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A couple of facts that should at least provide a baseline for costs (like the best case scenario): Shenzhen metro: 198 stations, about 180 miles of track (soon
by xt00 7y ago
A couple of facts that should at least provide a baseline for costs (like the best case scenario):
Shenzhen metro: 198 stations, about 180 miles of track (soon to be more like 250 miles), majority of it built in past 10-12 years. All I can find so far on cost is the phase iii cost which says it will cost about 20 billion. Phase I was quite small. So maybe they have spent about 30 billion to get almost 200 miles of rail and lots of stations? I’ve used the Shenzhen metro and it’s pretty nice. Also used the Shanghai metro as well.
Often in the US, stations are cited as a big cost.
Would be interesting to get a pie chart for costs between US and China like land acquisition costs, labor, raw materials, management, etc.
A bit disappointing that the report essentially ended in a “it depends” type of non-informative report.
- elithrar 7y ago> Would be interesting to get a pie chart for costs between US and China like land acquisition costs, labor, raw materials, management, etc. Safety, incidents/deaths, etc... (Although I believe that the costs for large infra projects are ballooning for a lot of reasons, comparison to China continues to ignore the human cost and history there)
- lotsofpulp 7y agoChina doesn't have to worry about liability and cover-your-ass costs, which are huge.
- topkai22 7y agoAlso presumably land acquisition/NIMBYism is easier to deal with.
- goodcanadian 7y agoLabour costs are much lower . . .
- oblio 7y ago> cover-your-ass costs Everything in a Communist Party in power in any country in the world, at any time, has been about cover-your-ass stuff. At least policies, if not costs.
- pzone 7y agoThose are cover-your-ass with respect to your superiors. In America, the cover-your-ass costs are with respect to the citizens who will use the infrastructure.
- BurningFrog 7y agoIn China the purpose of infrastructure projects is to get infrastructure. In the US the purpose of infrastructure projects is to enrich everyone associated with the project.
- sremani 7y agoNo China infrastructure project is laden with just different kind of political strings. In US the system has to impress up on voters, unions, donors etc. In China the hogs at the trough are just different.
- noobermin 7y agoYou say that but they get things done while we build nice mansions for contractors instead.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoThat simply isn’t true at all. There are plenty of unused or underused highways and bridges in China that made a few red families lots of money. It’s fascinating to me that some people think corruption in China is lower than the USA. Not even the Chinese would make such a claim.
- svachalek 7y agoIt's absolutely corrupt, but in a way that still gets projects done. Many, many projects, on a scale we can't even conceive of here. It's hard to believe our corruption is worse, but Occam's Razor says otherwise.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- BurningFrog 7y agoI did not at all claim there is no corruption. But look at your own quote: > There are plenty of [...] highways and bridges in China I think we agree that the infrastructure does get built!
- xt00 7y agoWith all the bright minds on hacker news i honestly think we could make this report ourselves.. I wonder if there are good sources for this info? The trend for more people moving to cities would seem that everything is moving in the direction of making infrastructure projects at least in cities more reasonable for every passing year. So seems like a worthwhile effort.
- dsr_ 7y agoWe are notoriously unable to estimate the time required to complete software projects. Most of us have zero practical knowledge of civil engineering. Expertise in one field does not automatically confer expertise in another.