4 ms·

> Unlike infrastructure projects in Britain or America, which are heavily reliant on external consultants to handle all stages of the project, this group of wel

by thatmf 3mo ago

> Unlike infrastructure projects in Britain or America, which are heavily reliant on external consultants to handle all stages of the project, this group of well-paid in-house engineers led much of the Madrid Metro expansion. The team stayed largely the same throughout the different projects, meaning that they were able to learn from their experience and apply it to future projects. Imagine that: building expertise in-house and within the governmental org results in better planning and management and thus outcomes.

thewhitetulip 3mo ago
In India metro is either built by private companies in a Public Private Partnership Or by govt orgs by contracting it out. Both styles have resulted in massive delays so much so that it has become a meme that metro will be inaugurated 100yrs into the future Maybe if Govt hired actual engineers like they do for railways then metros will be prioritised
- thelastgallon 3mo ago
  India has the most interesting construction projects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcRDsIjG3g8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcRDsIjG3g8 I guess this is what vibe coding in the real world looks like.
  - boxed 3mo ago
    I would guess this is a consequence of people following orders. There's many people that should have refused the work along the way, but only the planner gets the blame, while I'd bet the planner was only following orders also.
    - csomar 3mo ago
      So it’s nobody’s mistake?
      - boxed 3mo ago
        No, that's the opposite of what I'm saying. I'm saying they are all blame worthy, and their culture itself is also blame worthy.
    - victorbjorklund 3mo ago
      People need to be able to think for themselves. I once stayed in an apartment house where I noticed a door 1.5 m up in the air on the outside of the building. When opening the door there was a small bathroom with a toilet. With no way of accessing it from the inside. Just that normal inside door on the outside wall up in the air. 100% someone in the chain made a mistake and said the door should be on the wrong wall. But no one that actually built the house stopped and say ”eh are you sure?”
      - jodrellblank 3mo ago
        Which is why we have https://old.reddit.com/r/NotMyJob/ https://old.reddit.com/r/NotMyJob/
        victorbjorklund 3mo ago
        Thanks. That’s amazing.
- porridgeraisin 3mo ago
  Metro doesn't use PPP or directly public in any Indian city I can think of, they setup SPVs and actually have stable engineering and finance teams across contracts. And most of the engineers are taken from railways only in any case. And it's a really good promotion path, ministers are known to select successful metro spv administrators for lucrative roles in the state secretariat. They even have lateral movement between SPVs of different cities, e.g many top CMRL people are ex-DMRC. So the talent problem is not there. The reason for delays are more boring: land acquisition, coordination among nhai, state pwd, railways, utilities, etc etc. But overwhelmingly land acquisition is the main bottleneck. If land acquisition fails or isn't exactly as you planned then you have to tweak the project itself which ripples delays all the way into the construction contracts, safety approvals, NOCs etc etc. After you resolve that, flyovers and roads are simultaneously being constructed in most cities since they are all expanding so you have to coordinate with that. And india from pre-independence has utilities placed under the middle of the road, as opposed to the sides of the road. Now this is not an iron clad rule (nothing is, in india) but it's generally true. This means that you also have to coordinate with utilities. And most of them were laid in the last century without any record left of where they were laid, so you can't even plan ahead you dig and you find out you've slashed a utility line. Each coordination point above is an NOC and all put together it takes time.
  - thewhitetulip 3mo ago
    Some metros are PPP Some are by contractors However, all are perpetually delayed Pune metro line 3's construction status was 85+% for over 1yr now Land acquisition was over a long time ago. Progress on road is just invisible despite being built by a private company which will operate it for the next 30yrs
    - porridgeraisin 3mo ago
      All Indian metros without exception are managed by SPVs. Land acquisition is not something that gets over. It is a continuous process. Then the court cases if any always show up with some delay, and that can revoke transfers. Then you have to look for alternative land parcels, which may involve minor reroutes in the worst case. It's the same with finances, everything comes in tranches, land, money, everything. > Pune You can see this entire documentation[1], make sure to click on the two section headers to reveal content. While no doubt the document might mislead you about the extent of the delay, and really % done means nothing in these projects where the unknowns are unknown, you can clearly see it's the exact coordination issues I had mentioned earlier: utility coordination, handling expanding flyovers/roads, etc. > All are perpetually delayed Because, it's not an internal organisation issue or a personnel issue (i.e "hire more engineers"). The exact organisation does not matter when the problems are of the external kind mentioned above. Now, the problems mentioned in TFA don't occur here because the SPVs house long term employees with - for government standards - fairly robust institutional knowledge. The top comment now has content refuting the article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582433 > Look at the memes for Pune metro line 3 and for Karnataka metro (forgot which line) The same memes exist everywhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582563 > Even though private If you want real private efficiencies, you have to give the entire responsibility of many departments to the private company. So, a near-private whole sub-municipality. Just making the metro SPV private is meaningless, although definitely better than having it under PWD... [1] https://www.pmrda.gov.in/en/pune-metro-line-3/maan-hinjawadi-shivajinagar-metro-line/ https://www.pmrda.gov.in/en/pune-metro-line-3/maan-hinjawadi...
- sieve 3mo ago
  Depends on the state and the political environment. Some people will deliberately sabotage projects for political reasons. The biggest problem with metros in India is the inability to provide last mile connectivity. Some cities will run buses in competition to metro lines, or provide free bus travel to women. Both actions compete against a fast mode of travel. So, it is an India problem, not a government problem.
  - thewhitetulip 3mo ago
    metro construction is delayed in every state ruling party or opposition Look at the memes for Pune metro line 3 and for Karnataka metro (forgot which line)
gib444 3mo ago
In the UK infrastructure projects are about creating jobs and making their friends rich first, and providing some kind of useful infrastructure last (and also optional) There is so much thievery of public funds it's just corruption disguised as incompetence and the public believe it every time
- fer 3mo ago
  In Spain it is the same, the Metro de Madrid being an anomaly rather than the norm (for now). Some flagrant cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Real_International_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Real_International_Airp... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castell%C3%B3n%E2%80%93Costa_Azahar_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castell%C3%B3n%E2%80%93Costa_A... https://maps.app.goo.gl/8BRnx8eQFfihvHmv5 https://maps.app.goo.gl/8BRnx8eQFfihvHmv5 https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/05/17/inenglish/1558078529_500254.html https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/05/17/inenglish/15580... The 2008 crisis had a special flavor in Spain, cajas de ahorros (privately owned, but politically controlled banks) worked with politicians -surprise- to grant mortgages (i.e. lending someone else's money) to buyers of the housing constructions they themselves had their fingers in, at a time regular banks were already wary of the direction of the housing market. It wasn't uncommon people being told which bank to go to to obtain a mortgage that'd be usually refused. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_bank_(Spain) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_bank_(Spain)
  - miguelxt 3mo ago
    To say they were "privately owned" doesn't sound right. Cajas de ahorros had no shareholders so profits were not distributed to any "private owner". Leaders and executives of the Cajas were appointed by a mix of local councils, unions, autonomous regions, and other non-private organizations. Juridically, they were "private organizations", but factually, they were just a form of state-owned company, as it was the municipalities and regions that made the important governing decisions.
  - flr03 3mo ago
    At least Spain has something, UK has something to show for it the numbers are crazy.
darreninthenet 3mo ago
The UK used to have that with its railway projects - the old government owned British Rail had massive and extensive knowledge on large rail infrastructure projects and no need for expensive external "consultants". That all got lost when the Tories tore it apart into private companies... hopefully now they are being renationalised as their contracts expire, at some point in the future they can regain all that expertise in-house again.
- mentalgear 3mo ago
  It's the standard privatisation playbook, also used with the NHS: first, politicians (often Conservatives) underfund and fracture a world-class public system (e.g. healthcare). Then, once it's struggling, their private-equity and investor allies swoop in to 'save the day' by privatizing it for profit as the 'only option to restore quality'.
  - dspillett 3mo ago
    > often Conservatives Almost always conservatives, the key exception in recent history being Tony “Tory Lite” Blair's time in office (who pretty much ignored many years of promises to undo the direction Thatcher and Major had taken NHS and university/student funding should Labour be returned to power, greatly irritating many of us who voted for them that time around). Unfortunately this is a common pattern: parties like Labour get control and realise how hard it is going to be to fight what has been set in motion so do too little or actively push on in the existing direction (just applying a little lipstick to the pig for public appearances). The current lot are trying to do better in that regard, but are failing so impressively elsewhere that they likely won't have a second term and one term is not enough to build momentum, so their replacement will just put a stop to any good that has actually been achieved. The scary thing is that their replacement (assuming Refrom don't rip themselves apart from the inside between now and the next election, which is something there is still hope of happening) might make the old Tories look extremely moderate.
  - rob74 3mo ago
    ...and then everyone acts surprised that things become more expensive.
Schiendelman 3mo ago
There are serious issues with that approach. If you don't have continuous funding from the projects, you end up with a big overhead of highly paid engineers without work for them to do. Then you have to lay them off, so you lose the institutional knowledge anyway. We tried this early on with sound transit in Washington state, and because engineering work is boom and bust on a project by project basis, the model just doesn't work. The good people left for better jobs, and we were left with a team that basically couldn't produce, leading to massive delays on the next set of projects.
- 0zer0 3mo ago
  I think it is for this reason that Switzerland has a fixed budget for their railway construction. And it seems to pay off, Swiss railway is exceptional.
  - Schiendelman 3mo ago
    With a small country, stable government, and national level funding, that's perfectly feasible. I wish that would work in the US, but we have hundreds of transit agencies that do capital projects.
    - BDPW 3mo ago
      Has nothing to do with size, see Japan and China.
      - sokka_h2otribe 3mo ago
        What does it have to do with then? My understanding japan has a surprisingly private train system, and China fits the model of "works when it's constantly expanding"
      - Schiendelman 3mo ago
        Japan is mostly using exactly the model I suggested.
    - 3mo ago
casey2 3mo ago
America at least needs highly paid consultants so they can maintain their massive suburban project.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]

by thatmf 3mo ago

thewhitetulip 3mo ago

In India metro is either built by private companies in a Public Private Partnership Or by govt orgs by contracting it out. Both styles have resulted in massive delays so much so that it has become a meme that metro will be inaugurated 100yrs into the future Maybe if Govt hired actual engineers like they do for railways then metros will be prioritised

thelastgallon 3mo ago
India has the most interesting construction projects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcRDsIjG3g8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcRDsIjG3g8 I guess this is what vibe coding in the real world looks like.
- boxed 3mo ago
  I would guess this is a consequence of people following orders. There's many people that should have refused the work along the way, but only the planner gets the blame, while I'd bet the planner was only following orders also.
  - csomar 3mo ago
    So it’s nobody’s mistake?
    - boxed 3mo ago
      No, that's the opposite of what I'm saying. I'm saying they are all blame worthy, and their culture itself is also blame worthy.
  - victorbjorklund 3mo ago
    People need to be able to think for themselves. I once stayed in an apartment house where I noticed a door 1.5 m up in the air on the outside of the building. When opening the door there was a small bathroom with a toilet. With no way of accessing it from the inside. Just that normal inside door on the outside wall up in the air. 100% someone in the chain made a mistake and said the door should be on the wrong wall. But no one that actually built the house stopped and say ”eh are you sure?”
    - jodrellblank 3mo ago
      Which is why we have https://old.reddit.com/r/NotMyJob/ https://old.reddit.com/r/NotMyJob/
      - victorbjorklund 3mo ago
        Thanks. That’s amazing.
porridgeraisin 3mo ago
Metro doesn't use PPP or directly public in any Indian city I can think of, they setup SPVs and actually have stable engineering and finance teams across contracts. And most of the engineers are taken from railways only in any case. And it's a really good promotion path, ministers are known to select successful metro spv administrators for lucrative roles in the state secretariat. They even have lateral movement between SPVs of different cities, e.g many top CMRL people are ex-DMRC. So the talent problem is not there. The reason for delays are more boring: land acquisition, coordination among nhai, state pwd, railways, utilities, etc etc. But overwhelmingly land acquisition is the main bottleneck. If land acquisition fails or isn't exactly as you planned then you have to tweak the project itself which ripples delays all the way into the construction contracts, safety approvals, NOCs etc etc. After you resolve that, flyovers and roads are simultaneously being constructed in most cities since they are all expanding so you have to coordinate with that. And india from pre-independence has utilities placed under the middle of the road, as opposed to the sides of the road. Now this is not an iron clad rule (nothing is, in india) but it's generally true. This means that you also have to coordinate with utilities. And most of them were laid in the last century without any record left of where they were laid, so you can't even plan ahead you dig and you find out you've slashed a utility line. Each coordination point above is an NOC and all put together it takes time.
- thewhitetulip 3mo ago
  Some metros are PPP Some are by contractors However, all are perpetually delayed Pune metro line 3's construction status was 85+% for over 1yr now Land acquisition was over a long time ago. Progress on road is just invisible despite being built by a private company which will operate it for the next 30yrs
  - porridgeraisin 3mo ago
    All Indian metros without exception are managed by SPVs. Land acquisition is not something that gets over. It is a continuous process. Then the court cases if any always show up with some delay, and that can revoke transfers. Then you have to look for alternative land parcels, which may involve minor reroutes in the worst case. It's the same with finances, everything comes in tranches, land, money, everything. > Pune You can see this entire documentation[1], make sure to click on the two section headers to reveal content. While no doubt the document might mislead you about the extent of the delay, and really % done means nothing in these projects where the unknowns are unknown, you can clearly see it's the exact coordination issues I had mentioned earlier: utility coordination, handling expanding flyovers/roads, etc. > All are perpetually delayed Because, it's not an internal organisation issue or a personnel issue (i.e "hire more engineers"). The exact organisation does not matter when the problems are of the external kind mentioned above. Now, the problems mentioned in TFA don't occur here because the SPVs house long term employees with - for government standards - fairly robust institutional knowledge. The top comment now has content refuting the article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582433 > Look at the memes for Pune metro line 3 and for Karnataka metro (forgot which line) The same memes exist everywhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582563 > Even though private If you want real private efficiencies, you have to give the entire responsibility of many departments to the private company. So, a near-private whole sub-municipality. Just making the metro SPV private is meaningless, although definitely better than having it under PWD... [1] https://www.pmrda.gov.in/en/pune-metro-line-3/maan-hinjawadi-shivajinagar-metro-line/ https://www.pmrda.gov.in/en/pune-metro-line-3/maan-hinjawadi...
sieve 3mo ago
Depends on the state and the political environment. Some people will deliberately sabotage projects for political reasons. The biggest problem with metros in India is the inability to provide last mile connectivity. Some cities will run buses in competition to metro lines, or provide free bus travel to women. Both actions compete against a fast mode of travel. So, it is an India problem, not a government problem.
- thewhitetulip 3mo ago
  metro construction is delayed in every state ruling party or opposition Look at the memes for Pune metro line 3 and for Karnataka metro (forgot which line)

gib444 3mo ago

In the UK infrastructure projects are about creating jobs and making their friends rich first, and providing some kind of useful infrastructure last (and also optional) There is so much thievery of public funds it's just corruption disguised as incompetence and the public believe it every time

fer 3mo ago
In Spain it is the same, the Metro de Madrid being an anomaly rather than the norm (for now). Some flagrant cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Real_International_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Real_International_Airp... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castell%C3%B3n%E2%80%93Costa_Azahar_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castell%C3%B3n%E2%80%93Costa_A... https://maps.app.goo.gl/8BRnx8eQFfihvHmv5 https://maps.app.goo.gl/8BRnx8eQFfihvHmv5 https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/05/17/inenglish/1558078529_500254.html https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/05/17/inenglish/15580... The 2008 crisis had a special flavor in Spain, cajas de ahorros (privately owned, but politically controlled banks) worked with politicians -surprise- to grant mortgages (i.e. lending someone else's money) to buyers of the housing constructions they themselves had their fingers in, at a time regular banks were already wary of the direction of the housing market. It wasn't uncommon people being told which bank to go to to obtain a mortgage that'd be usually refused. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_bank_(Spain) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_bank_(Spain)
- miguelxt 3mo ago
  To say they were "privately owned" doesn't sound right. Cajas de ahorros had no shareholders so profits were not distributed to any "private owner". Leaders and executives of the Cajas were appointed by a mix of local councils, unions, autonomous regions, and other non-private organizations. Juridically, they were "private organizations", but factually, they were just a form of state-owned company, as it was the municipalities and regions that made the important governing decisions.
- flr03 3mo ago
  At least Spain has something, UK has something to show for it the numbers are crazy.

darreninthenet 3mo ago

The UK used to have that with its railway projects - the old government owned British Rail had massive and extensive knowledge on large rail infrastructure projects and no need for expensive external "consultants". That all got lost when the Tories tore it apart into private companies... hopefully now they are being renationalised as their contracts expire, at some point in the future they can regain all that expertise in-house again.

mentalgear 3mo ago
It's the standard privatisation playbook, also used with the NHS: first, politicians (often Conservatives) underfund and fracture a world-class public system (e.g. healthcare). Then, once it's struggling, their private-equity and investor allies swoop in to 'save the day' by privatizing it for profit as the 'only option to restore quality'.
- dspillett 3mo ago
  > often Conservatives Almost always conservatives, the key exception in recent history being Tony “Tory Lite” Blair's time in office (who pretty much ignored many years of promises to undo the direction Thatcher and Major had taken NHS and university/student funding should Labour be returned to power, greatly irritating many of us who voted for them that time around). Unfortunately this is a common pattern: parties like Labour get control and realise how hard it is going to be to fight what has been set in motion so do too little or actively push on in the existing direction (just applying a little lipstick to the pig for public appearances). The current lot are trying to do better in that regard, but are failing so impressively elsewhere that they likely won't have a second term and one term is not enough to build momentum, so their replacement will just put a stop to any good that has actually been achieved. The scary thing is that their replacement (assuming Refrom don't rip themselves apart from the inside between now and the next election, which is something there is still hope of happening) might make the old Tories look extremely moderate.
- rob74 3mo ago
  ...and then everyone acts surprised that things become more expensive.

Schiendelman 3mo ago

There are serious issues with that approach. If you don't have continuous funding from the projects, you end up with a big overhead of highly paid engineers without work for them to do. Then you have to lay them off, so you lose the institutional knowledge anyway. We tried this early on with sound transit in Washington state, and because engineering work is boom and bust on a project by project basis, the model just doesn't work. The good people left for better jobs, and we were left with a team that basically couldn't produce, leading to massive delays on the next set of projects.

0zer0 3mo ago
I think it is for this reason that Switzerland has a fixed budget for their railway construction. And it seems to pay off, Swiss railway is exceptional.
- Schiendelman 3mo ago
  With a small country, stable government, and national level funding, that's perfectly feasible. I wish that would work in the US, but we have hundreds of transit agencies that do capital projects.
  - BDPW 3mo ago
    Has nothing to do with size, see Japan and China.
    - sokka_h2otribe 3mo ago
      What does it have to do with then? My understanding japan has a surprisingly private train system, and China fits the model of "works when it's constantly expanding"
    - Schiendelman 3mo ago
      Japan is mostly using exactly the model I suggested.
  - 3mo ago

casey2 3mo ago

America at least needs highly paid consultants so they can maintain their massive suburban project.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]