5 ms·

IMHO often the purpose of these projects isn’t to deliver transportation, it’s to keep people employed in the project. That means draw it out, maximize the bud

IMHO often the purpose of these projects isn’t to deliver transportation, it’s to keep people employed in the project. That means draw it out, maximize the budget, spend every penny, etc., whereas the actual infrastructure is the excuse to keep it going. Put another way, conflicts of interest tend to arise from the bureaucracy inherent in these projects. The researcher here identifies the symptoms of this but seems to see this more as an accident.

robomartin 4y ago
> IMHO often the purpose of these projects isn’t to deliver transportation, it’s to keep people employed in the project. Bingo! Another element of this is to use such projects to buy the votes of the large unions. Just a couple of months ago these crews came through our street. They ripped-up the PERFECTLY GOOD sidewalks and rebuilt them. This street is 24 years old. In other words, it's new. Oh, yes, they repaved it once about a year ago. The guys ripping-up the sidewalk told me they are going to rip-up the street and repave it next year. This is criminal.
- jimt1234 4y ago
  Can you please tell them to come re-pave my street? It's pothole heaven.
  - robomartin 4y ago
    That's the irony/tragedy of this, isn't it. The misallocation of funds is staggering. I'll give you another example. There's a stop sign not far from my home that gets knocked down with such alarming frequency that the neighborhood knows it at "Kenny" (the South Park character that always got killed). I would say it lasts two to six weeks. I would not be surprised if, in the last ten years, Kenny was replaced 100 to 200 times. I lost count. The reason this happens is that semi trucks exiting the freeway at night can't see it, make a tighter than usual turn and run it over. There really isn't anything wrong with the turn, they have plenty of room. The sign is simply in the wrong place. Guess what they do? Every time the sign is taken down they return and install a new sign in exactly the same spot. Brand new sign. I would not be surprised if the aggregate cost of replacing this sign, between hardware, labor and organizational costs is in the order of $10K to $20K. Which means we have likely spent between a million and four million dollars, if not more, replacing this sign. It's Einstein's definition of madness: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And we pay for the madness.
    - jimt1234 4y ago
      I think Einstein's definition assumes people give a shit about the results. LOL
      - robomartin 4y ago
        That's hilarious.
- pencilguin 4y ago
  The hell of it is, it isn't criminal. It has been made wholly legal!
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  The part that irks me more than the self-serving "not technically graft" you are describing is the jerks who will find some reason to defend the actions as "necessary" as if there aren't plenty of 100yo original sidewalks in places. Literally any other "big faceless organization" would not be cut slack to this extent.
- user3939382 4y ago
  > They ripped-up the PERFECTLY GOOD sidewalks and rebuilt them. If you haven't already, watch a movie called Falling Down. There's a scene about this.
airza 4y ago
That explanation doesn’t really seem to explain why there is such a huge difference between the US and other countries with an arguably larger administrative state and higher union participation.
- pencilguin 4y ago
  The US is more corrupt than many other countries. Our innovation was to make corruption explicitly legal, so there is no risk of indictments.
- akira2501 4y ago
  The US is just that.. a union of states that enjoy a much higher level of independence than in other countries and at the same time have to deal with their own counties. The states all have differing levels of competence, enforcement and leadership. The federal government has limited oversight, except for cases of particular types of criminal corruption. In my mind what screwed a lot of states up was the financial collapse of 2007, many did not adjust their spending forecasts and reconsider these projects appropriately in the face of the decade that came after. Finally, add in the pandemic and remote work, and it really undercut the rationale and scope of many of these projects that were never adjusted in the face of this.
  - bigbacaloa 4y ago
    The US states are no more autonomous than the analogous regions in many countries. For example, Madrid's transport system is controlled regionally in a way that involves region, city, and private entities and is far better than anything in the US (NYC included). The US has institutionalized and legalized practices that are viewed as corruption in most countries and this becomes very evident in regards to public contracts and public works.
    - Robotbeat 4y ago
      Can you provide very specific examples of these practices?
pencilguin 4y ago
Once the project is done, the money stops. The bigger the project is, the more backers it needs. Many of these have to be bought. The people initiating the project don't have money to buy them, but the project budget does, or can. Adding that to the budget would make it a bigger project, needing more backing. So, projects are under-budgeted, and overruns pay off backers. Nobody involved wants that money flow ever to end, so it goes over schedule. Some projects avoid this fate. Solar and wind farms have transparent costs (N units x $M per unit), and start producing revenue almost immediately. Nukes suffer it most, because nobody knows how much any of it ought to cost, it takes forever, and it produces nothing until it is finished several changes of administration later.
8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
It sounds like the taxpayer is forced to pay for someone else's basic income instead of people completing the project at its most efficient price.
joe_the_user 4y ago
IMHO often the purpose of these projects isn’t to deliver transportation, it’s to keep people employed in the project. Not even that, it's a corrupt racket. It's purpose is to make money for powerful people. Sometimes employing people helps but notice "Andrew Cuomo launched a “transformation plan” created by a consulting firm to “simplify a complex and inefficient organization,” the MTA (still) says on its website. The most noteworthy “accomplishment” was hiring six-figure executives who promptly left with golden parachutes; once Cuomo was gone the transformation team was shut down." The researcher here identifies the symptoms of this but seems to see this more as an accident. Yeah, that's kind of standard for reports like this. A sophisticated reader can easily discern a steam mass of corrupt interests involved with situations like this but the report writer doesn't like to burn their bridges so they don't connect the dots and X many other apologists merrily misapply Hanlon's razor to the situations as well.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  > The most noteworthy “accomplishment” was hiring six-figure executives who promptly left with golden parachutes; once Cuomo was gone the transformation team was shut down." This happens everywhere, all the time. People work their entire lives to pay taxes that fund these temporary, do-nothing, expensive exercises.
  - joe_the_user 4y ago
    This happens everywhere, all the time. People work their entire lives to pay taxes that fund these temporary, do-nothing, expensive exercises. Hey, the money one pays for various good things, like Internet service or movies, also funds a lot of bureaucratic cruft too. The particular American private-enterprise-ideology justification of corruption and public-private collusion has this weird tendency to provoke a certain type of person to repeat this same ideology when confronted with example of the corruption. Politician: "Look how inefficient and corrupt the state is, let's do it like private enterprise - competition, for-profit, unregulated" (uses this to shovel money to well-connected friend). Semi-libertarian American, notices this: "Wow! Look how inefficient and corrupt the state is, why can't we do things like private enterprise - competition, for-profit, unregulated..." (the scams continue as normal).
sfpotter 4y ago
The purpose of transit projects is to build transit.
rob74 4y ago
Ok, then the problem with such projects in the US is obviously the lack of plannability. New York has now (finally, after decades of planning) built 3 stations of the Second Avenue Subway. Wether it will ever be expanded is currently unsure. Compare that to Munich, where between 1965 and 2010 there was always a subway under construction. Even without the inherent interests of the companies and workers involved, it should be obvious that when you build more, the cost per mile will be much lower.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  Yeah, and now with the 2. Stammstrecke money sink, it's unlikely there will be funds for more than the U5 Pasing extensions.
- afarrell 4y ago
  It seems like the lesson is that if the company and its workers know that there’s always another project to work on next, then there’s no incentive to drag out this one.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
the8472 4y ago
Maybe the incentives could be changed by not employing those people as long as it takes but by a fixed amount of time and instead making the project scope flexible. Once the main project is finished they can work towards some optional goals and get a bonus or something.

robomartin 4y ago

> IMHO often the purpose of these projects isn’t to deliver transportation, it’s to keep people employed in the project. Bingo! Another element of this is to use such projects to buy the votes of the large unions. Just a couple of months ago these crews came through our street. They ripped-up the PERFECTLY GOOD sidewalks and rebuilt them. This street is 24 years old. In other words, it's new. Oh, yes, they repaved it once about a year ago. The guys ripping-up the sidewalk told me they are going to rip-up the street and repave it next year. This is criminal.

jimt1234 4y ago
Can you please tell them to come re-pave my street? It's pothole heaven.
- robomartin 4y ago
  That's the irony/tragedy of this, isn't it. The misallocation of funds is staggering. I'll give you another example. There's a stop sign not far from my home that gets knocked down with such alarming frequency that the neighborhood knows it at "Kenny" (the South Park character that always got killed). I would say it lasts two to six weeks. I would not be surprised if, in the last ten years, Kenny was replaced 100 to 200 times. I lost count. The reason this happens is that semi trucks exiting the freeway at night can't see it, make a tighter than usual turn and run it over. There really isn't anything wrong with the turn, they have plenty of room. The sign is simply in the wrong place. Guess what they do? Every time the sign is taken down they return and install a new sign in exactly the same spot. Brand new sign. I would not be surprised if the aggregate cost of replacing this sign, between hardware, labor and organizational costs is in the order of $10K to $20K. Which means we have likely spent between a million and four million dollars, if not more, replacing this sign. It's Einstein's definition of madness: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And we pay for the madness.
  - jimt1234 4y ago
    I think Einstein's definition assumes people give a shit about the results. LOL
    - robomartin 4y ago
      That's hilarious.
pencilguin 4y ago
The hell of it is, it isn't criminal. It has been made wholly legal!
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
The part that irks me more than the self-serving "not technically graft" you are describing is the jerks who will find some reason to defend the actions as "necessary" as if there aren't plenty of 100yo original sidewalks in places. Literally any other "big faceless organization" would not be cut slack to this extent.
user3939382 4y ago
> They ripped-up the PERFECTLY GOOD sidewalks and rebuilt them. If you haven't already, watch a movie called Falling Down. There's a scene about this.

airza 4y ago

That explanation doesn’t really seem to explain why there is such a huge difference between the US and other countries with an arguably larger administrative state and higher union participation.

pencilguin 4y ago
The US is more corrupt than many other countries. Our innovation was to make corruption explicitly legal, so there is no risk of indictments.
akira2501 4y ago
The US is just that.. a union of states that enjoy a much higher level of independence than in other countries and at the same time have to deal with their own counties. The states all have differing levels of competence, enforcement and leadership. The federal government has limited oversight, except for cases of particular types of criminal corruption. In my mind what screwed a lot of states up was the financial collapse of 2007, many did not adjust their spending forecasts and reconsider these projects appropriately in the face of the decade that came after. Finally, add in the pandemic and remote work, and it really undercut the rationale and scope of many of these projects that were never adjusted in the face of this.
- bigbacaloa 4y ago
  The US states are no more autonomous than the analogous regions in many countries. For example, Madrid's transport system is controlled regionally in a way that involves region, city, and private entities and is far better than anything in the US (NYC included). The US has institutionalized and legalized practices that are viewed as corruption in most countries and this becomes very evident in regards to public contracts and public works.
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    Can you provide very specific examples of these practices?

pencilguin 4y ago

Once the project is done, the money stops. The bigger the project is, the more backers it needs. Many of these have to be bought. The people initiating the project don't have money to buy them, but the project budget does, or can. Adding that to the budget would make it a bigger project, needing more backing. So, projects are under-budgeted, and overruns pay off backers. Nobody involved wants that money flow ever to end, so it goes over schedule. Some projects avoid this fate. Solar and wind farms have transparent costs (N units x $M per unit), and start producing revenue almost immediately. Nukes suffer it most, because nobody knows how much any of it ought to cost, it takes forever, and it produces nothing until it is finished several changes of administration later.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago

It sounds like the taxpayer is forced to pay for someone else's basic income instead of people completing the project at its most efficient price.

joe_the_user 4y ago

IMHO often the purpose of these projects isn’t to deliver transportation, it’s to keep people employed in the project. Not even that, it's a corrupt racket. It's purpose is to make money for powerful people. Sometimes employing people helps but notice "Andrew Cuomo launched a “transformation plan” created by a consulting firm to “simplify a complex and inefficient organization,” the MTA (still) says on its website. The most noteworthy “accomplishment” was hiring six-figure executives who promptly left with golden parachutes; once Cuomo was gone the transformation team was shut down." The researcher here identifies the symptoms of this but seems to see this more as an accident. Yeah, that's kind of standard for reports like this. A sophisticated reader can easily discern a steam mass of corrupt interests involved with situations like this but the report writer doesn't like to burn their bridges so they don't connect the dots and X many other apologists merrily misapply Hanlon's razor to the situations as well.

robertlagrant 4y ago
> The most noteworthy “accomplishment” was hiring six-figure executives who promptly left with golden parachutes; once Cuomo was gone the transformation team was shut down." This happens everywhere, all the time. People work their entire lives to pay taxes that fund these temporary, do-nothing, expensive exercises.
- joe_the_user 4y ago
  This happens everywhere, all the time. People work their entire lives to pay taxes that fund these temporary, do-nothing, expensive exercises. Hey, the money one pays for various good things, like Internet service or movies, also funds a lot of bureaucratic cruft too. The particular American private-enterprise-ideology justification of corruption and public-private collusion has this weird tendency to provoke a certain type of person to repeat this same ideology when confronted with example of the corruption. Politician: "Look how inefficient and corrupt the state is, let's do it like private enterprise - competition, for-profit, unregulated" (uses this to shovel money to well-connected friend). Semi-libertarian American, notices this: "Wow! Look how inefficient and corrupt the state is, why can't we do things like private enterprise - competition, for-profit, unregulated..." (the scams continue as normal).

sfpotter 4y ago

The purpose of transit projects is to build transit.

rob74 4y ago

Ok, then the problem with such projects in the US is obviously the lack of plannability. New York has now (finally, after decades of planning) built 3 stations of the Second Avenue Subway. Wether it will ever be expanded is currently unsure. Compare that to Munich, where between 1965 and 2010 there was always a subway under construction. Even without the inherent interests of the companies and workers involved, it should be obvious that when you build more, the cost per mile will be much lower.

mschuster91 4y ago
Yeah, and now with the 2. Stammstrecke money sink, it's unlikely there will be funds for more than the U5 Pasing extensions.
afarrell 4y ago
It seems like the lesson is that if the company and its workers know that there’s always another project to work on next, then there’s no incentive to drag out this one.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

the8472 4y ago

Maybe the incentives could be changed by not employing those people as long as it takes but by a fixed amount of time and instead making the project scope flexible. Once the main project is finished they can work towards some optional goals and get a bonus or something.