9 ms·

For the Van Ness Bus Line example: one reason there were major delays was because maps of underground sewer lines and plumbing were inaccurate, and needed to be

by jljljl 3y ago

For the Van Ness Bus Line example: one reason there were major delays was because maps of underground sewer lines and plumbing were inaccurate, and needed to be relocated. The 6 years of construction was really a bus lane + major sewer infrastructure project. Which brings up another reason why some of these projects were Fast -- they operated in places where there there wasn't existing infrastructure or residents to deal with, or cut corners on planning and mapping, which future projects now have to deal with. https://sfstandard.com/transportation/van-ness-brt-bus-rapid-transit-history-timeline/ https://sfstandard.com/transportation/van-ness-brt-bus-rapid... Immediately after breaking ground, construction delays began. Existing maps of old gas, water and sewer lines flowing beneath the center of Van Ness Avenue proved inaccurate, slowing excavation and causing the city to bring in utility contractors. The utility placement also made the BRT’s center-lane design a challenge: Any future sewer and water repairs would disable bussing for the duration of repair. Plus, overhead bus electrical wires would need to be fully removed for the safety of the crews. Water and sewer infrastructure needed to be moved to the outside lanes to keep the center-lane BRT design — deemed the best for traffic flow.

seti0Cha 3y ago
I can't comment on the bus line example, but the New York Times had a great write-up (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-...) about subway building in New York. At least in New York there's a lot more going on than the reasons you point out. Particularly damning is the fact that Paris is successfully building subways at a 10th of the cost in far less time despite having even more constraints around digging.
- jljljl 3y ago
  Yeah, this is a much better example and reflection of how weakened institutions and process can drive up costs.
- porphyra 3y ago
  The recent additions to the Rome Metro were also built faster and cheaper compared to, say, the Central Subway in San Francisco, despite all the archaeological artifacts in Rome slowing down the digging.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
Lots of things happened fast during WWII. One of the big reasons, was that regulatory hurdles were removed. The result: Long Island is one big Superfund site, and our cancer rates are through the roof. I know of at least six women, in my immediate orbit, that are currently being, or have recently been, treated for breast cancer. Before I moved here, thirty-two years ago, I had never met anyone that had cancer. Since moving here, I have known at least one person per year (often more), that had/have cancer. Part of that is probably age, as I've gotten older, so too, has my peer group, but I wasn't that old, in 1990, when I moved here. The difference is that they died a lot more frequently, back then.
- m463 3y ago
  Not to knock the success of git, or the amazing effort under pressure, but the cohesiveness / understandability could be better.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    That's a good point. But Git was initially written by one cranky Finn, in ten days. It totally changed the way we all work.
    - nine_k 3y ago
      JavaScript was also famously built in 10 days. I'd say that internally git is more consistent %)
      - arrowsmith 3y ago
        > JavaScript was also famously built in 10 days And boy does it show!
      - ajmurmann 3y ago
        JS on the list is quite interesting, since it being rushed and a prototype ending up getting shipped often gets cited as an explanation for why JS has issues. Given how widespread it is, this is a project I wish had gotten a lot more time. An argument could be made that it succeeded, so it must be good, but given it's the only built-in, full language in the browser just says that it was good enough and now we are kinda stuck with it.
fragmede 3y ago
Thats the story, but everyone who transited Van Ness during that time saw the same thing - very little work actually being done. The equipment just sat there idle most of the time. A more efficient process could have come in and finished the work, block by block in far less time if they actually, y'know, worked on it. People in construction tell me that it's because they're always waiting on the other guy to finish their job before they can do theirs. Where's the Gantt chart for Van Ness? Where's the accountability?
- dmix 3y ago
  What are you going have consequences in the project management office of a gov contractor that probably has no real competition, besides maybe multiple years later when it's politically convenient? Fire the lower level union workers slacking off? The fact every single major infrastructure project is a decade late and 3x over budget is just normal and tolerated by the people running the show across the US/Canada. The gov workers picking who wins these gov contracts (usually the same small set of companies) doesn't seem to care, despite extensive track records of the same behaviour. They probably have jobs lined up at these companies there afterwards. It's only natural human behaviour to not put effort in if there's no consequences or risk in doing so. This is Public/private partnerships 101.
  - ireadmevs 3y ago
    > It's only natural human behaviour to not put effort in if there's no consequences or risk in doing so. That’s nonsense. That’s like saying that it’s only natural human behavior to abuse and be abused. If I put myself in the shoes of an underpaid sewage worker, that has a family to maintain, that sees the owner and investors of said private companies getting obscenely rich just by closings contracts under their AC… yeah, I’d slack the s* out of it too.
    - imchillyb 3y ago
      > ...That’s like saying that it’s only natural human behavior to abuse and be abused... I think that's exactly what experiments have shown the world. There are many follow-up experiments that prove exactly that. The Stanford Prison Experiment has become one of psychology's most dramatic illustrations of how good people can be transformed into perpetrators of evil, and healthy people can begin to experience pathological reactions - traceable to situational forces. Those traceable situational forces can be minor and subtle things, and yet.
AYBABTME 3y ago
Sure, complications happened. But how efficiently was each day, each hour, used to solve these problems.
- dmix 3y ago
  Hey if there's some delay caused by your team you can always just go back to the gov with shaking the money tin and explaining some 'unexpected outcomes'. The fact it's the same outcome every project is a feature not a bug.
  - slt2021 3y ago
    bait & switch strategy. if project realistically costs $100M and should take 3 years - it won't be approved due to budgetary and other political reasons. Much easier to announce a project as $30M that can be done in 1 year, and intentionally skip over planning, and contingencies+complications. Plan for naively simple project, like a Wordpress website, even if it is for is amazon.com. When the project SNAFUs, go back to customer and use sunken cost fallacy to get more budget & time, until customer runs out of either Money (budget) or Patience (time), then complete the project and move on to the next "Grande Project"
- crtified 3y ago
  Wherever there's a complex chain of independent workers (a government plan checker, inspector, a planner, a surveyor, an engineer, machine operators, a landscaper, a drain layer, a lawyer, ....) then the reality is that unforeseen nuance and conflicting priorities are ever compounding. It's ideal to have an uber-specialist, an experienced and respected senior overseer who knows the industry and the project inside-out in both theory and practice, dedicated to the project. That gets things going. It's also rare and expensive - there are a lot more development projects than there are such individuals. They are powerful cards coveted by successful owning developers.
danem 3y ago
For anyone looking for an in-depth post mortem of the Van Ness bus line, please read the report from the SF Civil Grand Jury here: https://civilgrandjury.sfgov.org/2020_2021/2021%20CGJ%20Report_Van%20Ness%20Avenue%20-%20What%20Lies%20Beneath.pdf https://civilgrandjury.sfgov.org/2020_2021/2021%20CGJ%20Repo...
- kfarr 3y ago
  Great report except it missed the most obvious recommendation: "decouple transit improvement from utilities projects"
  - jljljl 3y ago
    The issue was that in this case they couldn’t — a lot of the BRT benefits came from creating a center lane, and that center lane was infeasible unless they did the utility project first.
    - kfarr 3y ago
      I'm not an expert but have served on BRT CAC for Geary. They could have done side running and defer utilities to another agency at a later date, after which point move to center running. Or any other of the plethora of options that didn't involve a transit agency running a utility project.
lchengify 3y ago
> one reason there were major delays was because maps of underground sewer lines and plumbing were inaccurate, and needed to be relocated. New York calls this "peek and shriek" [1]. No one really knows whats under the street until you start digging. The Van Ness Bus line was particularly bad because it failed to adjust expectations and project management once this was discovered. In NY at least everyone expects it to happen, infrastructure there dates back hundreds of years. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/18/nyregion/new-york-101-streets-repair-and-maintenance.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/18/nyregion/new-...
- photonerd 3y ago
  It was also pretty predictable as literally ever major SF dog runs into similar problems or wacky underground issues (giant building sized slab of rock that no-one found? Happened. Run into multiple historic 150 year old sunken boats buried under your skyscraper? Happened…)
systemvoltage 3y ago
Are you arguing that we would have been just as slow in 1955 if "There were existing infrastructure or residents to deal with"? The whole point of this article is that we should aspire to be better, faster, more relisilient to failures, less bureaucratic and efficient. My gut sense (subjective) is that we profoundly suck today at doing anything aspirational. But, nitpicking each of the examples as many comments here are doing, is IMO missing the point. I don't think Patrick is trying to be super objective here besides trying to be as accurate as possible with sources/number of days it took to build those projects. It is kind of silly to say "Oh, they didn't have X, Y and Z in 1955" because you cannot accurately judge what would have happened if X, Y and Z were actually the impediments in 1955. I used 1955 as an arbitrary year to illustrate the point.
- climatologist 3y ago
  The reality is more complicated than it appears but I've observed a bunch of construction projects near Millbrae CalTrain station and they finish the buildings extremely fast. A bunch of metal frames go up, then some pipes, then some wires, and then some concrete walls. The project planning and construction is done by a single company, Truebeck Construction, and they seem to know what they're doing. I don't know what Patrick's list is trying to illustrate but most construction projects in the US happen very fast.
  - systemvoltage 3y ago
    This is not a widespread opinion or pattern as I see it. This is first time I am hearing from someone that we in America "build things fast". I suggest reading Eli Dourado's blog: https://www.elidourado.com/ https://www.elidourado.com/ and his many blog posts on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=elidourado.com&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
    - climatologist 3y ago
      Just speaking from personal experience. The methods that I observed are very modern and very efficient. The parts for the entire building are pre-fabricated and then assembled at the construction site. So the stagnation narrative is more than likely overblown and the folks that think things are slower now should visit some of those Truebeck construction sites and observe for themselves.

by jljljl 3y ago

seti0Cha 3y ago

I can't comment on the bus line example, but the New York Times had a great write-up (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-...) about subway building in New York. At least in New York there's a lot more going on than the reasons you point out. Particularly damning is the fact that Paris is successfully building subways at a 10th of the cost in far less time despite having even more constraints around digging.

jljljl 3y ago
Yeah, this is a much better example and reflection of how weakened institutions and process can drive up costs.
porphyra 3y ago
The recent additions to the Rome Metro were also built faster and cheaper compared to, say, the Central Subway in San Francisco, despite all the archaeological artifacts in Rome slowing down the digging.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

Lots of things happened fast during WWII. One of the big reasons, was that regulatory hurdles were removed. The result: Long Island is one big Superfund site, and our cancer rates are through the roof. I know of at least six women, in my immediate orbit, that are currently being, or have recently been, treated for breast cancer. Before I moved here, thirty-two years ago, I had never met anyone that had cancer. Since moving here, I have known at least one person per year (often more), that had/have cancer. Part of that is probably age, as I've gotten older, so too, has my peer group, but I wasn't that old, in 1990, when I moved here. The difference is that they died a lot more frequently, back then.

m463 3y ago
Not to knock the success of git, or the amazing effort under pressure, but the cohesiveness / understandability could be better.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  That's a good point. But Git was initially written by one cranky Finn, in ten days. It totally changed the way we all work.
  - nine_k 3y ago
    JavaScript was also famously built in 10 days. I'd say that internally git is more consistent %)
    - arrowsmith 3y ago
      > JavaScript was also famously built in 10 days And boy does it show!
    - ajmurmann 3y ago
      JS on the list is quite interesting, since it being rushed and a prototype ending up getting shipped often gets cited as an explanation for why JS has issues. Given how widespread it is, this is a project I wish had gotten a lot more time. An argument could be made that it succeeded, so it must be good, but given it's the only built-in, full language in the browser just says that it was good enough and now we are kinda stuck with it.

fragmede 3y ago

Thats the story, but everyone who transited Van Ness during that time saw the same thing - very little work actually being done. The equipment just sat there idle most of the time. A more efficient process could have come in and finished the work, block by block in far less time if they actually, y'know, worked on it. People in construction tell me that it's because they're always waiting on the other guy to finish their job before they can do theirs. Where's the Gantt chart for Van Ness? Where's the accountability?

dmix 3y ago
What are you going have consequences in the project management office of a gov contractor that probably has no real competition, besides maybe multiple years later when it's politically convenient? Fire the lower level union workers slacking off? The fact every single major infrastructure project is a decade late and 3x over budget is just normal and tolerated by the people running the show across the US/Canada. The gov workers picking who wins these gov contracts (usually the same small set of companies) doesn't seem to care, despite extensive track records of the same behaviour. They probably have jobs lined up at these companies there afterwards. It's only natural human behaviour to not put effort in if there's no consequences or risk in doing so. This is Public/private partnerships 101.
- ireadmevs 3y ago
  > It's only natural human behaviour to not put effort in if there's no consequences or risk in doing so. That’s nonsense. That’s like saying that it’s only natural human behavior to abuse and be abused. If I put myself in the shoes of an underpaid sewage worker, that has a family to maintain, that sees the owner and investors of said private companies getting obscenely rich just by closings contracts under their AC… yeah, I’d slack the s* out of it too.
  - imchillyb 3y ago
    > ...That’s like saying that it’s only natural human behavior to abuse and be abused... I think that's exactly what experiments have shown the world. There are many follow-up experiments that prove exactly that. The Stanford Prison Experiment has become one of psychology's most dramatic illustrations of how good people can be transformed into perpetrators of evil, and healthy people can begin to experience pathological reactions - traceable to situational forces. Those traceable situational forces can be minor and subtle things, and yet.

AYBABTME 3y ago

Sure, complications happened. But how efficiently was each day, each hour, used to solve these problems.

dmix 3y ago
Hey if there's some delay caused by your team you can always just go back to the gov with shaking the money tin and explaining some 'unexpected outcomes'. The fact it's the same outcome every project is a feature not a bug.
- slt2021 3y ago
  bait & switch strategy. if project realistically costs $100M and should take 3 years - it won't be approved due to budgetary and other political reasons. Much easier to announce a project as $30M that can be done in 1 year, and intentionally skip over planning, and contingencies+complications. Plan for naively simple project, like a Wordpress website, even if it is for is amazon.com. When the project SNAFUs, go back to customer and use sunken cost fallacy to get more budget & time, until customer runs out of either Money (budget) or Patience (time), then complete the project and move on to the next "Grande Project"
crtified 3y ago
Wherever there's a complex chain of independent workers (a government plan checker, inspector, a planner, a surveyor, an engineer, machine operators, a landscaper, a drain layer, a lawyer, ....) then the reality is that unforeseen nuance and conflicting priorities are ever compounding. It's ideal to have an uber-specialist, an experienced and respected senior overseer who knows the industry and the project inside-out in both theory and practice, dedicated to the project. That gets things going. It's also rare and expensive - there are a lot more development projects than there are such individuals. They are powerful cards coveted by successful owning developers.

danem 3y ago

For anyone looking for an in-depth post mortem of the Van Ness bus line, please read the report from the SF Civil Grand Jury here: https://civilgrandjury.sfgov.org/2020_2021/2021%20CGJ%20Report_Van%20Ness%20Avenue%20-%20What%20Lies%20Beneath.pdf https://civilgrandjury.sfgov.org/2020_2021/2021%20CGJ%20Repo...

kfarr 3y ago
Great report except it missed the most obvious recommendation: "decouple transit improvement from utilities projects"
- jljljl 3y ago
  The issue was that in this case they couldn’t — a lot of the BRT benefits came from creating a center lane, and that center lane was infeasible unless they did the utility project first.
  - kfarr 3y ago
    I'm not an expert but have served on BRT CAC for Geary. They could have done side running and defer utilities to another agency at a later date, after which point move to center running. Or any other of the plethora of options that didn't involve a transit agency running a utility project.

lchengify 3y ago

> one reason there were major delays was because maps of underground sewer lines and plumbing were inaccurate, and needed to be relocated. New York calls this "peek and shriek" [1]. No one really knows whats under the street until you start digging. The Van Ness Bus line was particularly bad because it failed to adjust expectations and project management once this was discovered. In NY at least everyone expects it to happen, infrastructure there dates back hundreds of years. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/18/nyregion/new-york-101-streets-repair-and-maintenance.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/18/nyregion/new-...

photonerd 3y ago
It was also pretty predictable as literally ever major SF dog runs into similar problems or wacky underground issues (giant building sized slab of rock that no-one found? Happened. Run into multiple historic 150 year old sunken boats buried under your skyscraper? Happened…)

systemvoltage 3y ago

Are you arguing that we would have been just as slow in 1955 if "There were existing infrastructure or residents to deal with"? The whole point of this article is that we should aspire to be better, faster, more relisilient to failures, less bureaucratic and efficient. My gut sense (subjective) is that we profoundly suck today at doing anything aspirational. But, nitpicking each of the examples as many comments here are doing, is IMO missing the point. I don't think Patrick is trying to be super objective here besides trying to be as accurate as possible with sources/number of days it took to build those projects. It is kind of silly to say "Oh, they didn't have X, Y and Z in 1955" because you cannot accurately judge what would have happened if X, Y and Z were actually the impediments in 1955. I used 1955 as an arbitrary year to illustrate the point.

climatologist 3y ago
The reality is more complicated than it appears but I've observed a bunch of construction projects near Millbrae CalTrain station and they finish the buildings extremely fast. A bunch of metal frames go up, then some pipes, then some wires, and then some concrete walls. The project planning and construction is done by a single company, Truebeck Construction, and they seem to know what they're doing. I don't know what Patrick's list is trying to illustrate but most construction projects in the US happen very fast.
- systemvoltage 3y ago
  This is not a widespread opinion or pattern as I see it. This is first time I am hearing from someone that we in America "build things fast". I suggest reading Eli Dourado's blog: https://www.elidourado.com/ https://www.elidourado.com/ and his many blog posts on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=elidourado.com&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
  - climatologist 3y ago
    Just speaking from personal experience. The methods that I observed are very modern and very efficient. The parts for the entire building are pre-fabricated and then assembled at the construction site. So the stagnation narrative is more than likely overblown and the folks that think things are slower now should visit some of those Truebeck construction sites and observe for themselves.