21 ms·
Why New York City Stopped Building Subways (2018)
- travisoneill1 7y agoThe most interesting part to me is the chart that shows the cost per mile over time. The cost per mile went up about 20% from 1940 to 1988 and then tripled from 1988 to 2017 and doubled again by 2019. What caused this increase?
- btown 7y agoSo one thing that's deceptive about that graph is that the projects are far from equal in per-mile complexity. The 1988 Jamaica extensions service a relatively sparsely populated area, with ready access for construction vehicles (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica%E2%80%93179th_Street_station#Entrances_and_exits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica%E2%80%93179th_Street_s... ) - by contrast, the proposed Manhattan projects in 2019 require much more engineering to route around limited access, preserve above-ground activities, and ensure reinforcement given large skyscrapers above. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway#Construction_methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway#Construct... But there are certainly likely other factors. One might imagine that as alternative modes of transportation (ridesharing, etc.) become more commonplace, prices would go down in a competitive marketplace. But one might also imagine that established construction firms might see things like ridesharing (or other decreases in construction costs) as damaging to their long-term stability; they may therefore do things like lobby the city for increased regulations that would cause the proposed project to drag out even longer and provide increased financial stability to the firm. (An alternate read on this is that the firms are finally catching up to increased standards for labor and health, and this was not priced in in the past... but that's a very optimistic read.)
- dantheman 7y agoThe big things are corruption, graft, and mismanagement.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoYou know you have a lot of corruption and graft when you can't just pretend it's all mismanagement.
- simplicio 7y agoHas corruption, graft and mismanagement increased so sharply over the last few decades? I don't picture, say, the NYC of Robert Moses as being particularly free of corruption and graft. And yet, they seem to have been able to build Subways much cheaper
- lotsofpulp 7y agoDefined benefit pensions are sucking up a lot of resources, as well as fire code/ADA related costs. I’m sure labor costs much more than in decades before, not just in construction, but in permitting and planning. As the years go on, projects with large liabilities have to go to extreme lengths to show they did their due diligence. Otherwise, it’s a ripe for a lawsuit that says “well you knew that risk existed and did nothing to prevent it” and pays out a few million taxpayer dollars.
- Gibbon1 7y agoMy working theory is graft and corruption can coexist with effective management of projects. I also have an impression that the US mostly stopped building infrastructure like subways which has various negative effects. Lack of experienced engineering oversight, lack of local engineering talent, no experienced workforce. Weak industrial capability and support. And milking to death any projects that do get through the approval process.
- TylerE 7y agoWonder how much of it is not treating workers like disposable things? Look at pictures of work crews back in the 30s and you see workers eating lunch - completely unharnessed - on exposed beams 100s of feet in the air. Deaths were common on large projects.
- neltnerb 7y agoYes, I agree that seemed odd to ignore. The theory that loss of experience results in increasing costs sounds true, but I see nothing to back it up or any thought of alternate explanations. Like models that include economic impact I would expect to skyrocket the costs (in a total sense) when building in areas that get built up over time.
- namdnay 7y agoWhy on earth would you want to encourage subway commuters to switch to ride sharing?! Ride sharing is a good intermediate solution, better than individual vehicles, but it still causes noise, pollution and traffic. We need to do everything we can to encourage people to avoid cars and adopt public transport
- jcranmer 7y agoThere are several factors: * Labor costs and construction material costs have grown faster than inflation. * There are more amenities in subways (such as handicapped access in stations) now than 100 years ago, and new construction accounts for them from the beginning. * The underground infrastructure has become more crowded, which increases the number of pipes and the like that need to be relocated or avoided during construction. * Planning and permitting requirements have increased, so you need to spend money showing, e.g., that you aren't harming any migratory fowl resting areas, or ensuring that you can expeditiously evacuate the station in case of an emergency. * The agencies in charge have been doing worse and worse jobs at cost-control and project management. The proposed price tag of the second phase of the 2nd Avenue subway is absolutely ludicrous--and so far, the MTA's justification [1] for the insane cost premiums is "fire codes." Seriously. For 10× over, say, Paris Metro construction costs. The public really needs to take MTA and the New York state government to task for allowing that sort of bullshit to stand. [1] http://secondavenuesagas.com/2019/09/23/mta-officials-cite-fire-code-in-defending-6-billion-cost-for-phase-2-of-the-second-ave-subway/ http://secondavenuesagas.com/2019/09/23/mta-officials-cite-f...
- throwaway1777 7y agoHow have labor costs gone up so much? Average subway workers haven’t recently started making a ton of money as far as I know, so is the money going to administration?
- lonelappde 7y agoAccording to reports, there is massive fraud of people being paid a lot to literally do nothing.
- oftenwrong 7y agofurther reading: 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-... >An accountant discovered the discrepancy while reviewing the budget for new train platforms under Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. >The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to the Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 jobs that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors. Officials could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there. >“Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything,” said Michael Horodniceanu, who was then the head of construction at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs transit in New York. The workers were laid off, Mr. Horodniceanu said, but no one figured out how long they had been employed. “All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000 every day.” ... >A Dizzying Maze of Jobs >The reasons for the M.T.A.’s high costs start with the sheer number of people employed. >Mike Roach noticed it immediately upon entering the No. 7 line work site a few years ago. Mr. Roach, a California-based tunneling contractor, was not involved in the project but was invited to see it. He was stunned by how many people were operating the machine churning through soil to create the tunnel. >“I actually started counting because I was so surprised, and I counted 25 or 26 people,” he said. “That’s three times what I’m used to.” >The staffing of tunnel-boring machines came up repeatedly in interviews with contractors. The so-called T.B.M.s are massive contraptions, weighing over 1,000 tons and stretching up to 500 feet from cutting wheel to thrust system, but they largely run automatically. Other cities typically man the machine with fewer than 10 people. >It is not just tunneling machines that are overstaffed, though. A dozen New York unions work on tunnel creation, station erection and system setup. Each negotiates with the construction companies over labor conditions, without the M.T.A.’s involvement. And each has secured rules that contractors say require more workers than necessary. >The unions and vendors declined to release the labor deals, but The Times obtained them. Along with interviews with contractors, the documents reveal a dizzying maze of jobs, many of which do not exist on projects elsewhere. >There are “nippers” to watch material being moved around and “hog house tenders” to supervise the break room. Each crane must have an “oiler,” a relic of a time when they needed frequent lubrication. Standby electricians and plumbers are to be on hand at all times, as is at least one “master mechanic.” Generators and elevators must have their own operators, even though they are automatic. An extra person is required to be present for all concrete pumping, steam fitting, sheet metal work and other tasks. >In New York, “underground construction employs approximately four times the number of personnel as in similar jobs in Asia, Australia, or Europe,” according to an internal report by Arup, a consulting firm that worked on the Second Avenue subway and many similar projects around the world. >That ratio does not include people who get lost in the sea of workers and get paid even though they have no apparent responsibility, as happened on East Side Access. The construction company running that project declined to comment.
- smadge 7y agoThe article suggests that the knowledge and skill required to build tunnels efficiently have atrophied over time, I suppose as the people involved in the explosion of construction between 1904 - 1940 retire.
- delfinom 7y agoThere's a documentary out there that details how NYC tunnel construction worked back then. Basically almost war-like propaganda about how working on the tunnel was good for you and the country, how you are chicken if you don't go down in there, etc. They got it done fast by literally throwing people at the tunnel and scooping out their remains. Then they had the papers run propaganda to cover up incidents and recruit more bodies. Incidentally, they basically had the human powered version of a TBM frame back then and still had people dying left and right. Times are a little different now....a little hard to have people dying every hour on a construction job
- beerandt 7y agoAmong other factors- late 70's EPA regulations starting to kick in on late 80's projects.
- dang 7y agoDiscussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16851165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16851165
- drtillberg 7y agoTL;DR: Private startups built subways rapidly in the 1910s and 20s. Government took over in the 1930s as startups lost steam, declined to invest via bond issues, plowed money into autos, and the long gaps in capital projects meant private expertise was repurposed and no longer available when needed.
- echion 7y agoAppreciated. Is there a tldr for hacker news front page submissions? Because someone should make that, if not.
- smogcutter 7y ago> plowed money into autos Part of the reason for this: building roads extended Robert Moses’ personal power, building subways didn’t. If you can think of something fucked up about NYC, odds are good it finds its way back to Moses somehow.
- Spooky23 7y agoRobert Moses acquired power because people wanted to GTFO of the city, either for the weekend or for good. I’m a little older than the average HN person. I remember as a kid growing up in Queens, my dad sweeping the ash from the Greenpoint Incinerator off of his car in the mornings when the wind blew the right way. The city was filthy, polluted and overcrowded. The subways were no exception.
- lonelappde 7y agoAnd driving cars out of the city and back made that problem worse, not better.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoIt arguably made the problem tolerable for the people who worked in the city but lived in the suburbs which is certainly better for the city than those people both living and working elsewhere.
- shmerl 7y agoMay be the Boring Company can work on this. They should be interested in accumulating expertise, instead of wasting it.
- jcranmer 7y agoToo bad the Boring Company would rather build their own transit systems than bore the tunnels for existing subway systems.
- shmerl 7y agoWhy can't they do both?
- jcranmer 7y agoThey absolutely can do both, but they don't seem to be willing to do so.
- CrazyStat 7y agoDo you have evidence to show that the problem is Boring Company's unwillingness rather than hesitance by cities (perhaps under pressure from Boring Company's more established competitors) to bring in a relatively inexperienced partner for a major project like a new subway line?
- jcranmer 7y agoEverything they have publicly bid for has been about deploying their Loop transit system. They have not bid on any contracts or subcontracts for tunneling operations, so far as I can find, and their FAQ page spends more time discussing the Loop system than it does their tunneling technology.
- mncharity 7y agoThe Boring Company is a startup exploring a transformative sweet spot around very-inexpensive small simple autonomous-EV single-lane road tunnels, when constructed very rapidly at extremely large scale. If BC were to attempt a conventionally sized and outfitted subway tunnel, bid against established contractors, for one of the very few contracts available, presumably with a machine in direct competition with established TBM manufacturers... well, that would be quite a pivot.
- cft 7y agoSummary from the article: "1940: City takes over the private subways"
- rayiner 7y ago> Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia took advantage of the disastrous finances of the BMT and IRT, ravaged by the Depression and the ban on fare increases, to acquire both companies > With the subways now in municipal hands, a doubling of the fare was finally negotiated. Years of deferred maintenance by the cash-strapped private companies had become increasingly evident. But by then, fare hikes only exacerbated the problem of declining ridership. So the government destroyed the system through price controls. Odd that City Lab doesn't explore that angle further. Price regulation continues to be a problem with the subway. Fares on the MTA are half those of the London Underground. New York relies heavily on subsidies to cover operating costs, while the London Underground covers its operating costs through fares: https://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/sep/29/public-transportation-subway-tube-expensive-ticket-rich- https://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/sep/29/.... That makes the MTA much more sensitive to changing political winds, as opposed to the Underground, which can pay its ongoing maintenance costs regardless of what the politicians are doing.
- objektif 7y agoI dont see any problem with subsiziding MTA fares by collecting funds through other taxes. The more people use the system the better. Based on my limited research on this topic, the root cause of the problem is the labor cost and inefficiency of MTA workers. I think everything else is noise. Here is great quote from NYT article on this subject: “Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything,” said Michael Horodniceanu, who was then the head of construction at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs transit in New York. The workers were laid off, Mr. Horodniceanu said, but no one figured out how long they had been employed. “All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000 every day.” 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-...
- lonelappde 7y agoMTA operates near capacity during peak time. It doesn't need more riders then. But NYC lacks peak pricing.
- ChuckMcM 7y agoI have always wondered what the 'actual' expenses were on the per-mile cost of rail transit. I had the curious experience of trying to get the information out of the VTA for their light rail project and they suggested I get a court order. I was very confused by that, its tax money they are spending and California has open government laws.
- rayiner 7y agoSee page 7: https://iurd.berkeley.edu/wp/2010-04.pdf https://iurd.berkeley.edu/wp/2010-04.pdf Per mile subsidy for the NYC Subway is $0.35 per passenger mile. Backing out the revenues, the total cost is about $0.55
- ChuckMcM 7y agoThat is an excellent report, the numbers I would like to see is from ground breaking to ribbon cutting, what are the actual expenditures and to whom. Something like: vendor a ($1M) - geotechnical services consisting of ... vendor b ($10M) - excavation consisting of ... vendor c ...
- azernik 7y agoWas this by way of FOIA request, or another process? (I ask because I'm looking for a pet project to test drive the FOIA process on.)
- ChuckMcM 7y ago
- sytelus 7y agoTLDR; It is 16X more expensive than in 1904 to build a mile of subway adjusting for inflation. It costs $4B for each mile now!! This should be extremely surprising as we generally expect tech to improve and become cheaper over time. It is being speculated that cost rises as we lose all knowledge of how to do this efficiently because of huge gaps instead of doing continuous construction. This is why we need Elon Musk and Boring Company.
- zanny 7y agoWhat the US really needed, and could have been using for 30+ years now, was a reorganization away from a military industrial complex war machine for 600 billion a year to a civilian engineering corps to build up the country and provide a guaranteed jobs program for an order of magnitude less money. I can't imagine how much nicer this country would have been with ~8 trillion invested in infrastructure over blowing up mud huts in deserts with "collateral" causalities in the millions while destabilizing third world nations into our next terrorist threat to point that 600 billion dollar tumor at next. We should have seen everything from public development of high rise high density apartments in high-demand urban cores to high speed rail networks connecting major metro areas across state lines to dozens of recent-gen nuclear plants funded from the federal level down. We got none of that except a burgeoning debt and thousands with lifelong PTSD and crippling injuries from a war machine to make defense contractors rich burning taxpayer money.
- mxuribe 7y agoTHIS 100x! I'll extend this even further: what if, after several years of all of this civilian engineering/infrastructure work being done, tons of expertise would have been built up...Then "sell" that expertise - either as a country to other countries, or as workers create their own smaller firms to look for work in other countries. Other countries would ideally hire American workers - because tons of expertise in infrastructure building - then these other countries could build up their own infrastructures, and so on, and so on....I can even imagine that our workers helping other countries (to build themselves up) might actually avoid some conflicts in the world - thereby avoiding needing such a heavy, expensive military in the first place. Ok, perhaps my premise is a little naive or idealistic...but I'm sure it would work in some pockets, and at least we (and a few other countries) would have some decent infrastructure remaining. So far, for all of our heavy, expensive, and excessive military spending, what do we have to show for it - mountains of debt, more people in the world hating Americans, our own people victims to PTSD?? President Eisenhower was correct.
- boyadjian 7y agoCity growth cannot be endless. Everything has an end. It is the same thing for Paris. With the "Grand Paris", we try to build new subways, but it is tremendously expensive.
- bobbydroptables 7y agoYes and no. Many cities have not stopped growing. And New York is quaint compared to many metropolises these days. New York stopped building infrastructure due to government and politics, not some sort of natural law. If a city grows enough to need more infrastructure, it usually grows plenty of taxpayers to fund it.
- zanny 7y agoNowhere on Earth is close to peak density. Concepts like Shimizu Pyramid exist demonstraing high class living with densities over 100k / km². Transit infrastructure has already been developed to handle volumes as high as the millions of persons per hour. We are also nowhere close to peak density efficiency, since the widespread refinement of high-density building would drop the price per person way below the current aggregate costs of living considering the whole of infrastructure and housing almost anywhere. There is a strong cultural barrier to the development of higher densities though that associate it with poverty. Thats the real challenge to overcome, because that culture operates like the anti-nuclear sentiment to stymie development and stunt the growth of innovations in the domain of urban planning.
- Loranubi 7y agoThe population density where I am living is around 40k/km^2 and the subway system is just working perfectly.
- khope 7y agohttps://share.cloutbucks.com/Khope https://share.cloutbucks.com/Khope A way to make extra cash! I've made over 1,500$ so far in not even 3 weeks! Check it out!
- mocha_nate 7y agoThe chart about cost hides how dramatic the cost difference is and it bothers me. Note the increment of .25 billion to .5 billion on the y axis without the design reflecting that shift
- zeveb 7y ago> The real estate industry was one of the most important constituencies supporting the development of the subway system in the early years. Developers enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the subway, which was extended into empty fields that were then swiftly and profitably blanketed with apartment houses whose residents then filled the trains. With the construction of the IND, that bargain began to break down—they saw new subways as more of a tax burden than a generator of big speculative profits. That's a fascinating little tidbit. When the developers were able to negotiate with the subway firms on an equal basis, they saw them as assets and partners; but when they were no longer able to (because a government is never an equal partner: it can change the law any time it wishes), they just saw them as an imposition. There's a lesson there about buy-in.