Hacker News Reader

Comment by snissn | Hacker News Reader

My armchair / layperson issue with the subway infrastructure is that a lot of the issues around delays and especially the L train upgrades are related to antiquated signaling systems that seem to not at all acknowledge all of the updates to telecommunications that have been developed in the last 100 years.

View on HN

I attribute the highly expensive nature of NYC subway to politics, since similar services don't have overall cost anywhere near what New Yorkers pay in fees and taxes. The new chief of the MTA is asking for $40 billion to upgrade the system. They should be able to build three new New York subway systems from scratch with that kind of money.

I would be very interested to see an analysis of exactly why laying track in NYC is more expensive than in other cities/countries. "Politics" is a very nebulous reason—if that is indeed the cause—I'd love to see more detail on where in our political system, and why, etc.

I'm sure part of the problem is that subway workers in NYC are well-paid, but that's probably not all of it.

Fraud, waste, and the worlds worst purchasing work.

NYCT workers are well paid, but that is only an explanation for high operating expense, not obscene capital expenses.

Operating expense is really fairly well managed, albeit with unusually high wages. It is a small, small part of the subway’s problems.

The unusually high wages can also be attributed to a city with an incredibly high cost of living, and large number of overtime hours.

Train conductor base pay is $23-30 an hour - the six-figure salaries that you read about are for people doing >40h/week, including night shift/holiday/on-call work.

I generally think that it's reasonable that people who do more work get paid more then people who do less work... Or that people doing the same work during hardship hours get paid more then people doing their 9-5.

This has been covered in the NY Times [1] and I've read more detailed breakdowns of other projects in more transit/government focused publications. The short version is that the government doesn't do a very good job with planning despite spending a ton on it and the combination of union labor and the hiring structure leads to workers getting paid several hundred dollars an hour during overtime (which happens due to the planning) and more workers performing a task than similar transit efforts elsewhere in the developed world.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

I assume you're speaking figuratively. Here's an extremely literal elaboration for the railfans in the thread. The route length of the NYC subway system is 245 miles. Subway construction costs vary across developed countries, but generally fall between $200-$500 million per mile[0]. So under extremely optimistic assumptions, 40 billion would get us to about 80% of the current subway network.

For those interested in analysis of subway construction costs, I highly recommend Alon Levy's work at Pedestrian Observations: https://pedestrianobservations.com/construction-costs/

[0]https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-ex...

> but generally fall between $200-$500 million per mile[0]

Does not help that NYC is paying 5-10x that. Given that, the former comment is pretty much in line, even if slightly exaggerated.

Yeah, I never meant to suggest that it was wrong (except in the most literal sense!). Comparative subway costs do not make MTA look good!

Yeah, but if they hire Oracle or IBM to come up with a solution, as big organizations often do, then you might prefer the 100 year old control system.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com