Hacker News Reader

Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

In SF a couple of parks needed to have new public bathrooms built. Cost: 2 million.[1] If you had to do it yourself, It'd be about 100k max. It's pure graft and greediness.

Meanwhile in Japan, they convert an above ground line into a subway line in 3.5 hours of coordinated work.[2] It's a startling difference. This is the one time I'd love to be able to bring engineering and crew from overseas and have them do the work for us and dispense with all the local corruption.

200 ghost workers -unbelievable. And they initially wanted to keep that discovery quiet. $1000/day/ghost worker for the taxpayers of New York. $200k waste per day --that's how much The City respects its citizens.

[1]http://hoodline.com/2017/10/golden-gate-park-playground-land...

[2]https://youtu.be/wIbZqqLra9k?t=80

View on HN

Japan also has a much different outlook on blue collar jobs, and (from studying the culture and spending ~3 months there) people seem to take genuine pride in their job regardless of what it is.

Contrast that with the MTA subway workers I see regularly huddled into groups, shooting the breeze and playing on their phones -- it's a widely different outlook on work.

Also regarding you [2] link, I can't remember where I read it, but I believe that operation took years of planning.

I mean, to be sure Japan has institutionalized pork too[1]. They offer contracts to build retaining walls where no one lives. But damn, when they have to do something they are experts in they do it right. And given the JRs are private orgs, they can't just ask for another bond measure or other tax or more pork from the govt.

And of course it took years of planning. In the US you'd have years of "planning" [pork dealing] and then the line shut down for a year or two probably, doing things as slowly as possible.

[1]https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-election-concrete/a...

Sitting in a cafe in Shibuya, Tokyo ( at the moment ), I would say there's a "oneness" to everything they do. Inconveniencing others is the height of moral crimes you can do here ( see your family being fined for your suicide [1] ). I think this permeates their culture to the point where they're more efficient so that they do not affect others, i.e. how on time trains are in Japan [2]. Of course, this is speculative, but it certainly does not feel like a, "I'll get mine, before you get yours culture" here.

[1] - https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/families-fined-for-su...

[2] - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42009839

I ran into a term some years ago, giri. Seems to be a remnant from their feudal times.

Something about reciprocal duty or some such, meaning that workers put their honor into their work with the expectation that they get looked after by the boss/lord in return.

This also seems to be the background for a lot of "drama" in their entertainment, where a character will struggle between upholding giri and their emotions regarding the task.

>Japan also has a much different outlook on blue collar jobs, and (from studying the culture and spending ~3 months there) people seem to take genuine pride in their job regardless of what it is.

The west seems like the weird culture here. The middle class looks down on people who make our coffees in Starbucks, drive the buses and man the trains but realistically they're the ones everybody would miss if they all suddenly didn't turn up to work on Monday morning.

The was a bankers strike once, in Ireland. For months.

The way people busy worked around it is really amazing, because those workarounds are what the system actually needs to do, minus all the abstraction.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/pubs-replaced-banks-in-ireland...

Not limited to the west. Indians are absolutely awful to people who work those kinds of jobs.

> that operation took years of planning.

Near the end of the 3.5 hour track change video, it says it was the culmination of 80,000 people working for 8 years.

８年間８万人の集大成

Reminds me of Arlington's million dollar bus stops. (the plan was eventually re-evaluated - links in chronological order)

http://www.dailytech.com/Virginia+Builds+1+Million+Super+Bus...

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/19/virginia-million-d...

https://www.watchdog.org/news/fear-not-taxpayers-arlington-b...

> In SF a couple of parks needed to have new public bathrooms built. Cost: 2 million.[1] If you had to do it yourself, It'd be about 100k max. It's pure graft and greediness.

I dislike when this sort of disingenuous description is used. It cost a lot of money to do infrastructure work, and entities generally schedule and package work as a bundle, not as individual items. I am quite certain they are not spending $2m on bathrooms.

From [1]: "Additionally, the funds will cover new water, electrical and sanitary utilities services to Lincoln Way, as well as [ways] to improve the pedestrian path that would meet ADA access requirements.

The construction work, which will adjust the playground's irrigation and add new landscaping, is slated to begin next month."

> Meanwhile in Japan, they convert an above ground line into a subway line in 3.5 hours of coordinated work.[2] It's a startling difference. This is the one time I'd love to be able to bring engineering and crew from overseas and have them do the work for us and dispense with all the local corruption.

London did something roughly comparable in fifteen hours during the construction of the Victoria line in the 60s: https://youtu.be/GwRRSJ_wtIg?t=1074

Minor correction but neither project in the story is managed by New York City. Although the city owns the subway, it's controlled by the MTA state agency (which is also responsible for East Side Access to Grand Central).

> it's controlled by the MTA state agency

Which the state controls because New York City ran itself into bankruptcy in the 70s and needed a bailout.

No.

The MTA was formed in the 1960s to take over operations of the then–bankrupt privately owned Long Island Railroad, assuming operations of New York City transit in late 1960s. NYCT had itself been formed in the 1940s after the then-private companies running various subway, elevated and bus routes went under.

Specific to today and the article in question: The government of NYC has little to no control over the MTA, including the subways, other than bickering with the governor over funding.

> Specific to today and the article in question: The government of NYC has little to no control over the MTA, including the subways, other than bickering with the governor over funding.

The MTA is an independent entity, but the state government has plenty of control over it through the contracts that control both its funding and its expansion projects.

However, as the article explains, the government chooses not to exercise that authority of oversight, delegating it instead to the MTA itself (!).

Right. My point is that the MTA is controlled by New York State, not New York City. HN comments tend to conflate the two and then gloss into a general "ultra liberal bankrupt NYC" critique. Many things to criticize NYC over, but management of the subways…is a state problem.

I don't see what those two comparisons have to do with each other. That's like saying "The marketing department spend $10m on new ads last quarter. Meanwhile, the development team released a new feature in one sprint."

Sound Transit is spending $54 billion to build a few miles of light rail.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/sound-tra...

Keep in mind that's 62 miles of rail, both above and below ground. Not saying it's a good price, but ~$900 million a mile is a bit better than ~$3.5 billion per mile.

The $54 B doesn't include cost overruns which are already happening!

Considering ST3 hasn’t broken ground yet, I find it hard to believe that the cost overruns are due to construction.

The cost overruns are because the cost of land and contractors are rising at an astronomical rate. I forget the exact numbers, but they planned for land appreciation of something like 10%, and the real cost has turned out to be double that.

Is it though? Considering it's light rail with 3 or 4 cars max vs 2nd ave subway being heavy rail with far longer trains, I'm not sure how much better it is.

That’s mostly above ground rail through suburbs. DC built the silver line for 1/3 that in similar areas. (Still breathtakingly inefficient compared to $450 million for digging under fricking Paris).

How much did the land acquisition cost, though? I imagine that's relatively expensive in Seattle?

It was mostly built in the right-of-way of existing roads, so it's probably not comparable to projects that involved a lot of land acquisition.

That’s not true. The majority of the costs in the light rail project discussed (ST3) involves ROW acquisition, for above grade or underground rights of way.

You may be thinking of the original light rail or Sound Transit 2.

The original light rail was kind of a disaster but since then the management has changed; we will see how ST2, currently in construction, plays out.

I was referring to the Silver Line addition to DC's metro system. It mostly runs in the median of 267.

The cost is dominated by the price of the underlying land, which is privately owned. The actual construction cost is much lower than $900 million a mile.

Considering that ST continues to ignore the Eastside Rail Corridor, I'm not sympathetic to their ROW purchase costs.

This is yet another proof against the narrative that govt run internet Monopoly would be infinitly superior to private run internet. We just cannot count on govt with our future.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com