
The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track - seibelj
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html
======
mc32
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...](http://hoodline.com/2017/10/golden-gate-park-playground-
lands-2-million-for-bathrooms-upgrades)

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

~~~
olingern
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.

~~~
crdoconnor
>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.

~~~
shubb
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...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/pubs-replaced-banks-in-ireland-
in-1970-and-the-economy-was-fine-2016-1)

------
rayiner
> “We thought ours was expensive,” said Laurent Probst, managing director of
> Île-de-France Mobilités, which controls transit in the French capital.

> The small number of workers has not slowed the Paris project. The line,
> which will run driverless trains every 85 seconds, is set to open by 2020,
> six years after groundbreaking. The Second Avenue subway, by contrast, took
> a decade to build.

> M.T.A. officials declined to comment on the Paris project.

French inefficiency used to be a joke in the US when I was a kid. Joke’s on us
now I guess.

~~~
pluma
American inefficiency has been a joke in Germany as far as I can think back.

Also, a recurring theme in what I hear about American customers from people
working in manufacturing is that US companies insist on providing extremely
detailed specs and strict tolerances but then run into issues because their
own (presumably US sourced) parts don't actually match the same specs.

~~~
masklinn
> American inefficiency has been a joke in Germany as far as I can think back.

'course now there's BER so the joke is a bit harder to make.

~~~
chx
For people not familiar with that particular flustercuck: BER is the new
Berlin Brandenburg airport.

After a lot (more than 15 years!) of planning they began building in 2006.

By 2011 October, it was ready or so they thought. In 2011 November they
actually ran trials with some 12 000 people.

8 May 2012 it was announced due to the failure of the fire protection system
the opening is postponed. In a 2016 audit, they concluded the airport was at
less than 60% readiness in reality at 2012 May.

Right now the opening is perhaps late 2020 or even 2021...

We are getting to the point where the 2016 audit should've concluded it is
better to tear it down and build a new one.

------
arnon
Anyone who's ever tried to set up a booth at a trade-show will know exactly
what this is like.

$900 for renting a TV for 3 days + $450 fee for installing the bracket + $180
for placing a power-strip at your booth.

You're billed $90 for every hour of work, billed at 30m increments.

Order of business:

1\. Person comes to look at where you want the TV. Billed $45.

2\. Person comes to drop by an extension cord, $45.

3\. Person comes to plug the extension cord in, but sees you're not ready to
have the TV mounted yet, $45.

4\. Lunch break

5\. Person comes to hook up the extension cord, $45.

Total bill: $180, for something a kindergartner can do (literally connecting a
power cord to the socket that's already in the floor)

~~~
ianlevesque
So what happens if you just plug it in yourself?

~~~
arnon
One neighbouring booth had a 'forklift malfunction', in which a forklift
'accidentally' destroyed their booth.

In other cases, they just kick your company out.

Oh, and you can't bring anything in during setup, if it can't be carried under
your arm. Seriously. For "safety reasons".

~~~
omegaworks
They probably got sued by a hapless white collar lawyer that spilled his
Starbucks and got shocked when he tripped over a power cable laid by someone
that didn't care that the cord was over the main walking path.

------
narrator
In the U.S, public transportation has the same problem as healthcare. That
problem is that spending more money on it won't make it better since the costs
are already many times higher than any other country. However, there is always
a demand that to get better public transportation and healthcare we must
continue to raise taxes. Finding out what is so expensive and fixing that
never occurs to anybody, probably because it's some well connected person's
cash cow.

~~~
Spooky23
We need to have a meaningfully competitive electoral system.

I live in New York, although not in NYC. I call elections “affirmations”, as
there are never meaningfully contested general elections, and probably a
meaningfully contested primary about 1/3 of the time. All of the bigger
offices (mayor, county exec, Congress) attract enough money that the incumbent
can find an African American or other bloc voter candidate to run on a third
party line and split the opposition vote. State legislative offices are only
involuntarily vacated by death or felony conviction.

It’s difficult to envision a brighter future as the national GOP platform is
so poisonous.

~~~
azernik
This is why I'm so happy about the California top-two primaries - they've
created competitive elections in a dominant-party state. But they were only
created through a ballot initiative over the objections of the legislature.

~~~
chimeracoder
> This is why I'm so happy about the California top-two primaries - they've
> created competitive elections in a dominant-party state.

Have they really? It seems more like they've pulled candidates towards the
center slightly and relegated third parties to the sidelines even more.

When the initiative was passed, third parties opposed it because they said it
would make it more difficult for them to run competitive or even influential
(but unsuccessful) campaigns.

For statewide races, the jungle primary approach seems to come down to which
two Democrats attract enough votes away from other parties (and other
Democrats) in order to make it to the final two.

~~~
nshelly
A 40-year incumbent in Fremont actually lost to a younger candidate who seemed
less controversial. In a primary, the younger / newer candidate may not have
won due to lower turnout. Of course, the incumbent was 5th in seniority in the
435-member House, so California is hurt in that way due to House rules, which
perversely, favor long-rooted incumbency and states with strong
gerrymandering.

[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-
politics/2012/11/...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-
politics/2012/11/pete-stark-defeated.html)

------
vman81
"Construction companies, which have given millions of dollars in campaign
donations in recent years, have increased their projected costs by up to 50
percent when bidding for work from the M.T.A., contractors say."

That's because you've legalized bribery. Your political system rewards
corruption. Every actor in the described mess is (re)acting rationally. Is
this somehow a surprise?

~~~
chimeracoder
> That's because you've legalized bribery. Your political system rewards
> corruption. Every actor in the described mess is (re)acting rationally. Is
> this somehow a surprise?

Ugh, please stop saying this. Bribery is not legal in the US. We literally
just tried a sitting US senator for corruption including bribery, and we just
convicted the former Speaker of the New York State Assembly for corruption,
including bribery and kickbacks. It's very much not legal.

New York politics is an outlier - in fact, New York has literally _the most
corrupt government in the country_. The problem isn't that it's legal (it's
not legal); the problem is that New York has such a wide and extensive network
of corruption (as this article shows) that it's damn-near impossible to
actually address any of it.

~~~
reustle
But campaign donations by corporate interests and lobbying _are_ essentially
legal bribery.

~~~
chimeracoder
> But campaign donations by corporate interests and lobbying _are_ essentially
> legal bribery.

Campaign contributions and lobbying are not at all the same thing.

First, "Corporate interests" are prohibited from making campaign
contributions.

Secondly, lobbying is simply the process of petitioning elected officials to
persuade them to advocate your causes. That's not unique to the US; every
democracy has a mechanism for that process.

------
electic
> The labor deals negotiated between the unions and construction companies
> also ensure that workers are well paid. The agreement for Local 147, the
> union for the famed “sandhogs” who dig the tunnels, includes a pay rate for
> most members of $111 per hour in salary and benefits. The pay doubles for
> overtime or Sunday work, which is common in transit construction. Weekend
> overtime pays quadruple — more than $400 per hour.

The article correctly identifies the number of people are working on a job is
about 4x the normal rate when compared to Asia and Europe. However, when you
take the hourly pay rate you quickly see it for what it is. This is fraud.

~~~
chimeracoder
It's even worse than that:

> The critics pointed to several unusual provisions in the labor agreements.
> One part of Local 147’s deal entitles the union to $450,000 for each tunnel-
> boring machine used. That is to make up for job losses from “technological
> advancement,” even though equipment has been standard for decades

They literally have to pay the union $450,000 for using machines that have
been standard around the world for fifty years.

~~~
Robotbeat
...and people scoff at Elon Musk for saying he can significantly reduce the
cost of tunneling in the US...

~~~
chimeracoder
> ...and people scoff at Elon Musk for saying he can significantly reduce the
> cost of tunneling in the US...

Nobody scoffs at Elon Musk for suggesting he could reduce the cost of
tunneling in the US. It's not like it's a mystery _why_ tunneling is so
expensive. They scoff at the suggestion that he's somehow unique or
exceptional for making that claim.

~~~
Robotbeat
Then their problem is with the press, not Elon Musk.

------
spikels
This is what is killing US public transit. Most things are reasonably priced
in the US by global standards. Why are our public works projects always so
ridiculously expensive? It has to be some structural or cultural difference.

~~~
mc32
I'm not an expert, but it seems the mix of unions, politicians, kickbacks,
corruption, favoritism, etc., leads itself to abuse.

Maybe, maybe if we just used something similar to the Army Corps of Engineers
to handle all major infra construction in the US, keeping local politicians
out of the fiscal and contractual aspects, then maybe we could get what we pay
for. In the meantime, it seems like a bunch of backscratching and pocket
stuffing --I mean, someone's making money.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Is the military somehow more efficient?

~~~
mc32
While it's part of the military, organizationally speaking, they are composed
of both military and civilian staff.

They have the expertise in engineering, construction, management and
budgeting.

And, since these sorts of projects don't happen often in a given place, but do
happen periodically around the country, the expertise gained can be leveraged
for other similar projects rather than have the MTA and other Transit orgs
reinvent the wheel.

While there may be some pork in there, it's be much less than you'd find when
you get local politicians and state politicians all trying to get something
out of it [I'll vote for your subway, if you vote for my bridge and don't
raise hell about hiring my son in law's firm, etc.]

------
bob_theslob646
Reading this makes me want to throw up. How these people are not in jail is
beyond me.

First Wall Street and now the MTA.

My dad would always say this expression to describe the difference between a
criminal on Wall Street and in construction. The only difference is a suit.

~~~
chimeracoder
> My dad would always say this expression to describe the difference between a
> criminal on Wall Street and in construction. The only difference is a suit.

Also, the construction worker or MTA worker is probably making more money and
working fewer hours.

For those who don't believe me, read the article - or even look up the
salaries online, since they're often public. This is not even an exaggeration.

------
djsumdog
Waste and corruption in a public good as vital as rail transport is truly sad.
It happens everywhere though. In Melbourne, contracts for their new ticketing
system were given to a totally unqualified company and ran several hundred
million over budget. Rather than just eat the cost, the corrupt city officials
have doubled down by wasting more money of worthless ticket inspectors to
attempt to recover some of the costs from fare evaders.

[https://sites.google.com/site/cheaperthanmyki/home](https://sites.google.com/site/cheaperthanmyki/home)

~~~
boulos
Having just visited Melbourne, I truly hated being forced into paying $7 (AUD)
for the privilege of getting a myki card to make a $4.10 trip each way (so
$8.20). There is no longer any way to buy paper tickets, and unlike San
Francisco which can print out reasonable RF-enabled single ride tickets for
MUNI, everyone took it as obvious that $7 AUD was simply the cost of doing
business. Thanks for the backstory on myki!

~~~
ClassyJacket
Melbourne had a disposable ticket system in place for Myki - the tickets had
already been made[1]. The Liberal government threw them out, wasting 15
million dollars in the process. And probably more on the equipment to dispense
them.

This is the same party that on a federal level threw out the nationwide fibre
to the premises project, wasting 50 billion dollars on installing new DSL
connections instead. I am actually being serious, they will be installing new
DSL at a cost of 2400$ per premises until at least 2020.

[1] [http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/15m-myki-cards-set-to-
be-p...](http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/15m-myki-cards-set-to-be-
pulped-20110904-1jsf3.html)

------
mschuster91
> First, the contractors said, the vendors add between 15 and 25 percent as an
> “M.T.A. Factor” because of how hard it can be to work within the bureaucracy
> of the transit authority. Then they add 10 percent as a contingency for
> possible changes. And then they add another 10-12 percent on top of all that
> for profit and overhead.

There is the core problem. Extreme horrid bureaucracy in the MTA (or any
public sector), combined with the change stuff - it's not unusual for decades-
long projects to have politicians demand changes, new regulations (fire
protection!), court orders (environmental protection) or the discovery of
historic sites leading to, sometimes expensive, change requests.

If I were a contractor, of course I'd calculate with this risk in mind. I'd
run bankrupt if not.

> insisting on extravagant station designs

And yet another problem: public projects don't like doing stuff with
"standardized solutions". It always ends up with specific weird customizations
- designed to e.g. force the project to buy parts from a specific vendor in
the home region of the politicians (hello NASA, Airbus), or to prevent
political undesirables from getting the contracts.

In addition, with public-sector works there is often a lack of competent in
house oversight and planning - and a lack of preventing any small politician
to cause change requests in the first place.

------
AznHisoka
Sometimes I wonder why the heck I should live in NYC and pay so much in state
and city taxes.. and then I can’t even deduct them starting in 2018... But
then i get depressed so I try not to think of it too much.

~~~
ajmurmann
I'm sure getting more negative about living in NYC was exactly one of the
things that the authors of the tax bill aimed for.

~~~
bmelton
Meanwhile, progressive-leaning organizations have been pushing for the
elimination of SALT deductions for years, on the logic that it primarily
benefits the wealthy residents in high tax states.

The Center for American Progress was urging the Obama administration to
eliminate those tax deductions[1]. Politifact fact-checked a Pelosi claim, and
came to the same conclusion, that the SALT deudction "is a tax deduction that
disproportionately benefits higher-income taxpayers[2]". Only 10% of filers
earning under $50k a year even bother claiming the deduction[3][4].

[1] -
[https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/general/news/2011/02...](https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/general/news/2011/02/02/9070/tax-
expenditure-of-the-week-state-and-local-tax-deduction/)

[2] - [http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2017/oct/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2017/oct/20/nancy-pelosi/do-moderate-income-families-benefit-
more-state-and/)

[3] - [https://www.urban.org/research/publication/repeal-state-
and-...](https://www.urban.org/research/publication/repeal-state-and-local-
tax-deduction)

[4] - [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/12/20/the-only-
go...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/12/20/the-only-good-thing-
about-the-tax-bill/)

~~~
ajmurmann
"wealthy residents in high tax states"

This to me is one of the biggest problems talking about taxation and wealth in
the US. $50k is nothing you can really live off in most (by population) parts
of California. $100k would make you well-off elsewhere but makes you poor in
the Bay Area. While I'm generally for some degree of wealth redistribution,
I'm afraid this will hit many people who aren't actually wealthy, but just
scraping by.

~~~
imbur
There is a large difference in the cost of living between areas like SF and
NYC and the average, but it is not nearly that high. The living wage for a
family of two adults, and two children, with one working, for San Francisco is
$72k according to
[http://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/06075](http://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/06075)
Chattanooga TN has the lowest of a major city at $47k in income for the same
size family. Over 50% of households in the bay area make less than $75k a
year. It is a hyperbole to say that $100k is poor even in the bay area

~~~
closeparen
Try and find just 2 real estate listings you think this family of 4 could live
in within an hour of SF.

Maybe if they got a rent controlled place 15 years ago.

------
lmm
> But the government worked closely with vendors, trying to build the type of
> collaborative relationships that are rare in New York.

This comes just a handful of paragraphs after:

> A Times analysis of the 25 M.T.A. agency presidents who have left over the
> past two decades found that at least 18 of them became consultants or went
> to work for authority contractors, including many who have worked on
> expansion projects.

> “Is it rigged? Yes,” said Charles G. Moerdler, who has served on the M.T.A.
> board since 2010. “I don’t think it’s corrupt. But I think people like doing
> business with people they know, and so a few companies get all the work, and
> they can charge whatever they want.”

So which is it? Is the MTA not close enough to the vendors, or too close?

~~~
lewis500
I think this is the most important part. It reveals one reason why things are
bad: uncompetitive bidding.

------
brohee
_Because most countries have nationalized health care, projects abroad do not
have to fund worker health insurance. That might explain a tenth of the cost
differences, contractors said._

That's a wrong analysis. Healthcare is funded of workers compensation in
countries with nationalized healthcare. The real issue is that Americans pay
much more for the same healthcare, but that only have repercussions on prices
when it's actually financed and not a burden on society.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Americans pay a huge percentage of GDP for relatively poor outcomes.

[http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-
briefs/20...](http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-
briefs/2015/oct/us-health-care-from-a-global-perspective)

So it’s not a wrong analysis. Helth care costs distort entire markets in the
US.

~~~
chimeracoder
> So it’s not a wrong analysis. Helth care costs distort entire markets in the
> US.

It's a completely wrong analysis. It's not even an analysis - it's just
quoting a talking point straight from the MTA justifying their high payroll.

And, as the article demonstrates, it's completely off-base. If you look at the
numbers from the article, it still doesn't add up, even assuming that every
employee is given the most generous healthcare plan available, the kind that
venture-backed Silicon Valley startups might give to their employees.

------
so33
The NYT article compares East Side Access and the Second Avenue Subway to the
Line 14 extension project in the Paris Metro:

>... while the Second Avenue Subway cost $2.5 billion a mile, the Line 14
extension is on track to cost $450 million a mile.

The costs for the SAS, over 5 times more per mile than the Line 14 extension,
are preposterous in this context.

~~~
RayVR
Why is the line 14 extension not comparable?

------
mnm1
There's simply no excuse for not tracking spending. With software, every $1
box of nails should be tracked. Everything else is fraud, that the NYC DA
seems to be willingly ignoring. Once again, no consequences for bad behavior.
Almost every single issue here boils down to no consequences for harmful
behavior or horrific consequences for normal behavior. It will be interesting
to see if we ever implement a justice system to fix these problems or just
keep pretending like whatever the fuck we're doing now is working.

~~~
briandear
The Manhattan DA is Cyrus Vance Jr., son of Jimmy Carter Secretary of State
Cyrus Vance. Jr has come under fire for refusing to prosecute Weinstein and
there is some evidence that his office received campaign donations from high
profile people he refused to prosecute.

Vance is about as old school “NY Democrat machine politics” as it gets. He’s
pretty much a modern Tamminy Hall. If he’s DA you will never see any
prosecutions for politically-connected corruption — at least not as long as
the campaign donations are rolling in. By the way, I am not implying that
Republicans are any better or worse — Vance is just in the dominant party of
NYC politics — the problem is the “machine” not the specific flavor of that
machine. If you are in New York, stop voting for Vance and other stuff like
him. There is a lot of talk about “resisting Trump,” but really I have yet to
see any equivalent outrage over the guys right in your neighborhood that are
essentially enabling theft and corruption. Most New Yorkers can spit fire over
Trump, but seem to be asleep when it comes to this ground level corruption.
Tip O’Neil once said “All politics is local,” — perhaps voters should act like
it and start holding local politicians’ feet to the fire. In a city packed
full of lawyers, Cyrus Vance is the best y’all could do? For sure national
politics matters, but the real bleeding happens on the street: on school
boards, the DA’s office, City Hall, in the boroughs.. NYC is a great city —
despite the politicians New Yorkers insist on re-electing.

~~~
thebiglebrewski
I'm pretty sure Vance ran unopposed in the latest election. I did not want to
vote for him.

------
cmurf
Lack of anti-fraud measures in the law as well as in the project contracts.
Where's the auditing and prosecution budget? There should be an independent
auditor making referrals for prosecution to an independent prosecutor. Th

 _$3.5 billion for each new mile of track_

At a certain point of a project, whether business or personal, you pull the
fucking plug. Done. Scrape it. Cut the loss. And that's what should be done
here. Fire everyone, fire the contractors, they don't like it, sue, the gravy
train has come to an end.

~~~
ubernostrum
It's worth pointing out that a situation like this is often the endgame of
anti-corruption rules.

It always starts simple: you put in a rule, say, that a contract can't be
awarded to a contractor who has some relationship to the person making the
decision. Then someone quite reasonably objects that a bureaucrat from a
different department might try to influence the decision-maker to award to
their friend for a kickback. So now you add a rule that there are multiple
entities, ideally adversarial, involved who all have to agree before the
contract gets awarded. Then you pile on yet more rules as people come up with
ever more creative ways to get around them.

And then one day you wake up and realize you have a literal maze of reports
and applications and audits and inspections and committees that all have to be
fulfilled for even the simplest project, and it's grown so complex that only a
couple of companies put in the (extreme) effort of figuring out how to
navigate it; everybody else has given up. Now those have a guaranteed lock on
future contracts, and no longer have any incentive to be honest or control
costs, since who else are you ever going to legally be able to give a contract
to? Plus, the system is so complex that even the people in charge of it don't
always know how to manage or enforce it. And then the costs start going up and
up and up...

~~~
thebiglebrewski
I guess I see what you're saying but...how about people are just reasonable
and not greedy? But I suppose that goes against basic human nature, or
something.

~~~
cmurf
Many cultures make this work, including Japan. They also have very involved,
ritualized, negotiations. I don't know whether the contracts are any longer,
or if they depend substantially on long standing norms.

What I see in America's big projects right now is a lot of selfish narcissism.
Greed stems from that. It's, "I am a whore, and you should go right ahead and
treat me like one because I'm gonna treat you like one." It's really
adversarial. There is no pride in anything other than making money.

Contrast with the big industrial boom period of the 20th century, when massive
public and private infrastructure was built, with really high taxes on the
high end - I think they took a lot of pride in their work, the fact that so
many people, a civil society, were going to use and benefit from using that
infra - and it was going to make everyone richer.

------
desertrider12
If the tunnels have a 20 ft diameter, that's $2100 per cubic foot of material
removed. Give me a jackhammer and shovel and I'll happily do it for 50% off.

------
noddy1
More and more I think that US/europe should adopt expat worker models. Having
a bunch of chinese companies bidding on this sort of work and then bringing
over ships full of temporary workers and equipment to do the job seems to make
sense. We outsourced manufacturing, now we need to outsource infrastructure
projects. It alleviates poverty in china, and ensures that our country doesn't
become a useless calcified relic.

------
ryan606
Stories like these are the reason that much of the public hates unions --
especially public sector unions and unions employed/contracted on public
sector projects. If public sector unions negotiated work rules and
compensation that were more in line with the private sector, I suspect that
their public image would benefit tremendously.

------
tankenmate
Unions have a necessary function; as a check and balance against corporate
power. But unions acting like this are just as bad as monopoly companies.
Anti-trust legislation or similar should be brought to bear here to break the
unions into smaller competing unions or place them under a consent decree.
Just like a monopoly company should be broken up or placed on a consent decree
(Google - search, Amazon - online shopping (although Amazon have yet to
seriously part take in rent seeking), Microsoft - desktop software) so should
abusive unions. Abuse of collective power; union, corporate, government should
be constrained and where reasonably possible pre-empted.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Anti-trust legislation or similar should be brought to bear here to break
> the unions into smaller competing unions or place them under a consent
> decree.

We can't. US law explicitly exempts unions from the monopsony and anti-trust
laws that would allow us to force them to compete with each other. Unions
successfully lobbied for that special protection decades ago, and now it'd be
very hard to reverse.

~~~
tankenmate
Doesn't mean we shouldn't try. I love unions, and I love companies too. One
represents the capital and the other the labour; both should be forced to
compete. But of course if a company tried to deal with only one union to force
the hands of the others then the one they dealt with would wound up being
broken up too. So problems wouldn't go away. And employees could chose the
union that represents their interests best; i.e. charges reasonable fees,
negotiates reasonable wages, etc.

------
cm2187
Can’t help thinking of the sopranos, where a few mobsters were “employed” on
construction sites.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r-ECvI5rD40](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r-ECvI5rD40)

------
kevin_thibedeau
> they were each being paid about $1,000 every day

How is this even possible?

~~~
bob_theslob646
You left off the most important piece. If your going to quote it, provide the
right context.

>The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the
platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to the
Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 jobs
that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors. Officials
could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there.

“Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything,” said
Michael Horodniceanu, who was then the head of construction at the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs transit in New York. The
workers were laid off, Mr. Horodniceanu said, but no one figured out how long
they had been employed. “All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000
every day.”

~~~
bassman9000
Thanks. That's $200k extra a day, 1m week, 4.5m month extra.

_no one figured out how long they had been employed_

Nice.

~~~
zeep
it would be cheaper to get universal income going

------
d13
“Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything,”...
“All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000 every day.”

Why didn't they just ask them?

------
turc1656
$1,000 a day?! $400 an hour for overtime on the weekend?! Holy shit, what a
corrupt scam machine. The politicians that signed off on these projects at
these costs after receiving generous donations should be flayed alive.

------
jgalt212
> Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M.
> Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground
> construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than
> elsewhere in the world, documents show.

The Left decries the death of the unions, but it's this kind of nonsense that
kept Obama from getting any sort of fiscal stimulus passed in the wake of
2008.

------
nkoren
My previous career was as a consultant for public transport infrastructure. I
was involved in consultations in roughly two dozen countries, depending on how
you count, including India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and other localities not
well-known for efficiency and innovation. Of these, however, public-sector
America was overwhelmingly the least efficient and least innovative.

(I'm American myself, but emigrated to the UK to find less crazy-making work
in this sector.)

This isn't just a New York problem, although the 2nd Avenue Subway is a really
excellent example. It's a problem everywhere in America. I feel like this
article does an excellent job of digging into some of the lower-level
symptoms, but only touches lightly on the root cause.

At its core, this is a product of not just a broken political system, but of
two broken political cultures. Rhetoric has polarised into "we need to spend
more money on the public good" (health care, infrastructure, etc.) vs. "we
need to spend less money on the public good" \-- Democrats and Republicans,
respectively. I say "rhetoric" because what either side _says_ has very little
bearing on what they actually _do_ , spending-wise, but nonetheless the
rhetoric is important because of what it excludes.

Missing from this dichotomy is: "we need to get smarter at spending money on
the public good" \-- independent of any argument about whether more or less
should be spent. One simply isn't allowed to make this statement: the "spend
more money" crowd reads such a statement as being fundamentally in opposition
to a funding increase, while the "spend less money" crowd takes umbrage
because of its implicit endorsement of spending money on the public good in
the first place. _Everybody_ hates the argument that spending can and should
be done more smartly. It has no real supporters.

But why not? Digging deeper, I submit that this _isn 't_ a broken system, but
one which is working precisely as intended. It boils down to campaign finance:
politicians need campaign funds to be re-elected, and unions and
planning/engineering/construction companies are both major campaign
contributors, on a bi-partisan basis (unions skewing Democratic of course, and
the companies mostly skewing Republican). If public funds were spent more
efficiently, _they would get less money_ , full stop. Therefore they don't
give campaign contributions to politicians who advocate such positions, and
therefore there are no such politicians.

So what we get is a system intended to redistribute money to major campaign
contributors. It is working exactly as intended. In infrastructure this
enriches both unions and corporates; in healthcare it enriches doctors, health
insurers, drug companies, medical device companies, and lawyers. _Those_ are
the stakeholders that the systems are designed to serve. Recipients of actual
transport / health care services are a tertiary concern at best.

This problem won't be fixed until those "stakeholders" are held to better
account, required to do more work for less money. And _that_ won't happen as
long as they are able to buy influence in the political system. Everywhere
else in the world, the kind of influence-buying that happens in America is
regarded as corruption and is highly criminalized; in America, corruption is
legal as long as it goes through the right channels, and this is the result.

So nothing will change without major campaign finance reform, and that seems
to be a very distant prospect.

------
seibelj
I’m not sure why the title was changed. “On Earth” is in the article’s
headline. Some sort of editorializing by HN staff, very strange.

~~~
dang
Taking redundancy and linkbait out of submission titles is standard here. "On
Earth" was redundant because where else would the subway track be? And it was
hyperbolic, therefore linkbait, which is presumably why they put it there to
begin with.

That's not editorializing because no particular interpretation is being
pushed; we're just being good Strunk-and-Whiters and omitting needless words.

~~~
jcranmer
> "On Earth" was redundant because where else would the subway track be?

Without qualifiers, given the provenance of its source material, one could
reasonably assume it to mean "in the US". Saying "on Earth" or "in the world"
would clarify that it's being compared against all other subway building
occurring, even (perhaps especially) against notoriously corrupt countries
with artificially high construction costs.

~~~
tomhoward
_...would clarify that it 's being compared against all other subway building
occurring_

Sure, but it's not that kind of article. The title is rhetorical, rather than
conveying a demonstrated fact.

The article isn't about some study that establishes with certainty that it is
actually the most expensive length of track, anywhere in the world, ever, in
real terms.

Sure it seems plausible given the facts conveyed in the article, but the world
is big and the history of rail is fairly long, and the article is not
describing an exhaustive comparison with every other railway ever built.

So it seems reasonable for dang to decide that the original title is a little
too baity for HN.

------
exikyut
> _An accountant discovered the discrepancy while reviewing the budget for new
> train platforms under Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan._

> _The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the
> platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to
> the Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700
> jobs that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors.
> Officials could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there._

> _“Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything,”
> said Michael Horodniceanu, who was then the head of construction at the
> Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs transit in New York. The
> workers were laid off, Mr. Horodniceanu said, but no one figured out how
> long they had been employed. “All we knew is they were each being paid about
> $1,000 every day.”_

People may disagree with the following view and downvote, but still...

Where can I read an account of what the accountant found and how they reached
their conclusions?

I can only trust/hope that the accountant had experience in construction
and/or could consult with trustworthy advisers.

But the two things that came to mind as I read these three paragraphs were
that

a) this is a puff piece written from the POV of "spending too much money" for
whatever agenda this spin would help

b) this is cost-cutting being re-spun to look good

Some balance:

I live close by to a brand new driverless underground metro network that's
being developed. I'm super excited to travel on the new trains when they
arrive. I even hope to work there at some point.

When I was poking around the websites at an early point in the construction
process, I found that one site's design/layout was clearly mobile-first to the
extent that it was mobile- _only_ and displayed Amusingly™ on a desktop PC; I
also found a bit of a headscratcher with another site's DNS setup that I
didn't know where to report; and when I poked around the bid platform that let
any contractor sign up to be recruited to be part of the construction, I
decided the whole system (bid platform and everything else) felt very very
rushed-through.

So I have no industry experience but I've had a very tiny whiff of what a
multi-billion project looks like on the ground as it's developing. Tons of
overhead, lots of space for little things to fall through, etc etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if what's happening here is really just most of the
same kinds of industrial-scale rounding errors.

But that makes it equally possible that what's reported really is
unambiguously what happened, or that this is the uncomfortable norm and
there's some spin.

~~~
jcranmer
Taking the statement at face value, there were attempts to inquire what the
seemingly superfluous ~20% of the people were doing--that means 1 of every 5
of people is seemingly doing nothing. The only plausible permissible
explanation for people seemingly doing nothing I can think up is some sort of
hot standby/on call work, but that shouldn't account for so much.

It really does sound like featherbedding, especially giving that these people
are being paid ~$250k/yr to do nothing (skilled construction salaries you'd
expect to see more like $100-$150k/yr) [1]. With people being paid that much,
you'd really expect them to have good defense for why you're paying them to do
seemingly nothing, and that motivation should be strong even through multiple
levels of contractor/subcontractor relationships mid-audit.

[1] Source to validate these numbers:
[https://www.indeed.com/salaries/Construction-Worker-
Salaries...](https://www.indeed.com/salaries/Construction-Worker-
Salaries,-New-York-NY)

------
elango
There is a burst of NY times articles with annoying paid plans

------
annerajb
Hmm maybe this is what the boring company is trying to do. If they can use
their tech to tunnel the same distance at 90% less would truly redefine
transport.

~~~
alexhutcheson
A good response to the Boring Company plans:
[https://pedestrianobservations.com/2017/12/15/elon-musks-
ide...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2017/12/15/elon-musks-ideas-about-
transportation-are-boring/)

------
Animats
It's an inherently hard project that's costing way too much.

The East Side Access involves building another level of station underneath
Grand Central Station, without disrupting service. The tracks are 150 feet
below Park Avenue. They're working around skyscraper foundations, and adding
supports for buildings above. Look at some of the pictures on line.

~~~
tomarr
The article goes into this though, these challenges are something that
comparable international projects have faced in much worse ground conditions
(which extenuates the issue).

The magnitude of cost difference does not stem from engineering challenges.

~~~
martinald
Exactly. Crossrail in London had some insanely difficult challenges (like
threading a new subway tunnel between two existing ones with only a few cm of
distance between them), and hitting an enormous ancient Roman burial ground at
Liverpool Street.

Despite that (and many more) it is currently 6 months ahead of schedule.

There's a great documentary about the project called the fifteen billion pound
railway which covers a lot of these challenges.

~~~
spiralx
Don't forget that they did that bit of the tunnelling on a Monday morning,
there were some tense looking staff on the platform that morning :)

------
melling
“The estimated cost of the Long Island Rail Road project, known as “East Side
Access,” has ballooned to $12 billion, or nearly $3.5 billion for each new
mile of track — seven times the average elsewhere in the world.”

------
mojomark
More "fleecing of America" alarmist journalist bullshit. This type of ill-
informed journalism is largely what creates the red tape (i.e. extra layers of
unnecessary oversight, insane requirements, and irrational spending
restrictions) in government agencies that would otherwise be very lean.

I'm a government contractor and I see first hand every day (painfully) how
this type of reporting has resulted in the Governments inability to attract
and retain talent, as well as the loss of corporate knowledge. It's the same
irrational logic that prevents non-profit orgs from attracting/regaining
talent because people thinking that wvery dollar spent goes directly to those
in need without regard to the need to build an infrastructure to deliver
fund/aid.

I have no knowledge of New York subterranian transit, but at some point you
have to step back and ask yourself if the expenditure is worth it, simply
based on the value of the dollar. I think it is. This journalist apparently
doesn't, but seems to have all the answers, so I say fire the 200 'excessive'
workers, hire Todd Heisler (the journalist) and put him in charge of the
teamining 600 workers (and associated budget) to get the job done. Apparently
900 isn't good enough for Todd.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _you have to step back and ask yourself if the expenditure is worth it_

I don’t think our $4 billion train station that looks like a reptilian carcass
is worth it [1].

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/6/11168484/inside-the-
oculus...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/6/11168484/inside-the-oculus-new-
yorks-insane-looking-4-billion-train-station)

~~~
inferiorhuman
Sure beats the $2 billion bus station that San Francisco is building.

