-construction-costs/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/01/08/meme-weeding-u...
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  It's an interesting refutation. The author explicitly claims the following: 1. Construction unions in New York, specifically, cause horrific and unjustifiable cost increases. 2. But unions in most of the country aren't in New York, and don't have the same power that NY unions do. 3. The problem is that New York is responsible for a lot of construction, and more sensible areas unthinkingly copy New York's awful, union-driven policies -- those other areas don't need to do things New York's way, but they don't have enough construction experience to know better. The author goes on to say that union-busting politics as they exist in the US won't solve the problem, but obviously believes that unions are responsible for significant parts of it. (And in fact says in so many words that in the absence of particularized US politics, union-busting would be somewhere from neutral to productive.) An immediate implication is that if you're worried about getting things built in New York, you should be trying to break up the unions there.
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  That post has a few problems: - His line about the DART Orange Line is mixing three different projects (the actual Orange Line, the Trinity River Expressway, and the Dulles (VA) Metro extension) - He is mixing actual project costs with projected costs, as if the comparison is equivalent - The biggest problem, though, is that he is using "Right to Work" to mean "no unions", which is ridiculous. He even doubled down on that in the comments with the asinine statement "But in places with zero union density, like Texas". Those are just the problems I saw from ~10 minutes of research on the subject. Considering that, I don't put a lot of faith in his arguments.
  - abduhl 8y ago
    I noted similar issues as well. Particularly for the Silver Line (which he later calls the Orange Line) the guy neglects the fact that this is a government job, despite being in a Right to Work state, and is a federally/publicly funded project and so falls under Davis Bacon Act provisions which are strongly driven by union rates within the region. Especially for Silver Line, union rates in MD/DC have a large impact on the greater DMV area, including the Silver Line.
dmode 8y ago
While union can be a factor compared with Asian countries, aren't our costs higher than European countries that have stricter labor laws ?
- turbinerneiter 8y ago
  Granted, I only know Horror-Stories about US-Unions, but it seems that the Europeans are much ... saner. With some hyperbole, I once read this story about how for a simple job someone had to get three different unionized workers, because each one only can do certain work. At our company we are currently building an automated machine to do quality control on a manufacturing line - we had to deliberately design it in a way that doesn't actually reduce the number of people needed for the job. In i.e. Germany this doesn't seem to be so weird. Here, the unions are way more involved in running the company, it's way more about partnership, doing good for the company, then in making sure to keep privileges. Obviously it's also not perfect, there are other problems for sure.
  - yardie 8y ago
    They're saner by the fact that their media speech laws only extend so far. The US, you can call yourself unbiased news, lie on-air, and then if confronted on it just declare it free speech. There, inventing or grossly embellishing stories will get you sued and fined.
    - chii 8y ago
      Free speech only pertains to citizens when the govt is trying to shut it down. News outlets calling themselves unbiased is not invoking free speech at all. Anyone can declare themselves anything - it's called lying.
- ska 8y ago
  In my limited semi-personal experience, (some) European countries have stronger labor laws but a much less adversarial model of union & management collaboration, which can include creative ways of reducing costs (so long as the benefit of same is distributed equitably).
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paulddraper 8y ago

> Politicians in the United States do not have an incentives to control costs. Do any other politicians have systemic incentive to control costs? If so, how?

addicted 8y ago
Let’s take the UK for example. Grayling, the transport minister, is currently getting pressure from all sides and definitely from the public to quit his post because of his poor decision making that led to a 33m pound out of court settlement. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, is facing questions and tremendous public pressure on a daily basis for her austerity led decisions to cut the police budget (something that would be unheard of in the US). They have tremendous incentives to cut costs. In fact, the UK, which was also booming (growth which has slowed since the Brexit vote, however) over the past 5-6 years, continues to be engaged in austerity measures. Clearly something there is incentivizing UK politicians to pay attention to costs. I think part of the reason is that in the UK you have (a) a populace that believes that government should be providing services where it is effective, and as a result, considers reductions in services a major negative against the government, and (b) you have actual ministers who ar directly responsible for specific areas, such as transport, who can be held accountable by the public. Not being able to control costs means not being able to provide services effectively, which in turn leads to the government failing in elections. In the US, there isn’t a transport minister to point to when the California HSR fails, which means responsibility and blame is diffused. Maybe that’s where the difference lies. Also, contrary to what some believe, most people who believe in government providing certain services don’t believe in the government being inefficient in doing so, and will hold that inefficiency against the government since it means they get less, or substandard services.

chanakya 8y ago

It'll be useful if the title could clarify that this is about metro/subway construction costs in large cities, rather than all construction costs in America.

paulddraper 8y ago
Indeed, residential/commercial construction costs are actually relatively low historically speaking. (The land that you build it on is another matter.)
- the_economist 8y ago
  https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/whats-up-with-construction-costs https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/whats-up-with-construction-co... Real construction costs are 50% higher than they were in the 1950s, according to our analysis.
  - lainga 8y ago
    Off topic, what led you to snag "the_economist" for BuildZoom?
    - the_economist 8y ago
      This is not a company account.
  - clairity 8y ago
    yes, that's probably about right (based on my remembrance leading product for cost estimators widely used in appraisal & assessment). construction costs tended to beat inflation by a bit, enough to compound to 50%-ish over 60-70 years.
  - paulddraper 8y ago
    That is attributed entirely to increased labor costs and almost all of that in increasingly large urban centers (which also have a lot of construction). So basically.... Apples to apples it hasn't gone up. It's simply that people are buying more construction in urban areas.

jonawesomegreen 8y ago

News that the Transbay Terminal is something like $300 million over budget should not come as a shock to anyone. We always knew the initial estimate was way under the real cost. Just like we never had a real cost for the Central Subway or the Bay Bridge or any other massive construction project. So get off it. In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in. - Willie Brown (former SF mayor) I think the inability of politicians to have a real conversation about costs is a big part of high construction costs. Without this sort of difficult conversation it's hard to plan and try to mitigate things that might cause ballooning costs because you need to pretend that don't exist in the first case.

enraged_camel 8y ago
The politicians can’t have a real conversation about costs because the legal and political complexity of our society has reached such high levels that it is impossible to accurately project costs multiple years into the future.
- pas 8y ago
  It's possible, to a degree that would be enough. But doing a feasibility study that gives an estimate is much different from doing a full plan, which is still quite diferent from having fresh surveyed maps and ready to build blueprints, and all of that is just before doing the first strike with a backhoe. And it's no wonder everything seems so complex, because the people who are able to cut through the bullshit are usually ignored, because people don't like to accept the fundamentals. They cling to their biased beliefs about costs, project management, design, estimation methods, etc.
conanbatt 8y ago
Thats purely corruption. I always explain to my argentinian friends, used to the petty corruption of putting friends and family in public positions, that the us does corruption at a much bigger scale: at the legal one. The transbay terminal is one of the biggest rip-offs ever. It cost the revenue of sales taxes of the city for years. And it doesn't even work, while the "transient" station that must have cost almost nothing works perfectly fine.

bluedino 8y ago

One of my first jobs in IT was for a big general contractor. We built schools, hotels, restaurants, you name it. Whenever we had a government project, like a building for the county, a jail, new secretary of state/dmv office...we went way over budget and way over schedule. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. We'd have a 'groundbreaking ceremony' and then not be able to actually dig at the site for 12 more days because permits got tripped up. How can the government not approve their own permits on time?

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>How can the government not approve their own permits on time? I'd wager that "internal customers" aren't buying donuts to accompany their permits and doing all the other borderline corruption type things you need to do in order to get government do work with you in a timely manner. Edit: Having the person at the desk remember your company as "the one that brings donuts" and the mid-level manager remembering your company as "the one that sponsored my son's little league team" don't has the potential to make a massive difference. For a company that does a lot of business with government spending a few grand a year making sure the people of government see you in a positive light is well worth it.
jimktrains2 8y ago
"the government" is more a loose confederation of public agencies. They're not a monolith that has the ability to know everything about everything, especially at the local and county levels. I don't know the specifics of that case, but last minute citizen protests or protests that weren't able to be resolved quickly enough are another issue. It's also not like this doesn't happen in the private sector. A company bough some land on the main road where I am, razed the building, graded, and then stopped for almost 2 years now because the board won't change the zoning for them. (Which is the right decision imho.)
- jessaustin 8y ago
  What are they putting in, a slaughterhouse? Maybe a brothel? What horrible business can't be accepted on "the main road"?

abduhl 8y ago

I haven’t had time to read through the entire article in detail but my skimming indicates that the article fails to identify what I believe is the true reason for tunneling increases in the USA: third parties and their ability to sue projects. This increases costs due to risk of lawsuits/challenges and excessive amounts of money put towards mitigating this risk. This continues from procurement through design and through construction. Environmental concerns have ironically been coopted into this category by NIMBY folks.

abduhl 8y ago
Also just as a point on High Speed Rail: this job was put out to bid and awarded before the owner had secured property access for the contractor (Tutor) and Tutor sought damages for this legitimate delay. Shame on Tutor for being good at playing the game that California has set up I guess?
mcphage 8y ago
> the article fails to identify what I believe is the true reason for tunneling increases in the USA: third parties and their ability to sue projects Why do you believe that's the true reason? I have no idea if it is or if it isn't, I'm just wondering where you got that from.
- abduhl 8y ago
  I have worked in the tunneling industry for nearly a decade designing, building, and procuring these jobs. Tunnels are generally the last option chosen when third parties are the concern. They are the most expensive option, by far, unless other factors (environmental, public impact, political perception, etc.) are considered. Therefore, once you arrive at the decision to use a tunnel, it becomes clear that third party impacts are a driver. From that point it becomes a battle of easement/property acquisition during procurement and with each easement or third party agreement comes promises that must be made to that third party. This translates into design mandates which need to be held and designed around which translates into additional design costs and then additional construction costs. If we don't hold to these agreements then litigation ensues, and so we would rather overdesign to reduce the risk profile and position the project better for the inevitable lawsuit. Other countries do not have similar litigation risks. Or at least, that's what my European contemporaries tell me when they come to work in America.

vuln 8y ago

Regulation.

cortesoft 8y ago
Yeah, wanting building not to fall down really slows down construction.

sct202 8y ago

The point about the size of the stations is very obvious in Chicago. Most of the stations were built 100 years ago, and are roughly the same size. A handful of stations have been rebuilt--at great cost. At some of the older stations, you can't barely walk 2 people side by side on the platform without feeling like you're about to fall on to the tracks. The new stations by comparison are 4 times as wide and have gigantic entrances.

perardi 8y ago
Can't wait to see how fantastically expensive the Uptown and Edgewater station reconstruction ends up being. (They should have thrown in another billion to rebuild the Sheridan stop. Now that's a narrow platform.)
secabeen 8y ago
The interesting question is, do we need the huge stations? If that's a the difference between a $80mil project and a $400mil project, could we build the smaller ones?

sys_64738 8y ago

I found this article really fascinating. 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-...

burlesona 8y ago

Ok, this is worth reading for the section on “Incuriosity” alone. It’s worth quoting in its entirety but too long to paste here, so I’ll just say if you do nothing else, click through to the article and read that section.

Camillo 8y ago
That part stood out to me, too. It's a phenomenon I've been noticing for a long time when talking to Americans (even here on HN), but I think this is the first time I've seen an American recognize it.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  That's because most Americans have never traveled overseas, let alone lived and worked there. The few of us who have, often notice the same thing.
meej 8y ago
Agreed, though I was surprised it didn't point to a cause, which I might identify as American Exceptionalism. No need to be curious about how other countries do things when you're operating under a mythology that your country is the best.
- mattlondon 8y ago
  +1 to this. As an outsider it appears to me that this "we're the best in the world!"/"our unique freedoms" propaganda is drummed into people from a young age without anyone ever questioning it. Its no wonder there is this pervasive "what could we ever learn from them? We're the best." mentality. The other common excuse is size. "Oh no, we can't have trains like that! We just such a big state that won't work here!" Japan is roughly the size of California. EU is roughly 10x the size of California. Both are criss-crossed by high-speed rail.

dashundchen 8y ago

Regarding point 9 about the inability to look outside North America. I always wondered why it seems transit agencies haven't looked to bring in teams of people who have managed/built successful projects in Europe, Asia, or even closer like Mexico City. California HSR for example went to solicit bids from foreign operators and selected Deutsche Bahn/German Railways. But AFAIK the initial design work/RFP/proposals were done by California and domestic engineers, who obviously wouldn't have much, if any, experience in designing or managing HSR construction. Would an experienced team be able to overcome a very different regulatory and political environment to make a difference in cost and time?

wil421 8y ago
I think you’re confused about what these projects really are. They are not construction projects they are job creation programs. Both the unions and politicians use them as such to bolster their own interests.
- pas 8y ago
  That's natural. Unions and politicians will always act in their best interest. And a HSR project seems to be in their best interest. Unions see it as good jobs, politicians see it as something for their constituents. Of course this backfires when the NIMBY folks don't want anything built, and those who are okay with the idea want it done cheaper. (So the unions are not going to be happy.) So the project stalls.
dashundchen 8y ago
Replying to myself to add- I wonder if it extends down to the construction itself (not that a project would hire the workers abroad, but maybe mixing up supervisors/foreman/leads or sending them for training). Orders of magnitude smaller in scale but in my observations, even things like urban sidewalk, sewer and road construction seem to be conducted entirely differently in Germany, for example, vs North America. Is the difference in construction specs? Formal vocational education of trades and apprenticeships vs the US? I don't know, but the final products seem to be much higher quality than public projects in the US and I doubt they're spending multiples more.

alwaysdoit 8y ago

> In Paris, as well as Athens, Madrid, Mexico City, Caracas, Santiago, Copenhagen, Budapest, and I imagine other cities for which I can’t find this information, metro stations are built cut-and-cover... There is extensive street disruption, for about 18 months in the case of Paris, but the merchants and residents get a subway station at the end of the works. The cost of using a more expensive method ($750M per station vs $110) of building in order to prevent disruption to car traffic is almost always attributed to the cost of public transportation. But it seems to me like it at least partially should be considered a cost of maintaining car infrastructure.

vinay427 8y ago
I'm actually curious: how do those businesses, particularly smaller ones, survive 18 months of highly impeded traffic?
- lostapathy 8y ago
  If parent poster's numbers are even in the right ballpark, we could just directly subsidize the small businesses that are disrupted and still come out money ahead.
  - sitkack 8y ago
    Some transit could pay for itself by not being built and paying the people who would ride it to stay home. There is a lack of total system optimization.
- bregma 8y ago
  It turns out small businesses make money from customers who stop in, not people driving by in automobiles. I had no problem walking into shops at metro station construction sites in Copenhagen or Budapest.
- ams6110 8y ago
  Many of them do not. I know the owner of a business who is really struggling for this reason.

deleted 8y ago

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objektif 8y ago

NYC MTA is a great example of why. We need to put blame on all parties involved politicians, corporations and labor unions. Anyone who unconditionally defends labor is naive at best. NYT reports: “Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show.” Source: 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-...

rjkennedy98 8y ago
I am certainly of the left, but Labor Unions have been a huge contributor to so many problems in the United States. I'm not against people getting a living wage, ect but Labor Unions have always been about getting "theirs". A huge reason the US doesn't have universal healthcare is Labor Unions who preferred that they got good healthcare benefits from their work. A huge reason we have major infrastructure problems in the US is because of the absurd cost of labor. Nothing gets built in most big cities unless Labor Unions are involved and they rip everyone off. This makes public transit unworkable, cities unlivable and unaffordable, ect.
- objektif 8y ago
  I also stand at the far left of political spectrum and in my experience labor unions completely abuse their positions. I think it is way past time to find another way to provide decent wages to workers.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Why are unions even permitted on public infrastructure projects? All municipal projects that I have heard about in recent years had extensive work rules, safety, "living wage" requirements, etc. as conditions of the bid.
  - Thlom 8y ago
    I don't know much about unions in the US, but it seems like they are organised very differently than in Europe. We don't have these kinds of problems over here.At least not that I'm aware of.

3pt14159 8y ago

I actually have a reasonably large amount of knowledge on this topic. I took a break after the dot com bubble burst through structural / construction engineering[0] before returning and my brother has been and continues to be in charge of some mega projects for EllisDon. It is certainly worse in America, but it's not great in Canada either. The issue is this: There is no incentive alignment at multiple levels of these projects. For example, I've worked with a couple great unions[1] but overall unions slow things down. There have been times where I've been reprimanded for lending a utility knife to open a pallet to a unionized worker. It's too adversarial here and it really does slow things down. I've seen countless work-arounds to the rules just so employers can pay people that work harder more. For example, only valued employees are offered snow plowing work in the winter when construction is slow, but these tactics don't scale. Then, on the other side, we do not pay our public servants enough and nor do we have high enough standards for their work. There are good public servants, to be true, but that's essentially random chance. It isn't because we've intentionally created a culture of achievement or excellence in our public works departments. In both cases firing someone is too difficult. I'm not saying it should be easy, but I've known people that show up for work at 10:30am and leave, no joke, at 2:00pm. It's completely ridiculous. Then there is the issue of building for the first time versus expanding or maintaining. First time construction is much easier. Standards are lower, there is less stuff in the way, everyone in the city is excited for the new thing so people make sacrifices. A new subway or sports stadium brings in business to the surrounding area, so part of the cost can be pushed on to local property owners in the area. Thirty years later when the soffit is cracked because subsurface water wasn't as expected there is none of that stuff. Just some angry commuters and shop owners wondering why it is taking so long. I'm starting to think that capital projects, especially subterranean ones, are inherently worse than smaller alternatives. They're so expensive to maintain and once they're in there is no going back. I'd rather have lots of bike lanes or streetcars than subways. We could build a lot of bike lanes for the same cost of a subway, and even have them covered so snow and rain wouldn't be annoyances. [0] I worked on lots of stuff for the TTC, including subway stations, and some stuff for the City of Toronto. [1] Electrical worker union IBEW Local 353 was especially great because they pushed their employees to work hard. In exchange, they were able to negotiate default conditions like nine-hour, four-day work weeks. It fostered a sense of pride in their trade and work.

dreamache 8y ago

Government. I didn't read it, but that's the reason.

bsder 8y ago
And you are wrong, so go read the article.

thisisweirdok 8y ago

The Big Dig in Boston was originally estimated to cost $8 billion. People were upset about this. There were multiple problems along the way. It ultimately ended up costing $22 billion. People were also upset about this. At the end of the day? It was an awesome project. They completely buried a highway that cut through the city, and added a ton of green space downtown (The Greenway). The city is better for it. Taxpayers would never have allowed it if they had their way. We need a similar program to revitalize the MBTA. It should be done regardless of the cost. I will happily pay more real estate taxes and highway tolls for the rest of my life to support it.

acomjean 8y ago
It is a great project and allowed the city to expand into places that were very inaccessible (south boston). Having a second tunnel to the airport is actually the best part in my opinion. People here are VERY untrusting of any government projects because of this project. See the Olympic bid that was supposed to have all sorts of public sector improvements rejected (well who rejected who is another story) But traffic on 93 (the tunneled highway) is back or worse than pre-upgrade levels (some of the worst traffic in the country here in Boston), the public transit promised as part of the project is finally being worked on (green line extension) but it all seems like its not enough. Housing prices in the Boston area are at SanFran/NYC levels. We need more infrasturure in boston. We have good proposals (North-South rail link, south shore rail) but lack a governor /politicians who will be honest and tell people they need to pay for this stuff. Public transit is so bad here that a running club raced one of the green line trolleys (I'll let you guess who wins) https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/04/race-pits-runners-against-green-line-trolley/Ist6AENvUdt71FdIkFtaGN/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/04/race-pits-runne...
aero142 8y ago
But is it $22 billion better?
- eropple 8y ago
  Profoundly, yes. Downtown Boston was a dismal place when I was a kid. It was dark. The overheads sucked so, so hard. I've worked downtown for years now and it's a pleasant place to be.

MarkSweep 8y ago

The part about mezzanines struck me. BART has huge barren mezzanines. There is not one shop in the entire station. The other subways I've visited in the US (Boston, DC, NYC) also don't have any shops except in some of the largest like Grand Central or Penn station. Compare this with subways and train stations in Japan which often have shops in the mezzanines and sometimes at the platform. There are always at least vending machines at the platform. I don't think this is unique to Japan, I recall there being shops in the station in Korea, Taiwan, and London too. Why do the stations in our supposed capitalistic society not have any shops?

Nasrudith 8y ago
Perhaps because other local interests don't want competition?
bane 8y ago
I think part of it has to do with how the lines are financed and built. In Japan and Korea for example, individual companies own the lines and stations and basically use them to funnel customers to shopping areas where they actually make their money. In the U.S. they are built as public works projects and owned in the end by some local municipal authority. Since they are public property, there's no incentive/ability to conduct commerce there. It would be like having a McDonalds inside of a library.
- icebraining 8y ago
  As far as I know, stations in Western EU are also mostly public works, and they do have shops. As an example, Brussels-Central has multiple coffeeshops (including a Starbucks), a waffle kiosk, a fast-food joint, a newsstand, and even a small supermarket. And funny you should mention libraries; my local public library has a private café inside (not in the reading area, of course).
  - bane 8y ago
    Ha! I stand corrected! In the U.S. at least it's pretty rare to see shops of any kind inside of subway stations or libraries. There's a few news stands in some NYC subway stations, but not many. I've been throughout much of Europe and don't recall seeing many stores in most of the subway systems -- but maybe I wasn't paying attention. But there will be some kind of place to get a bite in many train and even bus stations.

strangemonad 8y ago

“That said, having spent the last nine years looking at topline costs and a few itemized breakdowns does let me reach some initial conclusions, ones that I believe are robust to new data.“ So... a hypothesis?

ghobs91 8y ago

Those who blame it squarely on unions, explain how Europe has strong unions and yet construction there is orders of magnitude cheaper than in the US? It's because there isn't a proper bidding process. Politicians just give sweetheart bloated contracts to the same contractors every time, and those contractors then "donate to their campaign". If they instead used things like sealed bids and had contractors compete against eachother, it wouldn't cost $1B per mile for NYC's 2nd avenue subway, absurd. NY Governor Cuomo surprisingly called this out recently, describing it as a "transit industrial complex": https://nypost.com/2019/01/04/mta-officials-are-fuming-over-cuomos-brazen-blindsides/ https://nypost.com/2019/01/04/mta-officials-are-fuming-over-...

pas 8y ago
Unions do what unions can. It's amazing that NYC MTA uses unionized labor for things that could be easily outsourced/contracted. This strange example of market failure points to us having insufficient information to understand the real transactions. MTA must get something else too from the unions to abide by their rules. (Allegedly it's Cuomo himself who benefits, thus he pressures the MTA.)
Nitramp 8y ago
There are unions, and then there are unions. In Germany, labour unions are strong, but things like union security agreements are unheard of (and I was amazed something like that would exist when I first heard of it). The stories you read about corruption in US labour unions (admittedly subject to selection bias) are unheard of over here. There are strong laws and customs around arbitration processes, and a culture of unions considering survival and success of the business above pushing through maximal demands. E.g. in a prolonged strike, if employers and union are unable to resolve the conflict, after some time arbitration by a generally respected elder statesman kicks in. They hear both sides, and then make a binding decision, which usually is generally accepted. It all seems a bit more balanced. I'm not sure how much that transfers to other European countries. France famously has a different culture around strikes and unions, but doesn't seem to be representative (https://www.etui.org/Services/Strikes-Map-of-Europe https://www.etui.org/Services/Strikes-Map-of-Europe).

drpgq 8y ago

Interesting about the stations. My Ontario city is close to starting an LRT system and the station costs for just those seem kind of high. We recently added a new station for the GO regional railway transit system that currently has two trains a day and I think it was something like $50 million Canadian. I can understand needing an elevator for disability, but it could have started as something simple besides that.

sitkack 8y ago

This is refreshingly low level and candid. I would welcome this kind of analysis in more places. Please emulate this document!

charliebrownau 8y ago

If you consider cost of living and cost of construction is high in USA Go live AU or NZ or CA for 6-12 months

stevespang 8y ago

The title should include the words MASS TRANSIT, or SUBWAY

pimmen 8y ago

Americans not wanting to learn from other countries is just so puzzling to me. If I ever get an answer to why it's often "the US is much bigger than Sweden, it wouldn't work here" to which I reply "then why don't your states look at the European countries? Germany and France have way more people than any US state" to which I get some defeatist drivel about that too. Meanwhile in Brazil, China and India curiosity reigns.