Comment by acomjean | Hacker News Reader

Comment by acomjean | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

live in MA and take the T (what we call the subway/bus service here). Public transit is a major problem in this city and surrounding areas. It what make this city OK and expensive vs being great and affordable.

While the transit system here needs upgrading badly, this piece is very political. The quoting of Charles Chieppo is a give away.

"For many systems, Chieppo said, the focus is on improving stations or opening new ones rather than fixing the core infrastructure." The T is working on the first expansion of the subway rail system since the 1980s. Its going into the neighboring city of Somerville and "surprise" its over budget. They might kill the expansion with the focus on "fixing the existing" as kind of justification, instead of doing both at once? They're also reducing late night service for the extra couple hours they tacked on to friday and saturday, while proposing a fair hike. Things cost money, but people don't like to pay more to get less.

(I'm actually usually on one of the MASCO "private" buses that supplement the T for its failure to provide adequate routing to the Longwood Medical area.)

Green line expansion (two stops) initially budgeted at $954M in June 2010.

5 years later, costs estimated at $3.09B and project is terminated.

  A Reliable Project Budget is Defined as being
  within +10% and -5% of what it would Cost
  to Design and Construct the Project

Costs went up over 300%. The level of incompetence on display here is borderline criminal. Have a friend who works at one of the big 4 who is being called in to audit this failed project. Should be interesting to get an insider perspective on where taxpayer money was spent.

http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/Board_Meetings...

Wow, $3.09B for 4.3 miles of track and 4 stations? In possibly 7 years, if everything goes according to plan?

Elsewhere in the world, the Delhi Metro Phase 2 cost $2.9B and took 3 years. 77 miles of track, 85 stations, and countdown clocks. The Bangalore Metro (phase 1) is expected to be $2.5B (including a 25% cost overrun) for 26 miles and 40 stations. It also includes countdown clocks. Barcelona spent $200M for a 5.8km rail tunnel.

Where's your money going?

Have you looked at the wages of Indian labourers versus American construction workers lately?

In fact, most of the cost of train construction is not labor (except in the US). That's why the Egypt, China and India (low labor costs) aren't significantly cheaper than Spain or Korea (high labor costs).

https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp...

If only I thought of this - then I might have cited a Spanish construction project in the very comment you replied to, so that no one could cluelessly bring up labor costs.

In any case, even if your claim were true, there is an easy solution. Import Indians to get the job done. The goal is fixing our crumbling infrastructure rather than union featherbedding, right?

To be fair, he mentioned Barcelona, which is not too different from America hopefully.

I'm going to see if I can google what a Swiss equivalent costs (pretty certain the Swiss should be more expensive than American workers).

Edit: the only metro in Switzerland is in Lausanne, and it cost SFr590 million ($472 million) for about 6 km (3.7 miles) and 14 stations.

Construction is probably much easier, but the American one still has some pretty brutal cost overruns.

3.09B!!! That is insane. I would think after the big dig disaster they would have learned their lesson.

In Zürich they just finished a huge expansion with a complex 10km tunnel und a 3rd underground 4 track station. Project cost was 2.0B up from 1.8B. At one point a drill got stuck and they had to abandon it.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durchmesserlinie_Altstetten–Zü...

MBTA has huge project management problems to be sure, of course it should be looked into.

But its really the only subway the city has, plus I think they're required by consent decree to build sometimg (Part of the "big dig" project (putting highway in a tunnel), another fine example of poor project budget control in the commonwealth of Massachusetts)

Ha. This is too true. If there wasn't some kind of construction project over budget at all times, people would think something was wrong.

Really though, the MBTA has a bunch of major issues. Not just project management. I honestly don't know what it would take to fix it but something has to give sooner or later. People are finally getting fed up.

I believe that the housing market in Medford and union Sq for years has been inflated on the speculation of the green line exrension. For years it was taken as a given. Has the Market declined since it came to light that the estimates were off, and the project cancelled ? I imagine a lot of people will lose money over this.

Its not canceled yet..Just scaled back. Though I think the City of Somerville took some property in union square to make it work.

I honestly think that the $954M original price tag is a bigger problem than the 3X overrun.

To be fair in regards to the late night service cut, it was only a test program when they rolled it out and supposedly ridership was declining since they introduced it. Plus, it was only available on the weekends (two days a week) anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com