San Francisco’s quest for the perfect trash can
missionlocal.org
missionlocal.org
That says nothing about the rest of this article, though.
Well, except the first question presented in the article is "why are we paying for any prototypes in the first place, instead of just using cans that already exist?"
Prototype costs seem pretty relevant to that question.
I can totally understand why a larger city like SF wants to spend some resources on this rather than just pick the next best off-the shelf solution without much thought.
They could come up with the best possible trash can ever invented and it wouldn't move the need on resident's quality of life.
Total waste of money.
I mean I've only been to San Francisco a few times, but apart from the Tenderloin I thought it was a very beautiful city. Yeah, homelessness and public defecation are a problem, but do these have to be brought up in ANY discussion regarding SF? Groups of people can deal with multiple issues at once.
As a tax payer, I've noted that San Francisco has actually been removing trash cans, that worked perfectly well, because people just dump trash beside them for the city to pick up. No trash can, no dumping? No, they dump anyways.
So the solution isn't to use the old design which seemed to work "ok". Or even talk to other cities to see if they have better options SF could just buy. It was to completely redesign a trash can. Insane. I'm waiting for SF to hire an outside firm to resign the tires on their city vehicles.
So yes, you can solve multiple problems at once, but there are also only so many hours in the day and so many tax dollars to work with and spending any time/money on new trash cans is less time solving actual quality of life problems.
Memories of human waste in the streets is the first thing I thought about after reading this article. I usually see at least one pile when I go into SF and walk around. I've also seen people actively relieving themselves and worse, and I've only wandered around SF maybe a dozen times.
Designing custom trash cans to optimize for esthetics in this context seems analogous to polishing a turd. It sounds like the bigger issue, ignoring potential corruption, is that they expect telemetry and sliding mechanisms in what notionally should just be some bent sheet metal, and assumed the stuff on the market was overpriced.
You're a tourist and you go to tourist places and most of those areas suck. They also tend to have more homeless people than average because tourists give more money to them than locals.
Tourist areas in most cities are also where most crime and homelessness live.
I lived in San Francisco for less than one year and saw people in the act of defecating in public more often than that. This was strictly a matter of walking between my apartment and my job.
Yes, unless public defecation has suddenly become some kind of understandable foible that might happen anywhere.
Unrelatedly, I find it interesting that, despite the fact that the Chinese name of the city is 旧金山, San Francisco insists on using a different name for itself in its official Chinese communications.
Want to end homelessness? Give people homes. We can't do that, though, because public housing is "socialism".
Want less crime? Make sure people can afford to live and you'll see less crime. Enforcement of the law isn't the problem here, especially since crime levels are generally at some of the lowest levels in decades.
Corruption is a strawman. You can point at basically anything and complain about "corruption" and people will agree with you. This isn't adding anything to the conversation unless you're talking about wanting to fix specific corruption.
The crime is often due to organized criminal gangs, at least the car break-ins and shoplifting, the most visible and quality of life impacting crimes. Nobody is stealing clothing from malls because they are poor.
And no, corruption is not a strawman. When the city says "we just need more money", saying "stop wasting money on redesigned garbage cans that enrich your donors" is an perfectly reasonable response.
It's excuses like yours that detract from actually fixing the problems.
1. Financial hardships
2. Mental illness
3. Lifestyle change
I'm saying that, if you're going to go down this path, costs in this ballpark are to be expected. That is, I don't think SF appears to be overpaying for their quixotic custom trashcans. (Again, at the ballpark/order of magnitude level.)
So this seems like a standard buy/build decision being turned into a political drama.
And the prototype cost is still irrelevant, we should only care about the total cost of ownership.
Lastly, San Francisco is riddled with trash and dirty streets. It seems rather surreal they’d spend so much on aesthetic trash cans, that may or may not work better than the existing solutions, when the streets are literally covered with human feces.
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/01/634626538/san-francisco-squal...
Quotes from that article:
> San Francisco's streets are so filthy that at least one infectious disease expert has compared the city to some of the dirtiest slums in the world.
> "The contamination is ... much greater than communities in Brazil or Kenya or India," says Riley, who researched health conditions caused by extreme poverty in some of the world's poorest regions.
> ...
> There were no off-the-shelf models that met most of those requirements, except for the Bigbelly. But those, at a cost of about $3,900 a can, were deemed too expensive. Nor were they particularly attractive, she said. The PEL [product] can also fit most of the requirements. It costs $6,400,
My original point stands in that it's not blown out of proportion and should be discussed.
> https://missionlocal.org/2021/08/san-franciscos-proposed-tra...
The actual three prototypes:
Lots of sensible ideas have components that cost more than the cheapest available alternative component e.g. if for example they introduced electric garbage trucks, it would be short-sighted to focus on just the up front cost of that vehicle versus a standard diesel alternative.
If other aspects (quiet operation, maintenance costs, fuel expenses, longevity) are counted then it may cost less overall, which is the only figure we should care about.
Yes, I can't prove that my hypothetical EV truck will deliver those future cost savings but if you're arguing against it without even mentioning those, then that's a very poor quality of argument and highly suggests you don't have anything better to use as your argument.
I'm also highly dubious, of why that article, from the same source, keeps referring to "primarily" and "most" of the bins that other cities use. Either they have a really strong case, and they have no idea how bad their presentation makes them look, or they are using these weasel words because they don't have an actual case. Since it seems to be some local civic government feud, I'm leaning towards the latter.
edit: reading further around this, the actual corruption seems to mostly stem from the trash collection being given to a monopoly in 1938, and there being no laws against that monopoly from giving gifts to the city employees that oversee them. Which seems insane, but also run of the mill for the US, where they often manage to be less market-oriented than European governments, while at the same time offering less benefits to the actual people paying for them. One of the drawbacks of living in an oligarchy rather than a democracy I guess.
Of course I haven’t, how could I? That’s up to the people running the project. My entire point was that this does not seem blown out of proportion to me and should actually be something for San Franciscans to push on. My personal opinion is that this does indeed seem like a vanity project on the outset but without more details, it’s hard to know. I think enough are there to not write it off though.
This comment seems relevant regarding what problem they are actually trying to solve, if there is one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28639600
> One of the drawbacks of living in an oligarchy rather than a democracy
Agreed there.
Maybe there really is a rotten core to SF refuse collection, maybe there really is something going on with Bill Gates and Covid Vaccines, but angry people on the internet saying things that are demonstrabaly not true in an outraged tone is not a good basis for believing either proposition.
What's the solution, though? Obviously part of this is staggering corruption, but I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of the problem here is also just fundamental incompetence on the part of these middle-managers. This is exactly what I would expect to come out of the worst design-by-committee no-initiative meetings. Spiraling costs, no understanding or acceptance of tradeoffs, and zero shame about the failures of the process. This has incompetent management written all over it, but no one will be held accountable for these failures. How can that change? Should we keep a public record of the projects that city councillors are involved in/advocate for?
Or does it really need to change? It's kind of an issue of dueling narratives. There are some public projects that are massive, embarassing failures, and some that go ahead on time, under budget, and quietly. We only really hear about the first, and there does seem to be a group that benefits from pushing the idea that large government projects always and inevitably fail. I don't know how common it really is, and it's hard to trust any source as definitive on the matter anymore given the incentives involved. Although from what I understand, Cost Disease is a thing - the prices of public infrastructure has gone up an order of magnitude over the last few decades.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that there's a large amount of waste in government spending - I've worked for large companies in the past, and it's not a stretch to imagine government as just a larger, even less tightly fiscally managed enterprise - but I don't think "smaller government" is the panacea that some propose. Especially because I don't believe anyone ever actually tries to shrink the government; a solution that no one would actually implement is not a good solution. Are there any practical proposals to increase accountability and effectiveness of government entities?
Corruption is one, but are there actually incentives to run lean for a govt government here, or do they act like money is free.
The people working on the shed probably are the ones who most likely just want to get on with it.
As for garbage cans, they could just order existing inexpensive products from any of the many suppliers out there.
And then there is their Wine bottle recycling receptacle. Looks like something out of some cartoon. Looks so unique!
[1]:https://myparttimeparislife.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/publ...
While we're talking trash we should scrap the CRV... the most idiotic policy whose only outcome seems to be trash/recyling gets emptied out all over the streets.
Having worked in government, seeming incompetence is not the fault of administrators more than you'd think. The ideology of "government is the problem" has led to a lot of legislation that knee-caps good decision making e.g. forcing acceptance of the lowest bid.
Along those lines, as trust was retracted from government agencies expertise was often removed with it. Departments that use to keep technical personnel on staff to review policies and make recommendations were replaced with consultants who usually have many conflicts of interest.
I don't have good solutions, but it's a stick and multifaceted issue. There are no easy answers sadly.
Whether it's the planning department, sanitation, government contracts, etc, it's kind of startling seeing multiple high-level people get snagged. I mean the federal gov't through the DOJ has active corruption investigations going on - I assume the feds don't get involved unless there are some big fish to fry.
It would explain just how poorly SF is run despite one of the largest per capita budgets for a city/county (plus airport) in the US.
https://www.elkoplast.eu/underground-containers
Probably hard to retrofit in the middle of cities though.
Or even pneumatic trash tubes, like in NY:
https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islan...
Which would seem more appropriate for HN discussion.
Plus, as other commenters have said, it’s one of the most visible public works, so it contributes quite a bit to the character of the city - a unique look would be nice.
This is a city spending $55,000 per tent to "support" a parking lot camp ground with porta potties.
Spoiler: much of the cost is for 24/7 onsite security
Even with 24/7 security (and SF wages) the costs seems high.
https://archaeologymysteries.com/2019/02/26/how-did-the-roma...
So to the degree that this equipment breaks down or fails to deliver on the self-cleaning promise, those costs should be included in the total cost of the toilet, no?