After Almost a Century, the 2nd Avenue Subway Is Close to Arriving
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For example, lowest-price bidding rules tend to result in more expensive projects overall because the agencies feel the need to do a whole bunch of up-front micro-planning in order to try and prevent the contract awardee - who, as we already know ahead of time, will be the lowest bidder - from cutting too many corners. Or to put it more simply, we've essentially mandated that public projects have to be the waterfalliest of waterfally waterfall projects.
Our "starve the beast" approach to funding public agencies, also inspired by our hysterical attitude about government corruption, comes into play, too. Since agencies end up with limited resources for permanent staffing, they don't necessarily have in-house resources available for project planning. But they can use funding set aside for projects to hire consultants, who are naturally expensive and less worried about what happens to the project 5 years down the line. They'll be long gone by that point.
A project like this will have monitory and women owned business goals, which usually translate into somebody's wife forming a shell company fronting money and skimming a profit. There are various labor agreements,which include quotas for various groups. Plus dozens of other crazy legal requirements.
I worked in government for many years. The work was great and rewarding, but the absurdity of the procurement process and the waste associated with it was really disheartening to me personally.
Re: starve the beast, you're 100% correct. Out of hundreds of projects, I can think of 5 (all huge rollout type things that had to be down quick) where using consultants to run the project was a best value. But probably 70% were done that way, and usually redone by government staff.
Delhi is hardly known for it's lack of corruption.
Similarly, one of the leaders in the U.S. defense industry, former Lockheed CEO Norm Augustine, recently had this to say:
Q. I often hear people blame procurement regulations for preventing communication between government and industry, but then I’m told there’s actually less communication happening than is even permitted by law. Do you find that to be the case? Is the problem the regulation or people’s understanding of the regulation?
A. ... Clearly the regulations are very controlling, ... everybody wants to be very, very careful on both sides. So you sort of build walls that weren't intended. It’s unfortunate, and I think [it] handicaps our system. At the same, time you don't want to have conflicts of interest. Having seen the Defense Department from both sides, and [while] I have my own complaints about the acquisition process, it’s 99.9 percent honest. I can't say that about everything I've seen in federal, state and local levels but the Defense Department by and large is honest. We don't want to lose that. So maybe part of the price to pay is to have this barrier that we live with.
It wasn't too long ago that graft was rampant at all levels of government, and it's still a major issue. We've set high standards, but they used to be pretty low.
Honestly, I think bringing more things like construction in house would solve a lot of this. Fly in the Army Engineering Corps? I feel like you could find enough people interested in large works that wouldn't mind being public servants. And since there's no financial incentive, simple budgeting processes could solve most things.
I still think there's a strong case for re-creating a program like the CCC[1] to A.) provide meaningful employment and job-training, and B.) build and maintain neglected infrastructure.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps
There's a vicious cycle here:
bureacratic rules -> government inefficiency -> perception of government ineptness and corruption -> more bureaucratic rules
Back in the day, we had corruption, but that didn't stop us from getting things done. If you look at New York or Chicago during the early 20th of the century, they were dominated by machine politics like Tammany Hall that openly traded votes for party jobs. But they also built most of the modern infrastructure that we take for granted today.
There is a more recent example: the reconstruction of major Japanese cities after WWII. They currently have excellent infrastructure, the best public transit in the world, and surprisingly affordable housing prices whether you rent or buy.
There was quite a lot of bribery, kickbacks, and illegal campaign financing going on the whole time between construction companies and politicians, but that may have actually helped. Local officials are a lot more motivated to push a project through the bureaucracy quickly when they are going to get a kickback.
Dozens.
Not hundreds or thousands. Dozens. With all that capital equipment laying around and all the opportunity costs being ignored.
There's a road project near my home that's been going on for more than 90 days now. Many days nobody is on the site at all, even though all the cranes and other equipment are left on site at all times. When the site is being worked it's by at most half a dozen people, five of whom are watching the sixth guy work.
You'd think that lowest-bid contracting would have fixed this but for some reason it hasn't.
The work is hard, the pay is shit, nobody wants to do it if they have even a slightly better option.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Bacon_Act
(Back in the day, contractors were hiring black workers and bypassing the more expensive white-only unions. Davis Bacon was passed to fix the "problem" of free markets overcoming racism.)
> Thus it has, according to a study from the conservative Heartland Institute, calculated prevailing wages at 22 percent above BLS figures, forcing higher prices.
Well shit is relative, I guess.
They had a job to complete that required access to a caustic pond, so they organised a small plastic dinghy to get out and take their measurements.
Even though it was just a dinghy, they still required a certified skipper on board, plus a saftey officer and then the technicians to take the measurement.
They had estimated an 8 day job, not realising that the pond had shrunk by half since the original satellite imagery.
So the technicians fly out and get prepared, but the mining company hadn't organised half the things they needed to. So for the next 8 days the technicians are waiting for saftey and job approvals and twiddling their thumbs.
Meanwhile the skipper and saftey officer are back at the port awaiting the technicians go ahead.
Now the dinghy, it was sitting on the grass at the boatyard. These resources are all charged per day, and while they're booked for the job they are on standby.
At this point, the dinghy on the grass and it's hardy crew had cost the mining company $16000 just for standby costs.
Eventually the job goes ahead, it only takes 4 days because the pond had shrunk so much, and the dinghy is only used for 2 days.
Total cost for the little plastic dinghy and crew was $25000. The mining company was fine with this.
The type of inefficiencies you describe are EXTREMELY common. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of American companies are simply stuck in the 70s/80s (sometimes the 60s) when it comes to how things are done. Most of their business processes are manual and paper-based and communication is archaic, usually relying on many single points of failure, who happen to be human operators. As a result, stuff falls through the cracks all the damn time.
I've been thinking about how companies can manage to stay in business even when they're run so poorly. I've come to the conclusion that it's because many of them, especially the larger ones, face no real competition. All the other companies in their space are run similarly. As long as a decent amount of revenue keeps coming in, the leaders (many of whom are approaching comfortable retirement) simply don't care.
I've also realized that, at the aggregate level, the primary reason the American economy is so ahead of other economies today is due to the head-start it enjoyed following World War 2, when most of the developed world had been devastated while America was virtually untouched. If there had been any sort of real competition, things would be very different today - and we're starting to see that as other economies are starting to catch up.
I'd argue that a better way to describe this is that there is competition and possibly even a lot of competition, but all competitors have to deal with the fact that their employees are not perfect, management is not easy, teamwork is inherently hard and that over time every company accumulates its own set of weird workarounds and inefficient procedures, so this in itself does not lead to a competitive disadvantage.
(1)E.g. An reference number is needed to set up X on a system. To get a reference number you need to get Y to sign off. Y is notoriously slow, and I have been doing this for years. Z lets me have a reference number on trust knowing that Y will sign off because my paperwork will be in order. Someone new would not get that trust until a few successful cycles. C.F. Lave and Wenger, communities of practice.
Implementing the software comes at the very end, ideally when the underlying process itself has been re-engineered. We found that you can't simply take an existing manual process and implement it in software, because if you do then you also capture many of the inefficiencies and bottlenecks.
One wonders how you identify the 'subject matter experts', and the extent to which you rely on their answers to questions versus direct observation of what they do.
My experience (anecdotal, informal) is that there can be quite a difference between a verbal description and what actually happens, and the difference has to do with situational knowledge (as in "oh yes, I forgot about Fred. With Fred we do ZZ instead")
I would be distinctly liberal with spending tax money on projects if the funds were more efficiently spent. However it irritates me to no end when I see vast inefficiencies with our tax money while we perceive ourselves as working hard every day to earn money. When someone talks about raising taxes, I scoff because I feel like if public projects weren't so wasteful, our money would have a higher return on investment -- that has led to me be very conservative in terms of public expenditures because I feel that the government is not a good steward of our hard-earned tax dollars. For example, the famous 'rubber rooms' for NYC teachers -- teachers and education always ask for more money but they find a way to waste it in salaries for people who quite literally do nothing all day due to the influence of union special interests and labor board rulings that favor the special interest over the greater public. Henry Hazlit (and Bastiat before him,) explained these issues very well.
I am not opposed to taxes or public spending, but when I see our money being pissed away with blantant and obvious inefficiencies, I get very stingy with my political will.
Construction contractors (and boards of education members,) would never spend their personal money this way, yet they happily spend public money like it's from an unlimited fountain.
Why would we expect public organizations to be any more efficient than private organizations? All large organizations have this kind of inefficiency, just like in the mining example. It's unreasonable to demand perfection just because it's the government doing it.
> For example, the famous 'rubber rooms' for NYC teachers -- teachers and education always ask for more money but they find a way to waste it in salaries for people who quite literally do nothing all day due to the influence of union special interests and labor board rulings that favor the special interest over the greater public.
Weren't the "rubber rooms" due to the school administration not paying their agreed portion of arbitration fees? I can't imagine anyone in those rooms wanted to be there (they sound incredibly depressing), but if you have a false complaint against you what else can you do? It'd be very hard to get another teaching job with that complaint on your record, and you don't want to let whoever filed it win by giving in; all you can do is wait to make your case to the arbitrator.
We wouldn't expect that, of course, but there are a lot of people out there who do assume as an axiom that any publicly provided resource is going to be handled much more efficiently than the private sector could. It's worth emphasizing that's not usually the case.
Swings and roundabouts.
Because if they piled a couple of guys into the dinghy, and it happened to capsize, they'd end up paying out seven figures at minimum to the dead technicians' families.
as per usual, the people are what is expense, even 'cheap' construction workers. likely those people are being sent around to multiple jobs because the crew+foreman are experienced and reliable and unlikely to cause general fuckups or financial liabilities.
Some of the other examples mentioned (with costly machinery just sitting there) probably cost millions per day.
1: Publish a request for bids, stipulate that price and outage duration be specified. 2: Wait. 3: Take the bids that are within 30% of the lowest bid, 4: Sort by outage duration. 5: Sign the contract.
Or another variation. Just don't expect bidders to optimise for something that isn't mentioned in the spec.
If the cities were willing to just close the road these projects would be done in a day or two.
Houston's near town development has a long history unique to our area - everything from a former Freedman's town that left lots of prime real estate in the hands of people who really preferred not to sell for development to local management districts using tax money to buy property outside their taxation area in order to prevent or slow gentrification. The area recently expanded to by the Northline extension was considered a blue collar area at best and frankly too crime-ridden and dangerous at worst for any redevelopment. That has turned around with the rail - and since Houston's is an at grade rail, we actually lose one-two lanes of the thoroughfare when rail goes in. Yet North Houston which was the site of the Moody Park Riots is now the target of development and gentrification and you can track that against the rail's expansion.
Among other things it linked most of the city's major stadiums, creating a relief valve for major event traffic, it linked parking and medical center sites, cutting traffic to and from our congested Medical Center and almost since inception it has carried more people on a daily basis than the combined ridership of our spoke and hub "Park and Ride" system which brings commuters in from the suburbs to downtown.
Development along the Red Line has ramped up and the gentrification that comes from it is obvious along its recent Northern expansion. So just like in Boston bringing rail has a net-postive effect on property values once construction is done.
Considering those ridership numbers are based on paid rides and ours is an honor system with loose enforcement Metro is putting up some decent ridership numbers!
Unfortunately due to Bob Lanier's intentionally blocking such expansion we don't have the desperately needed heavy rail system to cut freeway traffic between Houston's higher density bedroom communities.
And more frustratingly we still have only part of the rail plan implemented due to ongoing efforts to block rail funding. The rail line proposed to link our downtown and Galleria commercial district has been blocked for 10+ years by a single Congressman and some vocal business owners in a 1.5 mile stretch of road. If they had just sucked it up the construction would be done and those same businesses would be benefiting from their increased accessibility.
I'd rather take the 2.50 rail fare than the way more expensive lyft/uber/whatever.
Second, you can still fly first class if you want a better experience.
Most people don't buy BMWs either, but enough do that they stay in business. Uber doesn't compete with public transit by bus, either.
You're right to imply that initially there would (probably) be a luxury factor to get the sector off the ground -- what's the opposite of a loss leader? -- but the invisible hand reaches through the centuries and demands satisfaction, or so the story goes.
It might be successful someday, maybe, but how about we wait until then.
I find it hard to believe I'll still get all of this for the same relative price in a future when I'm renting rides from an autonomous fleet.
(that's maybe a slightly hyperbolic phrase, but people that aren't dependent on owning a personal vehicle will make different choices)
Current car sharing schemes only really work for short two way trips without much of a stay at the destination, since you would block the car for the whole duration. Robot taxis (just like their conventional counterparts) on the other hand could be booked separately for each direction,taking the duration of the stay out of the equation (except when it is so short that it is cheaper to keep the taxi waiting). Once on this level, it's just natural to replace the easy trips with public transportation.
I can understand thinking that autonomous cars aren't going to happen anytime soon (it's harder than it looks) but I can't understand thinking it will happen and not be a hugely transformative shift.
The parent is saying self-driving won't be a revolution because it won't fix that problem. You're still in traffic - just not holding the wheel.
In big cities it may indeed help reduce the need for cars, making the few cases where public transportation is wildly inefficient (i.e. getting from Manhattan to somewhere in Jersey <30 miles away) bearable.
But besides the literal handful of U.S. cities with workable public transportation, this automated car revolution will not help anything besides making things more convenient. It will not allow us to come to terms with the massive pollution that cars generate. It will not help us achieve truly affordable transportation (even when this technology is perfected, it will not be able to give us $2.50 rides like public transportation can do today). Etc.
With this autonomous cars movement, it looks like more Americans are finally ready to accept the idea of massive investment into transportation infrastructure (albeit by private companies instead of government). But the solution they are happy with is to re-purpose vehicles designed for individuals and make them into an adhoc transportation system. We need to think at true scale.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/unbelievable-nail-houses-around-the-w...
Why are those control systems so old? Well, a 24/7 system is difficult to do maintenance on!
Digging new tunnels should mostly be independent of operations in existing tunnels.
Only in some areas, mostly in Manhattan. The outer boroughs, especially in areas where the tracks are elevated, usually only have two.
When major track work has to be done the MTA has a habit of just shutting down a line temporarily. For the past couple of years they've been shutting down the 7 train (which goes from 34th street through Times Square in Manhattan to Flushing in Queens) multiple weekends during the summer, and it has had an impact on businesses.
This argument is pure BS that tries to explain New York's incompetence when it comes to planning and building infrastrucure by citing its exceptionalism.
New subway lines in NYC can't use the latest technology. They're being integrated into an existing 112-year-old subway system with the highest station count and track mileage in the world. I'd make a software development analogy, but it would be woefully inadequate at comparing the scope of the situation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Subway_Extension#Proposed_...
The Path stops about 2 miles from the airport. That would be a good project to finish.
http://www.nj.com/traffic/index.ssf/2016/05/push_to_expand_t...
- PATH to EWR
- 7 to LGA
Not only does Hong Kong have a subway terminating inside the main terminal, it runs separate from their MTR line, takes 30 mins to get into Central and makes a handful of stops at major MTR junctions along the way. It felt like public transit working exactly as it should.
Tokyo's great too even if you don't understand Japanese. Haneda is in a great location and has tons of connections. Haneda to Narita is also pretty easy (bonus: monorail).
Airports are, by design, generally out in the middle of nowhere and their connectivity suffers as a result. You get things like London where Heathrow and London City are reasonably accessible, but things like Stansted are out in the middle of bloody nowhere.
On the other hand, I take the Chinatown buses in / out regularly. It's a pretty smooth arrival experience in comparison.
Discovery is a problem. When I only occasionally traveled to NY I didn't know about this bus. My NY-based girlfriend told me about it.
I live within easy access of one of their pickup/dropoff stops in Manhattan, so it's quite convenient.
And you can check your bags at the train station and you don't have to see them again until you get to your final destination
EWR has the Airtrain instead of the PATH. That was more practical than building a new right-of-way for the PATH. PATH trains couldn't run on the NJ Transit/Amtrak tracks because of incompatible power systems (third rail vs overhead.) Also those tracks are at capacity at peak times and couldn't fit Path trains in addition.
Heathrow definitely has it correct in terms of trains into London.
But MTA funding is controlled by the state, meaning that all subway funding needs to be balanced by upstate highway funding, meaning that super high return projects like this (which could probably justify themselves based on the improvements in real estate values as Hong Kong does) are not happening.