NYC's brand new subway is the most expensive in the world
vox.com
vox.com
Many of the comparisons in the article seem to be similar to that, and with projects that seem far more complex, technically and politically, than what most of us deal with. Other than the fact that all the projects mentioned are called 'trains' or 'subways', and I assume are mostly underground, I don't have enough information to say they are comparable at all.
Sometimes, there is no way for the layperson to analyze the situation on their own.
EDIT: Minor edits
I'm not a plumber, doctor, police officer, etc. Sometimes they are obviously right or wrong. Otherwise, I can try to second-guess them based on some limited or amateur knowledge here and there, but I know that when laypeople try that in regard to my profession, it very rarely helps them and can be a recipe for disaster. They don't even know what questions to ask.
In the end, IMHO we have to decide which experts to trust - this plumber or that one; this subterranean urban transport engineer or the other one. Thanks to the open societies in modern democracies, plus modern communication, we have a plethora of experts and voices to choose from, but it ain't perfect.
Which is the exact same way politicians can know whether projects are not mismanaged or over-budgeted by the construction companies, etc.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-i...
The answer why is complex, but the two big factors seem to be red tape, specifically that standards are overengineered and it takes forever to get approvals, and lack of experience and existing construction infrastructure, so instead of having a well-greased machine like Singapore's that churns out line after line in rapid succession, you need to ramp up and ramp down for every single project.
The route would also be in a relatively recently built area, so it's not hard to imagine why it would be cheaper to plan and execute that a route under Manhattan.
I don't know very much about NYC, but the comparison does not seem fair.
As far as I'm aware, the biggest issues with building deep tunnels like this is everything that gets in the way - other tunnels, utilities, old buildings that might fall down, and rivers. The Crossrail project in the UK has a high pice tag (£15bn) but is also much larger, and given how old London and its infrastructure is, I would imagine has had to cope with a similar number of obstacles, if not more. I imagine Paris is in a similar place given its age.
On what basis do you have any idea?
and that's precisely why oversight might fail and let corruption sneak in.
(MTA officials say the Second Avenue Subway cost as much as it did because of Manhattan's "complex underground infrastructure" as well as the fact that the New York City Subway runs all the time [3], the latter not being a requirement of Paris or London's systems.)
[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/31/here-s-why-...
[2] http://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/the-path-to-4-billion...
[3] http://www.amny.com/transit/second-avenue-subway-cost-concer...
The Second Ave subway is a new line. It didn't even cross any existing lines. They obviously had to hook it up with the existing Q at one point, but I don't see why the 24/7 argument applies here?
The crossovers probably cost so much because they're underground and require extra tunnel space. (They require extra (as in between the two-or-more tracks that are being switched) foundations above ground too, which is probably more expensive than the switch itself.)
However, I'd like to see a cost breakdown.
Even the busiest lines in Tokyo are mostly single-rail. Of course, when a train breaks down, then nothing can happen, but at least you don't need 4 sets of rails, only 2 (one for each direction). There's probably way less in terms of delays because of that too. Each train is on its own set of tracks, so little cross-cutting.
But aren't most of the train lines in Tokyo owned and operated by separate competing companies They don't have to interoperate or not that much correct?
Once upon a time the trains in New York City were also owned by separate competing companies, there was the IND, BMT, and the IRT but they now operate as one entity under the MTA. As a result all these lines were originally built differently with different tunnel widths and platform to accommodate the different size cars. I think this level of interop adds to the complexity of the system as a whole.
The Vox article [1] specifically cites depth as a contributor to the Second Avenue Line's increased cost:
"the majority of the Second Avenue subway’s price tag actually comes from the stations rather than the tunnels. The line is being built unusually deep for a subway tunnel, which doesn’t do much to change the basic logistics of boring a tunnel, but does make excavation of station caverns unusually difficult."
[1] http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/1/14112776/new...
Why the focus on unions, which are very weak in the U.S.? How about public officials who give work to their wealthy, powerful allies and donors?
New York City's unions, particularly public and construction unions, are strong. In my limited experience, at hearings and meetings involving New York infrastructure, the "ayes" are supplied by the unions. The "wealthy, powerful allies and donors" are more present at zoning and related private-development discussions.
Unions are visibly and numerously present at New York's many off-season elections, e.g. judicial primaries and participatory budgeting polls.
Good point; unions seem stronger in NY than in other parts of the country.
However, if you are a New Yorker, I don't think you mean to claim that the wealthy and powerful aren't the beneficiaries of corruption.
IMHO, unions give workers power, balancing the scales a little. Power can be used for good or bad (or almost always, for both), but I certainly wouldn't exclude working-class people from it for not being angels. Why should they be held to a higher standard than other powerful people? If we are going to fight corruption, why pick on the working class?
It's absurd to imply that such a person, if real, is representative of the incomes of union members in New York. And again, why focus on that guy and not the person making tens of millions?
EDIT: Reading the articles you linked to, I understand those are the high-end of salaries of crain operators building skyscrapers in in NYC.[0] I'm not sure that's inappropriate; it's high skill work with many lives and enormous investment on the line, like an airplane pilot. Why do people think their incomes are inappropriate (if that is the implication) and not the person who makes tens of millions from their casual gaming software startup.
And that does not qualify as wealthy in NY, at least not in a way that will buy you any influence.
[0] The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 14-14B lays out the wage floor for its operators at $73.91 per hour. That’s $150,000 a year before overtime, plus benefits equal to $32.50 an hour. When the operator is behind the controls of a tower crane, he gets a $2-an-hour bump. On weekends, when cranes are moved, pay doubles. With overtime, many union members earn half a million dollars a year.
Weak in general, yes; but very strong in the public sector. They push through all sorts of measures because they control a large voting block (and often public sector unions support each other without questions; for example, if the fire fighters union is pushing for something, you can bet the police officers union will support it too). This really magnifies their power.
Are these useful comparisons? How can you possibly compare a train running the length of Manhattan to anything in Copenhagen? I want to know how much a new train line costs in Tokyo.
https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...
Also note that Tokyo is much less dense than Manhattan. A better comparison would be Hong Kong, except that labor and other costs there will be dramatically less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo
Note that the entirety of the Fukutoshin Line was within the 23 wards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Metro_Fukutoshin_Line
However, it's only a single stop on the line; the other 15 stops are in Central Tokyo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan
and therefore still significantly larger than Central Tokyo's 15,146/km². The 10,194/km² figure you quote is for all of New York City (all 5 boroughs)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City
which is to be compared with 6,225/km² for Tokyo Metropolis (i.e., the city proper, not the greater metro area, which is 2,662/km²).
Not exactly Tokyo, but in Seoul between $43m/km and $87m/km, Hong Kong $586m/km, Singapore $600m/km.
A quick glance at this [2] engineering book indicates Copenhagen is limestone. Apparently the same is true for Paris. Any engineers here who want to chime in about how that affects cost?
[1] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/magazine/tunneling-belo...
[2] https://books.google.com/books?id=6UAqS62NJDMC&pg=PA2616&lpg...
American infrastructure routinely costs between 5 - 10x that of comparable developed countries and, when you dig into why, it's like a litany of every failed project management idea from software, all rolled into one.
The reasons are myriad but, at it's core, the main driving factor is that America would rather spend an extra $10 non-corruptly than $1 corruptly. The obsessive focus on stamping out corruption puts rigid rules in place that stymie cost efficiency.
Until there's serious political pressure demanding serious government procurement reform, nothing will change. There's enough motivated special interests on the other side to keep America in a perpetual infrastructure deficit. But for that to happen, more smart writing and analysis needs to be focused on the problem of infrastructure procurement and how changing the way we do things could unlock huge savings and bring about the infrastructure revolution that America needs.
I'm having a hard time reading between the lines here, but it feels like you're saying that allowing corruption would lower costs, but that really goes against my intuition.
Several Japan infrastructure projects also cost huge amounts of money, and construction companies and gov't are very close.
Japan has better infrastructure. But the way they do it is by spending huge amounts of money. The only way the bullet trains exist is because of massive government spending (during Japan Railway's privatization, about $150 billion of Shinkansen debt was taken on by the tax payer).
There's basically two different construction industries in the US: contractors that do private construction, and contractors that do public works construction. On the private side, you have thousands of companies ranging in size from some random guy who does drywall all the way up to pipeline and oil rig construction contractors. On the private side, all the small guys have been weeded out because of absurdly high regulatory compliance costs(which have been designed to eliminate corruption), and so it's just a handful of extremely large companies. And knowing they have no competition, their bids are obscenely overpriced.
The multitude of governments and jurisdictions problems is more worrisome however. That kink won't fix itself.
London is far far older than NY, it's also more congested underground and a lot harder to organise logistically.
Blows my mind that the NY subway costs this much to extend.
This section of the 2nd Avenue subway (it's just 2.7km long) is deep under Manhattan itself. To get a comparison on cost you would have to only compare only the section of crossrail running under central london itself.
For NYC the trade off is worth it. The city absolutely requires 24/7 public transport.
I'm not sure if the crossrail will be in at night, but I hope it will.
Now in this case, we are talking about a long tradition of established power, not about a weak group suddenly rising. But I think the pattern might still apply: The rare powerful unions are not recent underdogs, but they feel a cultural oneness with the weak ones in other places. It must be very tempting to believe that you are fighting the fight of the typical weak union when you are actually expanding on the excesses of the rare powerful ones.
Counterexample: US.
A very large chunk of the Sound Transit 3 cost will be interest paid on borrowing. Because Washington State has no state bank or infrastructure bank, Sound Transit has to "borrow as it goes" by issuing bonds, building, paying back, issuing more bonds, building, and so on. It doesn't get the funds in one up-front chunk--like Vancouver did for its light rail system, from the BC and Canadian federal governments--so it's fund-as-we-go.
Above ground does matter. Grade separated still mostly works from a transit perspective, but there are other concerns: how they affect surface traffic, how they can be affected by marine traffic, etc. Underground is more expensive but still demanded for a reason, and we are still paying >2x per mile for above ground vs what Paris paid for underground lines.
Something connecting all the way from Riverside Drive/Henry Hudson Parkway passing through the 125th Metro North Railroad station. (...and maybe even shuttling to Randals Island, why not?)
It's faster walking than it is to take the buses that run that route. Cold weather means waiting for the buses sucks, and the only time it's worth a trade is when you're carrying something heavy.
Car service in Harlem is slightly schizophrenic, even with car hailing apps and "boro cabs" (because normal yellow cabs don't operate in Harlem, for reasons I still don't understand...).
But as the article points out, there's many ambitious plans that could be done if it weren't for the insane price tags and construction times. Heck how about some reasonable way to get to LGA?
> because normal yellow cabs don't operate in Harlem, for reasons I still don't understand
This is an ugly relic of NY's more violent (and more explicitly racist) past. I went to school with the kids of cabbies, and anything past the UWS was essentially off limits thanks to 30 year old stereotypes about the people living there.
Can it be because of any racial reason? (This is a non-rhetorical question. I'm honestly curious to know.)