26 ms·

Tunnels in the US cost more than anywhere else

• blakesterz 6y ago
  Interesting read. The cost in New York of $1.5 – $2.5B per mile is just amazing. They ask "What Can Be Done to Manage Underground Construction Cost?" and list a bunch of recommendations. The conclusion? "If these recommendations are implemented, would the U.S. costs match the European tunneling project costs? Unlikely." The reasons make sense, at least to me, someone who knows very little of this subject.
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    And the "unlikely" is followed up with a couple sentences that are basically a polite way of saying "even if we do everything else right the cost of NYC union labor is just too damn high".
    • ponker 6y ago
      Well it is, because Europe is able to get their labor much cheaper, and those guys ain’t starving.
      • dboreham 6y ago
        But that needs "socialism".
      • zrail 6y ago
        Those guys have socialized health care and government sponsored pensions.
        • nicoburns 6y ago
          I wonder if tunnel working is dangerous enough that the healthcare costs become extra significant.
          • 1123581321 6y ago
            Those healthcare costs would be covered from worker’s comp in the US (I am aware of the caveats here.)
          • zrail 6y ago
            Not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if life and disability insurance through the tunnel workers union is extraordinarily expensive.
        • PeterisP 6y ago
          It's paid out of the taxes on wages of laborers like these engineers working on tunnel construction; when you estimate the expenses for building a tunnel, that's included in the list price - it's just that in USA invoice that line might be labeled "union-agreed benefits" and in Switzerland invoice the same thing might be labeled "government-mandated social security tax" which covers things like "government sponsored" (i.e. taxpayer-paid) pensions.
          • ponker 6y ago
            Of course that line item is massively larger in the US than in Switzerland because it has to line the pockets of union bosses, lawyers, negotiators, administrators, and health insurance companies.
  • greatpatton 6y ago
    Come on freaking Switzerland where the minimum wage is around 4000$ per month was able to construct the longest tunnels (one for each direction) in the world for 1/10 of this cost. Even in my small city they are building an extension to a train tunnel in the middle of the city 1.4km -> 150M$. There is really a big problem here.
    • CaptainZapp 6y ago
      Not to nitpick. But there's technically no minimum wage in Switzerland. That said. Some localities (notably Genève) introduced a minimum wage. Also, a lot of employees are covered by a collective employment contract, which usually stipulates a minimum wage. What is true is that few employees make less than 4000 Francs a month (~ $4000).
• cksquare 6y ago
  I don't follow why South Korea is lumped in with Southeast Asia repeatedly in this piece.
  • samschooler 6y ago
    I'm wondering if it has to do with being in a similar labor market? It may be easy to get cheap labor from cheaper countries. But this is a guess.
  • syspec 6y ago
    Why is that surprising, because of its geographical region?
• cco 6y ago
  > Understanding the extreme tunnel costs in New York compared with other places in the United States is an enigma that is difficult to comprehend and cannot be controlled without major industry and government practice changes. Is this their way of saying corruption is an X factor they didn't account for?
• fastball 6y ago
  No mention of all the bedrock underneath Manhattan? Really? EDIT: specifically metamorphic bedrock
  • vidanay 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure there's bedrock in the rest of the world that gets tunneled through. It's not unique to Manhattan.
    • lbriner 6y ago
      Sure, bedrock would slow a project down but it wouldn't explain the higher level of labour. If you are moving more slowly, you need less people to keep the supply chain moving, not more. I saw a TV show with a standard Tunnel Boring Machine and it was about 5 men operating it (plus the automated materials feed). Even if they were paid $1M a year, it would still be loads cheaper than these tunnels are costing New York.
    • fastball 6y ago
      As far as I'm aware, it actually kinda is (at least compared to other major cities with lots of tunneling). London for instance is built on sedimentary rock (mostly limestone?). The metamorphic bedrock (mostly mica?) Manhattan is on top of is obviously much harder than that.
      • vidanay 6y ago
        If you are referring to the actual Manhattan Schist type of rock, then yes that can have an effect on the cost of tunneling, but that wasn't really what your original post said - you just said "all the bedrock". Switzerland recently completed the Gotthard Base tunnel which is almost all hard rock mining.
        • fastball 6y ago
          I'm no geologist, but I was under the impression that "bedrock" generally refers to this harder type of rock. It is not just a word for any rock that things are built on. Maybe I'm wrong though. I've never heard London referred to as being built on top of bedrock in the same way I've heard it of NYC.
• temp667 6y ago
  One point (I'm a dual citizen BTW). Europe has pretty strict environment rules, but they are not normally abused to stop a project by just delaying and litigating it forever. In the US, the actual care for environment is lower I think BUT you can just drag out a project forever on enviro issues. SF bike path was sued for not doing enough of an enviro study, took another $1M, maybe 1-2 years to get it going again. This is one (small) factor. Another - in the EU most folks are part of unions, but the unions are not such a political machine. So in the US you can get total nonsense in staffing, no show / low work jobs - the EU puts up with a lot less of that from casual observation (at least germany, maybe Italy / Greece have more of an issue here). Unions seems reasonably productive in Germany - does someone have more data here? I don't know the details, just my impression.
  • lbriner 6y ago
    In Europe, I think people know that you are unlikely to stop a project due to environmental reasons, but you might get a Judge to rule that the contractor has to move some wildlife or put tunnels where there was just going to be a cutting. It costs more money sure but in the scheme of it, probably not much in terms of %.
• nicolashahn 6y ago
  tl;dr: American tunneling labor is 3-4x as expensive as Europe. There are other factors but this is the big one. Also, this sentence stood out: > [for Europe] Infrastructure projects are evaluated and funded based on needs and economic benefits rather than political interests. Basically saying Europe's not corrupt, America is.
  • baggy_trough 6y ago
    Really wondering how much organized crime has to do with this.
    • fennecfoxen 6y ago
      The relationship in question is mostly not criminal, but rather involves the unions in question supporting the political career of their people in Albany. For instance, when the governor suddenly changed the plan for the L-Pocalypse tunnel repair over the holidays, after chatting with some of his buddies, undermining the MTA chief (who, if I recall correctly, first heard about it from the press conference?) The new plan involves fewer outside contractors and more union labor. (Yes, Albany, because the MTA is run by the state instead of the city, mostly to limit accountability.)
      • baggy_trough 6y ago
        Why not both? Is it truly known not to have anything to do with organized crime?
  • ben_w 6y ago
    While I wouldn’t be surprised if the average corruption was higher in the USA, I would be very surprised if the standard deviation of corruption was lower in Europe. For all that Americans say how diverse a nation the USA is, the EU alone [0] is a mixture of Common Law states and Roman Law states, where the laws are written in 24 languages that collectively use 3 character sets. Heck, despite the Euro it still has 10 non-Euro currencies in use. [0] I’ve seen “Europe” used to mean “the EU” in the same way I’ve seen “America” used to mean “the USA”; and while the EU is definitely not a country, it is about the same size as the USA.
• azurezyq 6y ago
  I just think that anything "big" can be used as a tool for political fight in the US. Political filibuster costs time but infra-filibuster costs tax money (massive). Really feel sad about this. I'm wondering when this began to happen. I don't think this was the case from day 1.
• Ottolay 6y ago
  The construction labor rate difference between the US and Europe is surprising, especially given the stronger unionization rules in Europe. "Although the material and equipment costs are similar (within 10%) for projects in the United States and in Europe, labor costs are substantially higher in the United States as outlined above. For example, in California the average billing labor rates for qualified tunnel workers is about $70/hr and the average New York labor rate of qualified tunnel workers is at over $100/hr, whereas in Germany (one of the high labor rates countries in Europe) the comparable labor rate is about $30/hr."
  • echelon 6y ago
    Is $70/hr fair market value, or are the contracts negotiated via corruption and cronyism?
    • yawnr 6y ago
      What do you think
    • beastman82 6y ago
      Obviously the latter
      • AlexandrB 6y ago
        Would you say the same thing about CEO salaries? Why or why not?
        • rhizome 6y ago
          I would. It's a racket similar to police unions: upward pressure on $ and benefits because not to do so will result in a collapse of the larger operation (company, society), or so the rhetoric goes.
    • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      why would $70 per hour not be fair for working underground boring a tunnel? What does a software developer make in California? on edit: added in California.
• beastman82 6y ago
  Unions
  • mseidl 6y ago
    The EU/Germany has much better worker rights.
• frankus 6y ago
  Interesting that the more expensive ones are all in Common Law countries. I wonder if that plays any role. I understand that was also a commonality in the countries that spent the most preparing for y2k.
  • frankus 6y ago
    I overlooked the glaring exception of India which according to a few seconds of googling is also at least partially a common-law country.
• ruddct 6y ago
  Lots of good data (and a map!) on this subject can be found at https://transitcosts.com https://transitcosts.com, much of it compiled by https://twitter.com/alon_levy https://twitter.com/alon_levy Also, here in NYC, it isn't just tunneling that's expensive [0], we pay dearly for most of our infrastructure. As this article points out, the elephant in the room is labor costs. [0] https://twitter.com/marketurbanism/status/1187045480540323841 https://twitter.com/marketurbanism/status/118704548054032384...
• tehjoker 6y ago
  Lmao: - Streamline the environmental and approval processes. - Establish an equitable risk sharing mechanism between the owner and contractor and properly implement it. - Revisit labor laws, rates, and union regulations and establish equitable Project Labor Agreements. These are just typical pro-corporate power talking points weeping about costs to the public so they can wreck the environment, externalize risk, and pay people that actually do work less.
  • jlmorton 6y ago
    I care deeply about protecting the environment, but environmental protection laws are being weaponized to prevent projects that would markedly improve the environment. That's rather perverse. For one recent and on-going example, look at the San Francisco Van Ness BRT project. This project merely adds dedicated bus lanes and center median boarding/unloading. Along with that work, there's some utility relocation, and sidewalk improvements. This route is entirely along an existing major thoroughfare in heavily-urbanized San Francisco. The entire route is already entirely paved. Anyone can look at this and conclude there is no risk to the environment from this project. Yet the CEQA process for this project took ten years to complete. The project would improve public transit, reduce traffic, reduce pollution. It's really ironic that laws meant to protect the environment are what held up this project for a decade. There needs to be a way to short-circuit laws like CEQA for certain categories of projects, like transit in heavily-urbanized areas.
    • sroussey 6y ago
      Yeah, unfortunately CEQA has become a way for anyone extort. In LA, housing associations sue to get concessions for their neighborhood and usually using the services of the small group that is suing.
    • clairity 6y ago
      note that ceqa covers more than just trees and fields. it includes views, soundscapes, air quality, and more, which is why it's so productive when used to slow or deny development. the variety of potential challenges is staggering. that wouldn't be such a big deal if reviews took days rather than years, but bureaucracies aren't designed to handle unbounded variety. that makes the process excruciatingly slow and expensive (bureaucrats are risk averse so are loathe to take responsibility in more than small chunks at a time).
• ggm 6y ago
  The unionisation is being misunderstood. The US seaports were unionised, but conversion from stevedore to container was achieved, by negotiation. The motivation was high: continuance of the work on site demanded it, for a 24/7 function which was relocatable (and did, to prove it). This altered negotiation positions. The tunnels are different. its periodic work, not continuing (across the years) and there is no "substitution" of moving to another place. There is only dig the tunnel or not dig the tunnel.
  • fennecfoxen 6y ago
    The New York Times (known for its hostility to labor unions — hahahaha actually known for the opposite) wrote the article referenced in this piece: 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-... In this article, they bring in the guy in charge of Crossrail (which runs right through Central London, at one point going between two existing transit lines with about a meter clearance on each side.) His first reaction was, perhaps, much like the first reaction of any casual observer would be: "What are all these people doing here just standing around?" NYC union rules still require oilers on cranes (because it's still 1930 or something and our cranes all need the constant attention of someone resupplying their oil) and the union is paid a big fee for every tunnel boring machine, to compensate them for all the jobs lost (relative to half a century ago). Of course, the MTA station design principles (mentioned elsewhere in this thread) do not help, excavating large caverns via mining, and the MTA doesn't know how to run a large program effectively and maintain good relations with its contractors, and of course there are a variety of exciting reported cases where the MTA doesn't even know why a person on the construction site is there or getting paid to begin with, so there's plenty of disaster to go around. Either way it works to the same result: we can't have nice things in this town.
    • ggm 6y ago
      I'm not saying your comment is wrong, but you don't seem to have understood my point: the unions for the dockside workers in new york were strong, but ultimately a rational negotiation worked. The huge advantage the shipping companies had, was relocation. But, the fact remains a rational negotiation worked. This single fact (relocation) does not explain why. For some reason, rational negotiation with the workers in the US tunnel boring community doesn't work. Given the amount of excess cost, I think it is very likely better negotiating could work. The question would be, why there hasn't been a rational negotiation. I would argue, the highly intermittent nature of tunnelling, and tunnel work, has made the entities involved (the employers, the state, the city, the corporates) reluctant to do the negotiating. You talk to consequence: behaviour on the job. That doesn't have a lot to do with negotiating. Negotiating is done behind closed doors.
• jcranmer 6y ago
  There's another factor that's not mentioned here: the US has some bonkers expensive station design. Take the newish Hudson Yards station. Its platform is about twice as wide as the original subway station platforms, and it's far longer than it needs to be too. On top of that, it has a full-length underground mezzanine above the platform, which is unnecessary. Overall, the effect when I first used it was "why is this so unnecessarily massive?" Oversized stations are even more problematic when you consider that the MTA wants to build all of these by mining rather than using cut-and-cover, because cut-and-cover has too much disruption to surface tenants. And mining is far more expensive than cut-and-cover, so the extra volume you need to dig out for excessive station sizes hits your purse even faster. For as high as the actual tunneling costs are, it's the station costs that truly make the subway extensions stratospherically expensive.
  • bobthepanda 6y ago
    Hudson Yards is Manhattan's newest office submarket and probably best-in-class modern office space in town. There were estimates that Hudson Yards would become the largest station by entries and exits. (MTA's station usage stats do not count transfers within a station's paid area.)
    • jcranmer 6y ago
      You have to include transfer density to account for platform load factors, and Times Square's situation of having 5 of the 7 Midtown Manhattan lines transferring there, all of them having both express and local platforms, on top of the massive local draws for boarding, and the location of the Port Authority's bus terminal virtually guarantees that it's going to the busiest station complex in perpetuity. By contrast, the Hudson Yards station is a terminus station of a single line. That means traffic is largely going to be directly from the single platform entrance (there's only one bank of escalators to the surface) to the waiting train, or vice versa. Even if it's potentially going to be busy, there is very little need for platform loitering, and certainly not for the massive overbuild of platform and mezzanine that exists today.
      • 6y ago
• gok 6y ago
  > In 2018, Congress asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to report within 9 months on the cost of rail – transit infrastructure projects across the United States compared to similar projects worldwide. After 16 months in July 2019, a report was produced but it did not provide the comparisons requested by Congress. Rather, the GAO in its report said making the comparisons was too difficult to obtain meaningful results and instead reported on improvements to be made by the FTA for better cost estimation. It appears even the GAO did not have the ability to identify measures for cost reduction of transit tunnels that have impacted the taxpayers by billions of dollars over the years. Alon Levy has more in depth reporting of this failed report: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/07/22/new-report-on-construction-costs-misses-the-mark/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/07/22/new-report-on-... And Matthew Yglesias has a good article on the congressional inference which is preventing this from being meaningfully analyzed https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/24/15681560/gao-report-transit-construction-costs https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/24/15681560/g...
• pchristensen 6y ago
  Anyone interested in this topic can learn much more at Alon Levy's blog at https://pedestrianobservations.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/. One of the points he makes is that Anglosphere countries (and the USA is worse than others) refuse to learn from other countries that have better cost and performance. He has a lot more to say - it's good reading.
  • fennecfoxen 6y ago
    Second Avenue Sagas — http://secondavenuesagas.com/ http://secondavenuesagas.com/ — is also a good one dedicated to NYC transit and has extensive coverage of this project specifically at http://secondavenuesagas.com/category/second-avenue-subway/ http://secondavenuesagas.com/category/second-avenue-subway/
  • johngalt 6y ago
    +1 Pedestrian Observations is great reading for infrastructure nerds. Really digs into the details and trade-offs related to city transportation and regional transportation design.
  • lbriner 6y ago
    Is it really "refusing to learn" or is it that things are always far more complicated than you would like? In the UK, planning rules are often blamed for large project delays but you can't easily just throw the rules out of the window without causing concern that you will end up with a different problem. The Shinkansen was/is a successful project but it had certain "costs" involving not just the demolition of lots of property but also the "eyesore" of above-ground railways. If you want to import that success, you import all of the problems at the same time. I think perhaps governments would spend better quality time really asking and answering "what do we want this country to be about", then maybe they could start knocking the old walls down.
    • benrbray 6y ago
      > The Shinkansen was/is a successful project but it had certain "costs" involving not just the demolition of lots of property but also the "eyesore" of above-ground railways. If you want to import that success, you import all of the problems at the same time. Sure, but the alternative is usually highways, which need to be wider, and tend to louder and more of an eyesore. I'd take a Shinkansen over I-75/I-85 any day. (looking at you, Atlanta)
• k__ 6y ago
  Interesting. In Stuttgart, Germany, we have rather big subway tunnels.
• maxharris 6y ago
  When SpaceX was talking about reusability for years prior to the first F9 stage 1 landing and reuse existence proof, industry "experts" wrote all sorts of conventional wisdom that was very much like this article.
• clairity 6y ago
  this is a submarine piece by industry insiders to pin the blame squarely and solely on labor, rather than the myriad corruptions that funnel money to executives and shareholders. for instance, labor rates are likely high, not because workers are being paid so well, but because administrative costs are opaquely tacked onto the labor rates. that's not to say all of the recommendations are bogus (e.g., the environmental review process being subverted to inflate costs), but rather that that particular conclusion is highly suspect. the regulatory environment needs to incentivize smaller, leaner, more nimble contractors, rather than oligopoly, if we want a competitive market that will drive down costs and foster innovation.
• redis_mlc 6y ago
  The Bay Area (PA and MV) wanted to dig tunnels under Central Expwy but were quoted $1 billion each, and can't afford that. I went to Bali in Dec. and visited 2 identical underpass tunnels built there in the past 6 years. Makes you go hmmm ...
  • asdff 6y ago
    CA transit agencies should really just bite the political bullet and contract mexican agencies to shuttle workers north and build transit networks. What they've done in Mexico City over the last 50 years is remarkable compared to the last 50 years in any American city. It's already done for seasonal farm labor so the mechanisms for this sort of temporary immigration are there.
    • redis_mlc 6y ago
      To echo that, you're literally correct. The CCP BRI programs do the same thing. For BRI, they ship excess Chinese steel rebar (lowering their per-unit cost) to a country, then fly burly Chinese peasant labor to the country, then bill the country for both. Win-win! (if you're the CCP.) What's funny is that I talked to Bali drivers about the two new underpasses. They said it reduced traffic for one month, then everybody increased driving so it was back to the same gridlock. Just like strongtowns readers would predict. :) https://www.strongtowns.org/nonewroads https://www.strongtowns.org/nonewroads The PA and MV underpasses would be beneficial since the purpose is a direct route from downtown across Central, rather than escalating gridlock remediation. But the numbers don't work at $1 billion per underpass for towns with around 40,000 residents. Sources: I read the local SV rags about the tunnels. I went to Bali to see the 2 underpasses there and rode a taxi through them. I saw the BRI/related workers in the Jakarta airport.
• hikerclimb 6y ago
  Good:)
• erulabs 6y ago
  It’s an ownership problem primarily - cities can blame states and states can blame the fed and the fed can blame the contractors. By the time anyone can figure out who’s really at fault it’s election time again. Swiss cantons have virtually complete authority over their territories - it’s not surprising to me their large projects go much more smoothly: there are a single entity in charge and at blame. In American society we deal constantly with our division of power: funding comes from all levels and therefore a single hiccup can break the entire chain. Suggesting that a city or state have authority over its own systems makes one persona-non-grata in most conversations - even in SF where our Mayor doesn’t have the authority to even replace the MTA director. The failure of American politics isn’t that we’re all federal or all local - it’s that the buck stops nowhere. Fascism and confederacy have their obvious issues: but inability to build a subway is not one of them.
• julienchastang 6y ago
  I read somewhere, in a reference I cannot find right now, that litigation between the government and private contractors is an important factor in high US public infrastructure costs. If there is a dispute between the government and the private contractor, the contractor is much more likely to have the upper hand in US courts than elsewhere.
• mcguire 6y ago
  To a first approximation, the table at the head of the article looks like "Why Tunnels in New York Cost Much More Than Anywhere Else in The World". But anyway, what's to be done? According to the article: * Streamline the environmental and approval processes. * Establish an equitable risk sharing mechanism between the owner and contractor and properly implement it. * Establish unified contractual terms and conditions for underground work similar to the FIDIC Emerald Book. * Be fair and equitable in dealing with changes, disputes and claims. * Reevaluate the need of all soft costs: Owner, PM/CM, EIS/EA, Engineering, etc., lower bonding limits, less litigation, lower insurance cost, etc. * Revisit labor laws, rates, and union regulations and establish equitable Project Labor Agreements. * Pay for public amenities and community and stakeholders’ provisions through other funds rather than transit funds. There is no doubt that community improvements and services are needed, but infrastructure projects should not be the vehicles to fund such services or improvements. * Transportation Alternative Program is essential for sustainability and environmental benefits, but their costs should not be funded through transit project costs. * Better management of stakeholders’ approvals, public expectation, ROWs, and utilities owners. * Remove politics from infrastructure projects. Where have I heard these before?
• Maarten88 6y ago
  > After 16 months in July 2019, a report was produced but it did not provide the comparisons requested by Congress. Rather, the GAO in its report said making the comparisons was too difficult to obtain meaningful results [...] As an outsider from Europe, let me try. 1. It always seemed to me that the litigious nature of doing business in the US must be costly to society. The thinking of "If anything ever happens to you, someone owes you money". Lawyers are needed in anything of consequence, and it leads to lots of overhead, distraction and unnecessary work to avoid the possibility of being liable for anything. 2. Then there is corruption. The US ranks lower than most european countries on corruption (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index). The article hints at that, mentioning "politicizing" of infrastructure projects. That also costs money to society. 3. Then there is lack of competition. Because antitrust laws have not been enforced for decades in the US (not anywhere else too btw), I suspect that big infrastructure projects are getting distributed among a few large companies, who don't actually compete; they'll all make good money and pay their C-level execs well. There may be other factors like healthcare costs, and unions adding to costs, etc, but those seem to be a result of the above, rather than a root cause.
  • nickpp 6y ago
    0. Unions. And that implies the others: litigious, corrupted and lacking competition.
    • estebank 6y ago
      Are you implying that there aren't unions in Europe?
      • nostromo 6y ago
        That's not the right question. The question is are labor unions stronger in Paris or New York; London or Chicago? It's not an obvious answer. If you just looked at pay, you'd probably come to the conclusion that unions in blue state metros in the US are much more powerful than any of their European counterparts.
• nova22033 6y ago
  https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/subway-anger-aim-unions-article-1.3738252 https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/subway-anger-aim-unions-... 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-... 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.
  • rjkennedy98 6y ago
    well we can’t just build good public infrastructure - it also has to be a jobs program also /s
  • thescriptkiddie 6y ago
    These jobs are not actually real, they are used to pay off the mafia. Nobody ever actually shows up, they just mail a pay check to some guido in New Jersey, and in exchange their construction site doesn't have any "accidents".
• aeturnum 6y ago
  >Although environmental regulations and requirements in most European countries are as elaborate as U.S. regulations, the environmental review processes are generally better streamlined, and approval is obtained faster than in the United States. The idea that U.S. regulations are simply administered more poorly than European ones reminds me of the U.S. tax system. For years, anti-tax people in the U.S. (and the tax prep industry) have blocked changes that would simplify filing taxes. They think (correctly imo) people will like taxes less if they're hellishly complicated to file. Is something similar has been happening with other regulatory requirements? I would be interested to read about it if anyone has any sources.
  • nostromo 6y ago
    > They think (correctly imo) people will like taxes less if they're hellishly complicated to file. Their actual argument is that we should simplify the code itself, not try and hide its complexity from the payers using some computer system only available to the IRS. They do think that you should have to file every year though, that is correct. That forces a bit of visibility and accountability on the government in that it shows people just how much they're working for the government before working for themselves. This is similar to how the US makes sales tax visible to the payer, rather than hiding them behind an invisible VAT. It's about transparency.
    • vkou 6y ago
      > They do think that you should have to file every year though, that is correct. That forces a bit of visibility and accountability on the government in that it shows people just how much they're working for the government before working for themselves. People would know this if they'd just get a tax bill sent to them. Believe me, people who live in countries where filing your taxes occupies ~5-minutes of brainspace per year aren't ignorant children. They know how much they are paying.
    • girvo 6y ago
      There is zero difference in transparency between my calculating what taxes will be added to the sticker price, or my calculating what taxes were added to the sticker price (here in Aus). In fact the latter is easier.
• m0llusk 6y ago
  These comparisons appear to miss the biggest issues. The NYC Second Avenue subway involves extremely complex construction in a location surrounded by other subway lines and infrastructure. The Los Angeles subways examined are extremely deep underground in a rocky and seismically unstable situation. In all of these cases there were extreme challenges unlike those found in other cases. Note that the Second Ave subway had been proposed and discussed for around one hundred years and was consistently considered too challenging to be practical. Doesn't it make sense that a situation like that would be extremely expensive to eventually deal with? Does finally building a subway line that for one hundred years was considered out of reach really compare directly to the construction currently or recently happening in other countries?
  • youngtaff 6y ago
    Crossrail tunnelled 14 miles under the centre of London, and had to avoid the tube lines, sewers and other utilities
  • asdff 6y ago
    Tokyo is also seismically active and their subway system looks like a fisherman's net.
  • akadruid1 6y ago
    London's Jubilee and Elizabeth lines were extremely complex and threaded through other subway lines and infrastructure. They too were on the drawing board for decades, and in the case of the Jubilee line, did not start until a new boring technique called the bentonite shield was invented. London should be in the same ballpark as New York but the article suggests it is 3-5x cheaper per mile.
  • cr1895 6y ago
    Complex projects in places other than NYC don't seem to have the same extreme level of superfluous labor that drives up the costs. "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." 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-...
• singhrac 6y ago
  For what it's worth, I briefly looked into why we don't construct more above-grade track. There's actually quite a lot in the outer boroughs of New York (and of course one such mostly-freight track was converted in the High Line). It's cheaper to upkeep, and actually possibly cheaper to buy (compared to cost of drilling), and of course gets built much faster. The problem is essentially noise. Light is also a concern but not quite as large. I wonder if anyone is working on making these trains more silent. It seems hard but might be quite valuable.
  • asdff 6y ago
    The elevated portion of the expo line in LA is remarkably quiet. Imo it's far quieter than a highway or even an arterial road. The problem is concrete supports are a lot more expensive and take more time to build than cheap creaky squeaky steel girders that you see in chicago and nyc. Plus, somehow, people were still pissed as hell about that train in LA and managed to dilute the plan from being a fully grade separated line into a mixed grade mess, where it might take you 15 minutes to travel through certain 2 mile stretches (on a train capable of 75mph).
• JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Is this mentioned? It's crazy complicated underground in large old American cities. Been putting pipes etc under there for a couple hundred years. A Seattle tunnel got stalled for months when they hit an old service main iron pipe that'd been put there a century before and forgotten. My sister worked for a pump company, been in business for 150 years. Got calls all the time for replacement pumps that had failed after a century etc. One was 6 stories underground in NYC. Had to dig a tunnel down through a maze of services (electrical, tunnels, drains, water, gas) to get to it. Then had to have exactly the same pump to fit exactly into the geometry it used to have (no problem; they still had the drawing for the pump in a drawer and made an exact copy). Pulled the old one up, dropped the new one down, hooked it up and then buried it for maybe another century.
  • zepearl 6y ago
    Mh, many other non-american cities are older => I don't think that "age" matters directly in the context of the cost-comparison shown by the article. If complications caused by conflicting stuff that you mention is one of the factors that drive up the cost, then I guess that general panning for all kind of infrastructure is just constantly done better (for whichever reasons) in non-amerian cities?
    • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      Its the frantic rebuilding and updating that makes it complicated. The largest industrial centers in the world (at the time) were built and rebuild countless times, each adding another layer of services. City centers are particularly complex, and everything seems to go through there. NYC went from 125000 in 1820, to 5.5M in 1920.
  • Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
    Compare to large old European cities, which have many of the same issues plus unexploded WW2 bombs, archaeological sites, and plague pits.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• Maha-pudma 6y ago
  Is it for the same reasons health care is so expensive in the US?
  • asdff 6y ago
    Yup, graft.
• aj7 6y ago
  Is it just me, or does this not really explain anything?
• aj7 6y ago
  The work-at-home cultural change makes the pressure on mass transit less. Remember we had to do work at home with current, somewhat neglected technology. Just wait.
• azerous 6y ago
  The first table lists Asian regions such as UAE (Doha), Korea (Seoul), PRC (Hangzhou), and India (Mumbai), and the author has classified examples as Middle East, India, China, and Southeast Asia. South Korea belongs to East asia, not a Southeast Asia by all means, i.e.geopolitically or ethnically or culturally. In South Korea, it is considered offensive and rude to treat Korea as a Southeast Asian country. It's like treating Japanese as Koreans and Vietnamese as Chinese. Also, the NATM method that Koreans have used on the Sin-Bundang Metro Line is much more cost-effective than the open cut method.
• diebeforei485 6y ago
  Clearly ripe for disruption, as Elon recognized years ago when starting The Boring Company.
• djaouen 6y ago
  Capitalism at work!
• xvilka 6y ago
  Meanwhile both London[1] and Paris[2] build huge new lines on quite a scale. More or less on time and not too far from estimated budget. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Paris_Express https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Paris_Express
• SEJeff 6y ago
  Isn't this literally the reason that Elon Musk found the boring company? He sees that there is a tech AND price arbitrage between existing and feasible tech for tunneling technology. Granted, one of the Boring Company's "Tricks" is that their tunnels are smaller due to only currently wanting to support electric vehicles, so you don't need quite as big tunnels due to less CO2, but still... They bought a commercial tunnel boring machine and decided to build their own. The first one is named Prufrock and it is going to be helping do the huge project in Los Vegas they've already completed the first phase of: https://cleantechnica.com/2020/03/01/prufrock-next-generation-tunnel-boring-machine-is-working-somewhere/ https://cleantechnica.com/2020/03/01/prufrock-next-generatio... The next phase of their project literally connects the entire Los Vegas strip underground via tunnels. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-boring-co-las-vegas-loop-tunnel-map-proposal-2020-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-boring-co-las-vega...
• wayanon 6y ago
  Am I being unfair for expecting to see organised crime on the list?
• mcv 6y ago
  When I saw this headline, my first thought was: "Have they considered the Noord-Zuidlijn in Amsterdam?" That was a line that went way over budget, way past deadline, caused damage to historical buildings it tunnelled under, so I expected it to be way more expensive than other metro lines. Especially considering the massive sprawling metro systems that many other cities have; surely they can't build those if they cost tens of billions? So I was quite surprised that this article is entirely correct: US metro lines really are way more expensive even than our way over budget line through our muddy, unstable soil.
• YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
  @jseliger - TIL that there is a tunnelingonline.com website. Thank you! I'm a little disappointed it's an industry publication and not a fan project, though, I was hoping to discover a whole new internet community of tunneling enthusiasts.