5 ms·

The build out of the Sound Transit light rail is taking 30 years for the following reasons: 1. ST only has the funds to build out a small % of the project at a

The build out of the Sound Transit light rail is taking 30 years for the following reasons: 1. ST only has the funds to build out a small % of the project at any one time. The work has to be staged because they can't take out all the $ at once. 2. Project managing the build out of the whole thing at once would require a much larger organization, which would be more expensive 3. Building the whole thing at once would require a much large workforce and much more equipment, which would be more expensive. 4. Staging construction gives them the time to work out the details of the next phase while working on the current phase.

WalterBright 5y ago
The railroad wasn't built all at once, either. It was two teams, one going east, the other west. The companies were paid as work progressed, they did not have access to all the funds in advance. They didn't even know the route to be taken, they had survey crews working ahead of the construction, marking the best route. If you don't think they had a much larger logistics problem, consider the problems with supplying the crews with food, water, clothing, rails, ties, horses, wagons, everything they need, from a thousand miles away. The most important thing, though, was the companies were paid by the mile. The faster they built, the more money they made, because that would push the meeting point further away. They had ENORMOUS incentive to move fast. And it worked. ST, however, has no incentive whatsoever to move things along. They have every incentive to delay, invent problems, all so they can go back and demand more money. At a company I used to work for, they hired a team of old software engineers to write a piece of software for a good customer. It took them 3 months, and arrived on time and under budget. Want to know the secret? They had a huge bonus for being on time (I think it was ten grand apiece), which would shrink away for every day late. I asked if that was what motivated them to be on time, and they all denied it with "we're professionals". I openly laughed at that. It's amazing what happens when the incentives are aligned with the desired results. We saw that last year when vaccine developers wanted 18 months to develop a vaccine, and Trump gave them a big financial incentive to get it done before the end of the year. Later came the usual denials that these incentives motivated them in any way :-)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dropofwill 5y ago
  > The urgency to create a vaccine for COVID‑19 led to compressed schedules that shortened the standard vaccine development timeline, in some cases combining clinical trial steps over months, a process typically conducted sequentially over years.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Over a year ago, I suggested this very process for vaccine development here, in HackerNews. This was strongly dismissed by people who told me I knew nothing about vaccine development (true) and that it couldn't be done (false).
    - Gibbon1 5y ago
      I remember that. At that time I was paying attention to people actually knew something about vaccine development. They said it would take at least 18 months. Being a practical pessimist I decided to take the under and say 12 months. The guys that knew what they were talking about were mostly right, most vaccines making it are taking about 18 months to make it to distribution. But I bet that out of ~100 vaccine programs a couple of them beat that by six months.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        > I remember that. Thank you.
- nradov 5y ago
  After the Northridge earthquake destroyed several bridges the contractors hired to perform the repairs earned millions in bonuses by finishing the job in just a few months. In one case they got an extra $150K bonus per day early. Financial incentives work.
joe_the_user 5y ago
I believe those are the reasons in the sense that they are result of [thing-we-can't-change] + [best-decision-under-the-circumstances]. But it's an example of the "a bunch of reasonable seeming decisions adding up to something preposterous" system that is quite common today. Notably, if Seattle wanted a light rail could spend what it cost. Spending over thirty clearly has all sorts of problems - their supplies could go out of business in the middle of the process etc, etc. I'm sure I find someone who could make the 3 billion dollars of planning money that went the California high speed rail sound sensible too.
scythe 5y ago
>2. Project managing the build out of the whole thing at once would require a much larger organization, which would be more expensive >3. Building the whole thing at once would require a much large workforce and much more equipment, which would be more expensive. This doesn't work out in a linear model. You either hire N people for 2T years, or you hire 2N people for T years, either way a total cost of 2STN for a mean salary of S per year. It works the same way with project management. With equipment you might have something of a point, but not if the equipment is leased. You can point to nonlinearity, but then that looks like a weakness of the system. >4. Staging construction gives them the time to work out the details of the next phase while working on the current phase. The city is a moving target; details you work out today may not be true tomorrow. Worse, the different pieces of the system are interdependent: changing conditions may invalidate work already done, incurring additional costs. Ultimately, it seems like the only compelling reason on this list is (1), which itself points to a lack of overall strategy on the part of the government.

WalterBright 5y ago

The railroad wasn't built all at once, either. It was two teams, one going east, the other west. The companies were paid as work progressed, they did not have access to all the funds in advance. They didn't even know the route to be taken, they had survey crews working ahead of the construction, marking the best route. If you don't think they had a much larger logistics problem, consider the problems with supplying the crews with food, water, clothing, rails, ties, horses, wagons, everything they need, from a thousand miles away. The most important thing, though, was the companies were paid by the mile. The faster they built, the more money they made, because that would push the meeting point further away. They had ENORMOUS incentive to move fast. And it worked. ST, however, has no incentive whatsoever to move things along. They have every incentive to delay, invent problems, all so they can go back and demand more money. At a company I used to work for, they hired a team of old software engineers to write a piece of software for a good customer. It took them 3 months, and arrived on time and under budget. Want to know the secret? They had a huge bonus for being on time (I think it was ten grand apiece), which would shrink away for every day late. I asked if that was what motivated them to be on time, and they all denied it with "we're professionals". I openly laughed at that. It's amazing what happens when the incentives are aligned with the desired results. We saw that last year when vaccine developers wanted 18 months to develop a vaccine, and Trump gave them a big financial incentive to get it done before the end of the year. Later came the usual denials that these incentives motivated them in any way :-)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dropofwill 5y ago
> The urgency to create a vaccine for COVID‑19 led to compressed schedules that shortened the standard vaccine development timeline, in some cases combining clinical trial steps over months, a process typically conducted sequentially over years.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Over a year ago, I suggested this very process for vaccine development here, in HackerNews. This was strongly dismissed by people who told me I knew nothing about vaccine development (true) and that it couldn't be done (false).
  - Gibbon1 5y ago
    I remember that. At that time I was paying attention to people actually knew something about vaccine development. They said it would take at least 18 months. Being a practical pessimist I decided to take the under and say 12 months. The guys that knew what they were talking about were mostly right, most vaccines making it are taking about 18 months to make it to distribution. But I bet that out of ~100 vaccine programs a couple of them beat that by six months.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      > I remember that. Thank you.
nradov 5y ago
After the Northridge earthquake destroyed several bridges the contractors hired to perform the repairs earned millions in bonuses by finishing the job in just a few months. In one case they got an extra $150K bonus per day early. Financial incentives work.

joe_the_user 5y ago

I believe those are the reasons in the sense that they are result of [thing-we-can't-change] + [best-decision-under-the-circumstances]. But it's an example of the "a bunch of reasonable seeming decisions adding up to something preposterous" system that is quite common today. Notably, if Seattle wanted a light rail could spend what it cost. Spending over thirty clearly has all sorts of problems - their supplies could go out of business in the middle of the process etc, etc. I'm sure I find someone who could make the 3 billion dollars of planning money that went the California high speed rail sound sensible too.

scythe 5y ago

>2. Project managing the build out of the whole thing at once would require a much larger organization, which would be more expensive >3. Building the whole thing at once would require a much large workforce and much more equipment, which would be more expensive. This doesn't work out in a linear model. You either hire N people for 2T years, or you hire 2N people for T years, either way a total cost of 2STN for a mean salary of S per year. It works the same way with project management. With equipment you might have something of a point, but not if the equipment is leased. You can point to nonlinearity, but then that looks like a weakness of the system. >4. Staging construction gives them the time to work out the details of the next phase while working on the current phase. The city is a moving target; details you work out today may not be true tomorrow. Worse, the different pieces of the system are interdependent: changing conditions may invalidate work already done, incurring additional costs. Ultimately, it seems like the only compelling reason on this list is (1), which itself points to a lack of overall strategy on the part of the government.