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Comment by billfor | Hacker News Reader

It would be expensive to build a new train to JFK. The unions and regulations in NYC make those projects very long and very expensive (look at the 2nd Ave subway line). There is an "AirTrain" to JFK but you have to take other trains to get to it first. There was supposed to be one to LGA but it got cancelled. We used to have a really nice water shuttle to LGA but that also stopped many years ago. People didn't want to travel to the water shuttle and pay $20 to get to the airport in 15 minutes. I'm hard pressed to see how a cheap quadcopter ride is going to be anything other than a novelty unless the FAA allows the heliports to be built inland -- we've had a bad history with blades flying through the streets.

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Funny how every other developed country manages to build more infrastructure cheaper despite having stronger unions and stricter regulations.

Isn't it? Look up the California high speed rail. There is massive corruption, incompetence, and red tape.

> Funny how every other developed country manages to build more infrastructure cheaper despite having stronger unions and stricter regulations.

Every country says this about every other country. The UK has HS2, and we point to Germany. Germany has Stuttgart 21 and they point to Spain. Spain has the Sagrada Familia. Spain points to China, and China has the HZMB [0]

This stuff is really really hard, and standards have evolved hugely. The london underground would never be built today, because of the ignored costs. HS2's massive problem isn't that we spent £100m on a Bat tunnel [1], it's that nobody was willing to say no because that decision is pinned to you but the blame absolving is "someone elses problem".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong%E2%80%93Zhuhai%E2%80.... [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9wryxyljglo

I'm not exactly sure the point you're making about each country pointing at another as a positive example. The chain you've listed (US->UK->Germany->Spain->China) is a pretty good list of countries in descending order of cost to build infrastructure (it's not a straightforward analysis, but see https://transitcosts.com/new-data/ for example). There are always boondoggles, but the scoreboard is pretty clear -- each country in that list is better than the country before at building rail infrastructure.

Your analogy is like saying that everyone thinks someone else is a faster runner: amateurs point to collegiate athletes, collegiate athletes point to elites, elites point to Olympians. You can find someone in each of these categories who has run a bad race, but that doesn't invalidate the existence of the differences in ability.

No, my analogy is that everyone assumes that everyone else is an Olympic runner, when we’re all just college athletes.

There are plenty of countries winning gold medals for massive infrastructure projects while the richest one can’t even get into college

The comment I replied to said:

> Funny how every other developed country manages to build more infrastructure cheaper despite having stronger unions and stricter regulations.

I picked a handful of absolutely colossal overspends on massive infra projects to point out that no, not every other western country is doing so. All countries have their success stories and mega disaster projects

> All countries have their success stories and mega disaster projects

What mega project success stories does the US have in the last 20 or 30 years?

We just sent people around the moon. James Webb is uncovering a ton COVID vaccines

The US did all those before (and they were huge successes) it’s just re-learning what it already did.

So is building a new train line, or a highway/motorway, or a nuclear reactor.

I mean, I'm not sure that the Sagrada Familia is a good example. It taking a long time to build was arguably part of the _point_, and was planned from the start.

I wasn’t sure if I should leave it in or not, it was more tongue in cheek than anything. The train between Madrid and Barcelona is a real example [0]

[0] https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2014/05/13/inenglish/13999...

One thing that some cities have done where awkward infrastructure is required to get a train to the airport is to, essentially, borrow money to do it, and make the fares to the airport very high to compensate.

Notably, getting to Brussels airport, which takes about 15 minutes from Brussels Nord, costs about 15 euro. For a 15 minute train journey. Hands-down the most expensive train per minute (or per km) I've ever been on. But, at least in theory, it's paying for this thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabolo_project

(That's by no means the only one; lots of airports are in awkward places so running rail to them is expensive, and it's common for it to be paid for by special, more expensive services. And people use them.)

Even at 15 Euros I bet its way cheaper than a helicopter or electric VTOL aircraft

Oh, yeah, and it can and does handle a scale of traffic that a helicopter service obviously couldn't. I think each train takes about a thousand people and they're every ten minutes or something.

The "use helicopters for airport access" thing seems, at best, extremely niche.

Joby plans to expand way beyond airport access, it’s meant to be basically flying rideshare. The key enabler is they designed it to be quiet enough to not annoy everyone around like a helicopter, so that it would be reasonable to have this thing taking off from residential neighborhoods. JFK access is just a very visible first test run.

This thing will not be taking off from residential neighborhoods. Regardless of noise, like any manned VTOL aircraft it requires a large open area free of overhead obstructions (trees, wires).

And the notion that landing pads will be installed on the roofs of tall buildings is mostly a fantasy. Commercial or high-rise roofs are mostly already occupied with other machinery, and aren't designed to support the extra weight.

Yep, Stockholm's Arlanda express train is costly as well

I guarantee France have stronger unions and regulations, and still managed the GPE. 3 years late and with 20% cost overrun, sure, but to be fair, they had to deal with floods twice, which wasn't planned and broke equipment and reseted some tunnels.

20% cost overrun is nothing if you look at the typical cost overrun of a US infrastructure project. UES extension in NYC a prime example of that. And 3 years late? How about 50 years late?

yeah lol, in NYC 3 years and 20% would be regarded as an unprecedented success

Exactly, some serious bonuses would be paid out

So your unions and regulations have nothing to do with it, but it has everything to do with corruption and the way US public command is arbitraged. You probably need _more_ regulation to avoid the former, and have unions involved in the review process (construction workers usually know when a construction company is full of shit).

I don't see how unions cause any of those problems. Corruption and incompetence comes through administration and management not the average worker wanting a decent pay and 2 weeks of vacation.

NYC unions are not your average worker. In my north of NYC town the labor rate for a union worker is 3x that of non union..and state laws mandate govt projects must pay that rate.

Yeah, that is what unions are for, protecting worker wages from the ever tightening noose of greedy capitalists that would otherwise use slave labor if they still could.

unions are often a form of corruption themselves. If, as is often the case, there's only one union that can do a job, that means that that union is a monopoly.

I don't see how that is corruption. Unions can be corrupted when the union leader's goals diverge from the average union members, but the whole point of a union is to collectively bargain as one to try and make up for the inherent power imbalance that capital holders possess. If workers were being treated well and not taken advantage of a union wouldn't form in the first place and people wouldn't want to join it.

They all too often use the together for political purposes that are corruption. If I legally have to hire union that is corruption.

There's a free bus to LaGuardia from the subway.

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