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Comment by randyrand | Hacker News Reader

What exactly is costing 600 million dollars? thats a huge sum of money to rebuild a few blocks on a single surface level road.

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There’s a little more information at https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Market-Street-ma...

The $600m includes upgrades of sewers and utilities so it’s likely all of Market street is getting dug up some way down. $600m still seems like a lot for that, but it is more than repaving.

If there are going to dig it up anyway they should dig in a subway while they are at it.

Conveniently, there are two running right under Market St! Muni Metro, and then BART below that. I assume some aspect of that also drives up the cost.

I have to admit my ignorance of SF, my comment is a more general comment that city planners should be considering opportunities to share costs more. For that matter, if they have a subway, why dig up streets now - shouldn't the subway tunnels been made a little wider so the pipes are maintainable without digging? (this is a complex question - obviously a bigger tunnel costs more than a smaller one.

It costs $1M or so in the US to e.g. outfit an existing intersection with a set of traffic lights. I thought they'd be some gold plated, diamond encrusted traffic lights, but no, they're just standard issue. Constructions costs are pretty ridiculous.

25K for the workers, 100K for materials. 875K for the company that sold this to the city. Rich keep getting richer.

If it's this simple why aren't other companies entering the market offering steep discounts? I don't see how such an arbitrary and vast margin could be sustained in the presence of even minimal competition.

In LA rail projects generally go to one contractor not because they are the cheapest (they aren’t), but because officials like that they worked on the previous project and have ‘experience.’ AKA nepotism and corruption.

LA rail is actually much more cost effective than other US cities. There was going to be a federal study why, but it was cancelled.

>> but it was cancelled

Ironically making it even more cost effective.

Federal study I wouldn't think would come out of LA's budget or federal allocation to that budget?

Probably the paperwork involved.

https://medium.com/@josefow/streets-paved-with-gold-sfs-ridi...

They want to use those new smart bricks that notify police via Twitter when a homeless person does their business with a video of the deed from the ground’s POV.

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