8 ms·

San Francisco’s quest for the perfect trash can

66 points by savanaly 5y ago

hstan4 5y ago
San Francisco: where the local government can’t even decide on a trash can without flushing hundreds of thousands of tax dollars down the drain
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Corollary: don't hire a contracting company that primarily does government contracts. They'll be experts at billing you while failing to make progress. I know this from personal experience.
Reubend 5y ago
It's sad to see yet another way in which the SF city government wastes taxpayer money. I'm astonished that there hasn't been political motivation to form some kind of broad audit for the city's spending. But since I don't live in SF, I guess I can happily ignore these issues and be content with my own city's relatively modest decisions.
- hayd 5y ago
  IMO it's largely down to party politics: there is no opposition. A broad audit would be politically damaging / without upside.
exmadscientist 5y ago
A tangent from your local product development engineer: never pay attention to the cost of prototypes. It's just not related to final product costs. It's a little like software: the first one's very expensive and the following ones are very cheap. In this case, it's because the prototypes are built by hand, often using the time of skilled engineers at hundreds of dollars an hour, with no factory tooling or anything. So of course they're going to be expensive. That says nothing about the rest of this article, though.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > never pay attention to the cost of prototypes. It's just not related to final product costs. It's a little like software: the first one's very expensive and the following ones are very cheap. Well, except the first question presented in the article is "why are we paying for any prototypes in the first place, instead of just using cans that already exist?" Prototype costs seem pretty relevant to that question.
  - ginko 5y ago
    These trash cans will most likely be on the street for decades to come. For better or worse they'll be part of the city's image. I can totally understand why a larger city like SF wants to spend some resources on this rather than just pick the next best off-the shelf solution without much thought.
    - refurb 5y ago
      "Part of the city's image"? I'd argue the city's image is dominated by homelessness, poop on the streets, lackluster enforcement of the law, corruption in city hall. They could come up with the best possible trash can ever invented and it wouldn't move the need on resident's quality of life. Total waste of money.
      - ginko 5y ago
        > "Part of the city's image"? I'd argue the city's image is dominated by homelessness, poop on the streets, lackluster enforcement of the law, corruption in city hall. I mean I've only been to San Francisco a few times, but apart from the Tenderloin I thought it was a very beautiful city. Yeah, homelessness and public defecation are a problem, but do these have to be brought up in ANY discussion regarding SF? Groups of people can deal with multiple issues at once.
        refurb 5y ago
        SF is a unique city in a beautiful location with a ton of organization problems. And yes, people love to exaggerate the problems, but I live outside the Tenderloin and still see poop on the street (though rarely) so these aren't limited to certain areas. As a tax payer, I've noted that San Francisco has actually been removing trash cans, that worked perfectly well, because people just dump trash beside them for the city to pick up. No trash can, no dumping? No, they dump anyways. So the solution isn't to use the old design which seemed to work "ok". Or even talk to other cities to see if they have better options SF could just buy. It was to completely redesign a trash can. Insane. I'm waiting for SF to hire an outside firm to resign the tires on their city vehicles. So yes, you can solve multiple problems at once, but there are also only so many hours in the day and so many tax dollars to work with and spending any time/money on new trash cans is less time solving actual quality of life problems.
sollewitt 5y ago
As an aside, hey San Franciscans, consider supporting Mission Local. The work they are doing covering this kind of bureaucratic stuff is invaluable - this years reporting on the Dept. Building Inspection has been particularly good
endominus 5y ago
I can already hear people sarcastically saying, "tax dollars at work." What's the solution, though? Obviously part of this is staggering corruption, but I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of the problem here is also just fundamental incompetence on the part of these middle-managers. This is exactly what I would expect to come out of the worst design-by-committee no-initiative meetings. Spiraling costs, no understanding or acceptance of tradeoffs, and zero shame about the failures of the process. This has incompetent management written all over it, but no one will be held accountable for these failures. How can that change? Should we keep a public record of the projects that city councillors are involved in/advocate for? Or does it really need to change? It's kind of an issue of dueling narratives. There are some public projects that are massive, embarassing failures, and some that go ahead on time, under budget, and quietly. We only really hear about the first, and there does seem to be a group that benefits from pushing the idea that large government projects always and inevitably fail. I don't know how common it really is, and it's hard to trust any source as definitive on the matter anymore given the incentives involved. Although from what I understand, Cost Disease is a thing - the prices of public infrastructure has gone up an order of magnitude over the last few decades. I'm sympathetic to the idea that there's a large amount of waste in government spending - I've worked for large companies in the past, and it's not a stretch to imagine government as just a larger, even less tightly fiscally managed enterprise - but I don't think "smaller government" is the panacea that some propose. Especially because I don't believe anyone ever actually tries to shrink the government; a solution that no one would actually implement is not a good solution. Are there any practical proposals to increase accountability and effectiveness of government entities?
- esyir 5y ago
  I think the first question you should be asking yourself is what are the incentives in play here? Corruption is one, but are there actually incentives to run lean for a govt government here, or do they act like money is free.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    SF has less than a million people. Its budget is 12 billion (10 without the airport). You know how if you leave your cat food out, you get a fat cat? We left the cat food out and now he is ever ravenous, never satiated.
WalterBright 5y ago
Seattle has SF beat. They bought 5 port-a-potty equivalents for a quarter million dollars each.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Naw, 350K for them here: https://www.hoover.org/research/only-san-francisco-61000-tents-and-350000-public-toilets https://www.hoover.org/research/only-san-francisco-61000-ten...
  - pkaye 5y ago
    Includes maintenance, security, and supplies. And the maintenance and security staff will need to be paid reasonably per city expectations. Knowing San Francisco that toilet will get trashed quickly and have drug needles and stuff that needs to be cleaned up.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      The Romans had it figured out 2000 years ago. https://archaeologymysteries.com/2019/02/26/how-did-the-romans-go-to-the-toilet/ https://archaeologymysteries.com/2019/02/26/how-did-the-roma...
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      Given that the toilet was designed to address these issues, yes the maintenance and security costs need to be included. That is why they bought the self-cleaning armored toilets to begin with, to cut down on these costs. These toilets have mechanical machines that self-steam the interiors, the seat tilts up and self-cleans, the floors and walls are made of steel to resist vandalism and there are all sorts of sensors in place to automate the toilet. So to the degree that this equipment breaks down or fails to deliver on the self-cleaning promise, those costs should be included in the total cost of the toilet, no?
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        Those Rube Goldberg machines will never survive contact with the public. 90% will be "out of order" at any one time, and in 5 years they'll all be scrapped.
gHosts 5y ago
My, my, it's securomad America and they're not even bomb proof. http://www.bombproof.eu/ http://www.bombproof.eu/
- ARandomerDude 5y ago
  I know just enough English English to know that securomad is security-crazy in American English. But it was like an etymological word riddle to get there.
northerdome 5y ago
There is so much corruption in this city the trash cans are an entertaining artifact of a much, much deeper problem. The quest for trash cans isn't bizarre when you consider where the incentives for those in government lie... This is a city spending $55,000 per tent to "support" a parking lot camp ground with porta potties.
- acchow 5y ago
  Can you provide more details about this and some citations please?
  - sbierwagen 5y ago
    https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-officials-want-15-million-for-tent-sites-16269998.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-officials-w... Spoiler: much of the cost is for 24/7 onsite security
    - hayd 5y ago
      Is there a breakdown of these costs? I couldn't see it in the article. Even with 24/7 security (and SF wages) the costs seems high.
    - vlovich123 5y ago
      Let’s say 2 people per tent. That’s a population of 500. Let’s say there’s 1 security person per 10 homeless person @50k/year. That’s 2.5 million/year. Let’s say you need triple that for round the clock coverage. That’s still only 7.5 million. Let’s say food and restrooms eat up the rest of the budget. Are the homeless a prison-like demographic where you need a security guard every 10 people for order? Heck, even prisons don’t have this level of security. This feels like a grift for funneling money to security firms that hire off duty cops/ex cops for their services. The city should just hire the homeless directly for providing their own security services. At least that way the money would also be going into the community that needs it.
throwaway284534 5y ago
Maybe a bay-area startup like Bird or Lime could disrupt the streets of SF by covertly dumping^H^H^H^H^H^H installing trash cans all over town. Or even better, put the trash cans on the back of their scooters and offer discounted rides to destinations in need of cleanup. They could even pay their customers to ride out to a recycling facility which converts the collected waste material into green energy.
ThePadawan 5y ago
I'd be happy to read the overly sarcastic comments if SF had decided to buy an off-the-shelf solution which it turns out was unsuited to the climate, or which came with an obligatory maintenance contract, or which couldn't be uninstalled for the marathon, etc..
dntrkv 5y ago
This is really being blown out of proportion. Spending $400k on a prototype for something that will cost $10M+, will be on every street, will be interacted with by every citizen seems pretty fucking reasonable. Their unit costs are basically in line with what other cities are paying. SF has its bullshit, but I don’t see this as that.
- bmitc 5y ago
  I really don’t see how it’s blown out of proportion. One, the article mentions that it is rather unclear, other than one idea or claim that it’s because of aesthetics, why the project is even being undertaken. That alone is cause for major concern. They’re spending money and wasting resources without even knowing why. Secondly, spending money on something when there’s already a solution seems bewildering, especially when there is no clear reason why those solutions don’t work. If it truly is aesthetics, is that what the people think or was it just someone’s personal feeling? Lastly, San Francisco is riddled with trash and dirty streets. It seems rather surreal they’d spend so much on aesthetic trash cans, that may or may not work better than the existing solutions, when the streets are literally covered with human feces. https://www.npr.org/2018/08/01/634626538/san-francisco-squalor-city-streets-strewn-with-trash-needles-and-human-feces https://www.npr.org/2018/08/01/634626538/san-francisco-squal... Quotes from that article: > San Francisco's streets are so filthy that at least one infectious disease expert has compared the city to some of the dirtiest slums in the world. > "The contamination is ... much greater than communities in Brazil or Kenya or India," says Riley, who researched health conditions caused by extreme poverty in some of the world's poorest regions.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    > Rubenstein from Public Works explained that in 2018, the department could not find a trash can that fulfilled an exacting list of features: a rolling inside can for easy emptying, a sensor to alert workers when a can is full, durability to withstand street life, and be tamper-proof. > ... > There were no off-the-shelf models that met most of those requirements, except for the Bigbelly. But those, at a cost of about $3,900 a can, were deemed too expensive. Nor were they particularly attractive, she said. The PEL [product] can also fit most of the requirements. It costs $6,400,
system2 5y ago
We spent $300M for a nonsense governor recall. I am okay with spending a few bucks for trash cans.
blackCee 5y ago
Join join join this!! CoinCircle https://coincircle.com/l/YlNU_VklpF https://coincircle.com/l/YlNU_VklpF
wonnage 5y ago
Would be money better spent on hiring people to empty the damn things
ladon86 5y ago
There are plenty of examples of SF government being wasteful, but this does seem pretty reasonable to me. Most cities can afford to be less concerned with the “tamper proof” feature, and when you add that to the other requirements, it’s not unreasonable that a custom bin is needed. Plus, as other commenters have said, it’s one of the most visible public works, so it contributes quite a bit to the character of the city - a unique look would be nice.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
This article seems like a political hitjob but, as the kind of nerd who actually thinks about street furniture, I was thinking it might be about one of those cool things where the small, visible interface leads to an underground vault: https://www.elkoplast.eu/underground-containers https://www.elkoplast.eu/underground-containers Probably hard to retrofit in the middle of cities though. Or even pneumatic trash tubes, like in NY: https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islands-futuristic-pneumatic-tube-trash-system/ https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islan... Which would seem more appropriate for HN discussion.

66 points by savanaly 5y ago

San Francisco: where the local government can’t even decide on a trash can without flushing hundreds of thousands of tax dollars down the drain

WalterBright 5y ago
Corollary: don't hire a contracting company that primarily does government contracts. They'll be experts at billing you while failing to make progress. I know this from personal experience.

Reubend 5y ago

It's sad to see yet another way in which the SF city government wastes taxpayer money. I'm astonished that there hasn't been political motivation to form some kind of broad audit for the city's spending. But since I don't live in SF, I guess I can happily ignore these issues and be content with my own city's relatively modest decisions.

hayd 5y ago
IMO it's largely down to party politics: there is no opposition. A broad audit would be politically damaging / without upside.

exmadscientist 5y ago

A tangent from your local product development engineer: never pay attention to the cost of prototypes. It's just not related to final product costs. It's a little like software: the first one's very expensive and the following ones are very cheap. In this case, it's because the prototypes are built by hand, often using the time of skilled engineers at hundreds of dollars an hour, with no factory tooling or anything. So of course they're going to be expensive. That says nothing about the rest of this article, though.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> never pay attention to the cost of prototypes. It's just not related to final product costs. It's a little like software: the first one's very expensive and the following ones are very cheap. Well, except the first question presented in the article is "why are we paying for any prototypes in the first place, instead of just using cans that already exist?" Prototype costs seem pretty relevant to that question.
- ginko 5y ago
  These trash cans will most likely be on the street for decades to come. For better or worse they'll be part of the city's image. I can totally understand why a larger city like SF wants to spend some resources on this rather than just pick the next best off-the shelf solution without much thought.
  - refurb 5y ago
    "Part of the city's image"? I'd argue the city's image is dominated by homelessness, poop on the streets, lackluster enforcement of the law, corruption in city hall. They could come up with the best possible trash can ever invented and it wouldn't move the need on resident's quality of life. Total waste of money.
    - ginko 5y ago
      > "Part of the city's image"? I'd argue the city's image is dominated by homelessness, poop on the streets, lackluster enforcement of the law, corruption in city hall. I mean I've only been to San Francisco a few times, but apart from the Tenderloin I thought it was a very beautiful city. Yeah, homelessness and public defecation are a problem, but do these have to be brought up in ANY discussion regarding SF? Groups of people can deal with multiple issues at once.
      - refurb 5y ago
        SF is a unique city in a beautiful location with a ton of organization problems. And yes, people love to exaggerate the problems, but I live outside the Tenderloin and still see poop on the street (though rarely) so these aren't limited to certain areas. As a tax payer, I've noted that San Francisco has actually been removing trash cans, that worked perfectly well, because people just dump trash beside them for the city to pick up. No trash can, no dumping? No, they dump anyways. So the solution isn't to use the old design which seemed to work "ok". Or even talk to other cities to see if they have better options SF could just buy. It was to completely redesign a trash can. Insane. I'm waiting for SF to hire an outside firm to resign the tires on their city vehicles. So yes, you can solve multiple problems at once, but there are also only so many hours in the day and so many tax dollars to work with and spending any time/money on new trash cans is less time solving actual quality of life problems.

sollewitt 5y ago

As an aside, hey San Franciscans, consider supporting Mission Local. The work they are doing covering this kind of bureaucratic stuff is invaluable - this years reporting on the Dept. Building Inspection has been particularly good

endominus 5y ago

I can already hear people sarcastically saying, "tax dollars at work." What's the solution, though? Obviously part of this is staggering corruption, but I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of the problem here is also just fundamental incompetence on the part of these middle-managers. This is exactly what I would expect to come out of the worst design-by-committee no-initiative meetings. Spiraling costs, no understanding or acceptance of tradeoffs, and zero shame about the failures of the process. This has incompetent management written all over it, but no one will be held accountable for these failures. How can that change? Should we keep a public record of the projects that city councillors are involved in/advocate for? Or does it really need to change? It's kind of an issue of dueling narratives. There are some public projects that are massive, embarassing failures, and some that go ahead on time, under budget, and quietly. We only really hear about the first, and there does seem to be a group that benefits from pushing the idea that large government projects always and inevitably fail. I don't know how common it really is, and it's hard to trust any source as definitive on the matter anymore given the incentives involved. Although from what I understand, Cost Disease is a thing - the prices of public infrastructure has gone up an order of magnitude over the last few decades. I'm sympathetic to the idea that there's a large amount of waste in government spending - I've worked for large companies in the past, and it's not a stretch to imagine government as just a larger, even less tightly fiscally managed enterprise - but I don't think "smaller government" is the panacea that some propose. Especially because I don't believe anyone ever actually tries to shrink the government; a solution that no one would actually implement is not a good solution. Are there any practical proposals to increase accountability and effectiveness of government entities?

esyir 5y ago
I think the first question you should be asking yourself is what are the incentives in play here? Corruption is one, but are there actually incentives to run lean for a govt government here, or do they act like money is free.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  SF has less than a million people. Its budget is 12 billion (10 without the airport). You know how if you leave your cat food out, you get a fat cat? We left the cat food out and now he is ever ravenous, never satiated.

WalterBright 5y ago

Seattle has SF beat. They bought 5 port-a-potty equivalents for a quarter million dollars each.

rsj_hn 5y ago
Naw, 350K for them here: https://www.hoover.org/research/only-san-francisco-61000-tents-and-350000-public-toilets https://www.hoover.org/research/only-san-francisco-61000-ten...
- pkaye 5y ago
  Includes maintenance, security, and supplies. And the maintenance and security staff will need to be paid reasonably per city expectations. Knowing San Francisco that toilet will get trashed quickly and have drug needles and stuff that needs to be cleaned up.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    The Romans had it figured out 2000 years ago. https://archaeologymysteries.com/2019/02/26/how-did-the-romans-go-to-the-toilet/ https://archaeologymysteries.com/2019/02/26/how-did-the-roma...
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    Given that the toilet was designed to address these issues, yes the maintenance and security costs need to be included. That is why they bought the self-cleaning armored toilets to begin with, to cut down on these costs. These toilets have mechanical machines that self-steam the interiors, the seat tilts up and self-cleans, the floors and walls are made of steel to resist vandalism and there are all sorts of sensors in place to automate the toilet. So to the degree that this equipment breaks down or fails to deliver on the self-cleaning promise, those costs should be included in the total cost of the toilet, no?
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      Those Rube Goldberg machines will never survive contact with the public. 90% will be "out of order" at any one time, and in 5 years they'll all be scrapped.

gHosts 5y ago

My, my, it's securomad America and they're not even bomb proof. http://www.bombproof.eu/ http://www.bombproof.eu/

ARandomerDude 5y ago
I know just enough English English to know that securomad is security-crazy in American English. But it was like an etymological word riddle to get there.

northerdome 5y ago

There is so much corruption in this city the trash cans are an entertaining artifact of a much, much deeper problem. The quest for trash cans isn't bizarre when you consider where the incentives for those in government lie... This is a city spending $55,000 per tent to "support" a parking lot camp ground with porta potties.

acchow 5y ago
Can you provide more details about this and some citations please?
- sbierwagen 5y ago
  https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-officials-want-15-million-for-tent-sites-16269998.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-officials-w... Spoiler: much of the cost is for 24/7 onsite security
  - hayd 5y ago
    Is there a breakdown of these costs? I couldn't see it in the article. Even with 24/7 security (and SF wages) the costs seems high.
  - vlovich123 5y ago
    Let’s say 2 people per tent. That’s a population of 500. Let’s say there’s 1 security person per 10 homeless person @50k/year. That’s 2.5 million/year. Let’s say you need triple that for round the clock coverage. That’s still only 7.5 million. Let’s say food and restrooms eat up the rest of the budget. Are the homeless a prison-like demographic where you need a security guard every 10 people for order? Heck, even prisons don’t have this level of security. This feels like a grift for funneling money to security firms that hire off duty cops/ex cops for their services. The city should just hire the homeless directly for providing their own security services. At least that way the money would also be going into the community that needs it.

throwaway284534 5y ago

Maybe a bay-area startup like Bird or Lime could disrupt the streets of SF by covertly dumping^H^H^H^H^H^H installing trash cans all over town. Or even better, put the trash cans on the back of their scooters and offer discounted rides to destinations in need of cleanup. They could even pay their customers to ride out to a recycling facility which converts the collected waste material into green energy.

ThePadawan 5y ago

I'd be happy to read the overly sarcastic comments if SF had decided to buy an off-the-shelf solution which it turns out was unsuited to the climate, or which came with an obligatory maintenance contract, or which couldn't be uninstalled for the marathon, etc..

dntrkv 5y ago

This is really being blown out of proportion. Spending $400k on a prototype for something that will cost $10M+, will be on every street, will be interacted with by every citizen seems pretty fucking reasonable. Their unit costs are basically in line with what other cities are paying. SF has its bullshit, but I don’t see this as that.

bmitc 5y ago
I really don’t see how it’s blown out of proportion. One, the article mentions that it is rather unclear, other than one idea or claim that it’s because of aesthetics, why the project is even being undertaken. That alone is cause for major concern. They’re spending money and wasting resources without even knowing why. Secondly, spending money on something when there’s already a solution seems bewildering, especially when there is no clear reason why those solutions don’t work. If it truly is aesthetics, is that what the people think or was it just someone’s personal feeling? Lastly, San Francisco is riddled with trash and dirty streets. It seems rather surreal they’d spend so much on aesthetic trash cans, that may or may not work better than the existing solutions, when the streets are literally covered with human feces. https://www.npr.org/2018/08/01/634626538/san-francisco-squalor-city-streets-strewn-with-trash-needles-and-human-feces https://www.npr.org/2018/08/01/634626538/san-francisco-squal... Quotes from that article: > San Francisco's streets are so filthy that at least one infectious disease expert has compared the city to some of the dirtiest slums in the world. > "The contamination is ... much greater than communities in Brazil or Kenya or India," says Riley, who researched health conditions caused by extreme poverty in some of the world's poorest regions.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  > Rubenstein from Public Works explained that in 2018, the department could not find a trash can that fulfilled an exacting list of features: a rolling inside can for easy emptying, a sensor to alert workers when a can is full, durability to withstand street life, and be tamper-proof. > ... > There were no off-the-shelf models that met most of those requirements, except for the Bigbelly. But those, at a cost of about $3,900 a can, were deemed too expensive. Nor were they particularly attractive, she said. The PEL [product] can also fit most of the requirements. It costs $6,400,

system2 5y ago

We spent $300M for a nonsense governor recall. I am okay with spending a few bucks for trash cans.

blackCee 5y ago

Join join join this!! CoinCircle https://coincircle.com/l/YlNU_VklpF https://coincircle.com/l/YlNU_VklpF

wonnage 5y ago

Would be money better spent on hiring people to empty the damn things

ladon86 5y ago

There are plenty of examples of SF government being wasteful, but this does seem pretty reasonable to me. Most cities can afford to be less concerned with the “tamper proof” feature, and when you add that to the other requirements, it’s not unreasonable that a custom bin is needed. Plus, as other commenters have said, it’s one of the most visible public works, so it contributes quite a bit to the character of the city - a unique look would be nice.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

This article seems like a political hitjob but, as the kind of nerd who actually thinks about street furniture, I was thinking it might be about one of those cool things where the small, visible interface leads to an underground vault: https://www.elkoplast.eu/underground-containers https://www.elkoplast.eu/underground-containers Probably hard to retrofit in the middle of cities though. Or even pneumatic trash tubes, like in NY: https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islands-futuristic-pneumatic-tube-trash-system/ https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islan... Which would seem more appropriate for HN discussion.