
California bullet train contractors botched bridge project - gok
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-10/california-bullet-train-bridge-snafu
======
supernova87a
Sigh, well this is a generalization, but I think this is what happens when a
country gets out of practice with building big infrastructure things. They
have to learn the mistakes again because the capabilities and knowledge fade
across time and across the sparse workforce.

In China (put aside all the political issues at the moment), they were
building elevated track to the tune of something like a mile a day at the
peak. (On the order of that magnitude -- elevated! Not even just plain track
on bare earth)

What does that produce? A rail-building skilled workforce (10,000+ engineers)
that has lots of practice, expertise, and templates to stamp out that stuff
like it's their business. Here, we do this now, what, once per decade? Are
there even 1000 such engineers that US companies could muster together to work
on a project, not even to speak of the necessary contributing industries
supplying the specialized tooling, materials, expertise for such a project?

I realize the story in question here was about a road bridge, but still it
involves coordination and management with the rail component, and the point
still stands I think.

Industry-wide skills and personnel fade and atrophy when a country doesn't do
these things any more, or go overseas to where there are projects for them.
These generational shifts in capabilities happen, unfortunately, while a
country is not looking.

~~~
pbronez
I agree, although designing institutions for building doesn’t necessarily mean
they can maintain what they built.

For example, in DC the subway system (Metro) is run by the Washington Metro
Area Transit Authority (WMATA). In recent years they’ve had a pretty poor
safety and service record, which much hand wringing over how to fix the
system. There are some financial challenges, some corruption, a good helping
of standard union pathologies... but a lot of it is just that the system
stopped growing a couple decades ago.

To hear the elders tell it, WMATA really figured out how to build in the mid
twentieth century. As long as they were building stations and laying rail
regularly, the system worked pretty well!

But then they finished and stayed finished for 20-30 years. Maintenance was
under-funded. Power structures calcified, public accountability weakened,
constituents took the system for granted.

When they tried to start building again, it was HARD. New stations have
structural problems. Contractors fail to deliver. Corruption hits the papers.

And the safety and service levels stay low. They shut down for maintenance
sprints that never seem to pay off... and then the pandemic shows up. So now
ridership is way down, and the finances look worse, but at least they have
more time to repair things..

I dunno where Metro goes next, TBH. I just wish it was efficient, reliable,
safe and ubiquitous. Building institutions like that is hard.

~~~
blaser-waffle
> So now ridership is way down, and the finances look worse, but at least they
> have more time to repair things..

A boon! Finally the Red Line can get fixed.

> I dunno where Metro goes next, TBH. I just wish it was efficient, reliable,
> safe and ubiquitous. Building institutions like that is hard.

It is safe, efficient, and ubiquitous. Outside of the public transit systems
that I used in Australia (esp. Melbourne and Adelaide), there are few systems
that compare to the DC Metro. I'm from Fairfax and used to ride it into the
city all the time, and when I was stationed at Bethesda I would ride it across
the city to see my folks on the other side of the river. It ain't Tokyo, but
it's pretty good.

------
jrockway
> The company declined to answer a series of written questions or to make a
> statement.

Clearly this is because they're being sued, and they want to minimize their
losses. Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we just said "that
sucks" and required a full postmortem instead -- no legal liability, just a
thorough public review that everyone could read and learn from. We see this in
other fields, like aviation; the NTSB investigates and publishes their finding
of facts. The field learns from the mistakes, and as a result it's incredibly
safe. (Even if you account for random chance, like MH370 or the whole 787MAX
debacle, we're still doing better than we were 10 years ago.)

Instead we just keep making the same mistakes again and again. Everyone pretty
much expects to get on a plane and arrive at their destination alive. Everyone
also expects their megaproject to be delayed and be finished over budget. When
are we going to fix this?

~~~
thomasedwards
> Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we just said "that sucks"
> and required a full postmortem instead.

This is how BAA built Heathrow Terminal 5. They took on all risk and just
dealt with each problem as they came up:
[https://www.christianwolmar.co.uk/2005/04/project-
management...](https://www.christianwolmar.co.uk/2005/04/project-management-
at-heathrow-terminal-5/)

~~~
arethuza
Didn't they have a disastrous opening day for Terminal 5 because of mistakes
that looked like poor project management?

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7322453.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7322453.stm)

~~~
xhedley
BA British Airways had a bad go live day for Terminal 5 because of parking
assignment, baggage handlers having trouble logging onto the system, other
staff not having maps, delays in getting staff through security and so on.
That’s bad change management from the airline BA.

The article was about BAA ( British Airports Authority originally) building
the physical terminal building with a roof and ceilings and power and
networks. Different organisation and set of project managers.

~~~
arethuza
Ah good point - my mistake.

Still shows that public memory of projects which go well in one area can be
effected when someone else screws up.

Not that this would every happen in software projects.... ;-)

------
pech0rin
How much the US botches large scale infrastructure projects is mind blowing.
What is the purpose of having 5 different layers of agencies etc? Just to
cover liability? Is there no company in the US that can build a high speed
rail? And if so why not hire a Japanese or Chinese company that is obviously
proficient at building these types of rail systems?

~~~
bleepblorp
The Pedestrian Observations blog[0] has a lot of thoughts on this. The content
is too long to go into here in depth.

However, the TLDR is that the US (and, to an extent, the rest of the
neoliberal world) botches transit and rail transport projects because
government agencies lack the in-house capacity for effective management and
rely too much on outside consultants whose interests are poorly aligned with
those of taxpayers.

Bringing in outside firms to do turnkey rail solutions does not have a good
history, generally because non-local prime contractors want to do things the
way they do in their home countries, which often isn't economical, or even
possible, elsewhere. Bring in a Japanese, Chinese, or European high-speed rail
prime contractor and they'll want to build a system using parts that aren't
widely available in the US (think metric vs. imperial fasteners and go way up
from there), which will make construction and maintenance very expensive.

[0] [https://pedestrianobservations.com](https://pedestrianobservations.com)
(this is not my blog)

~~~
M2Ys4U
The Metrolink in Manchester,[0] the UK's largest tram network, is a good
counter-example.

The expansion of the network been consistently well delivered over the last
~decade.

The Airport Line opened a _year_ ahead of schedule,[1] the Trafford Park line
eight months ahead of schedule,[2] and the Second City Crossing was only a
year behind it's aspirational opening date because of the discovery of a crypt
buried under where a new station was being built.[3]

I think this is mainly because there has been a pipeline of new projects
enabling both the contractors and TfGM to retain skilled engineering and
project management staff.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Metrolink](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Metrolink)

[1] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
manchester-29879147](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
manchester-29879147)

[2] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
manchester-51801265](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
manchester-51801265)

[3] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
manchester-30779807](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
manchester-30779807)

------
jaclaz
At face value, the corrosion makes no sense whatsoever.

This is central California, there is no way an un-grouted steel cable can
develop such a serious corrosion issue and in such a short time.

If it was some place with acid rains, exposed to the sea, etc, that would take
tens of years, AND it would have needed traffic on the bridge, possibly above
the theoretical allowance.

Disclaimer: I have been site manager in the construction of several pre- and
post- tensioned reinforced concrete bridges, I have dealt with this stuff for
years, but of course I know nothing of the specific project and/or exact type
of cables used in it.

------
mschuster91
> The California High-Speed Rail Authority has long wrestled with its
> dependence on consultants and outside experts, with a 2018 state audit
> faulting the agency for being overly reliant on these private interests.

So it's the same problem that plagues government and megacorp IT and
construction worldwide: they depend on external entities for oversight, QA and
controlling of the vendors instead of having the appropriate knowledge and
staff in-house.

That's what happens when public sector employees get gutted to "save costs".
The politicians who decided this decades ago are no longer there and cannot be
held accountable for the consequences, and we are stuck with the fallout.

~~~
dmix
I’m a relatively pro-market person and even I admit public-private ventures
are almost always worse than purely public or purely private. It always seems
to combine the worst features of both.

You don’t have ‘real’ private firms doing work, you end up with these
professional gov contractor companies (who focus entirely on gov projects)
which act like half baked gov agencies themselves with none of the public
oversight/responsibility to tax payers and government agencies acting like
profit seeking entities with no competition and bottom feeding talent
pools/lowest price contracts (which almost always ends up being flakey
organizations mentioned earlier who are entirely designed to get gov contracts
as mentioned earlier).

Beyond that, the inherent structure of using a patchwork of consultancies with
broken responsibility chains and corrupted incentive structures also kills
many over-capitalized tech startups too. It’s a poor way to build any
business.

Much like Apple the only things that should be outsourced are manageable
isolated pieces, not core parts of the project.

You also can see why people are pro-gutting public agencies when these
disasters are all they can produce - while at the same time there are certain
areas private firms won’t naturally account for. The whole thing needs a
rethinking.

~~~
mschuster91
> I’m a relatively pro-market person and even I admit public-private ventures
> are almost always worse than purely public or purely private.

With public infrastructure projects like roads and railways, why should one go
for a purely private infrastructure? The only reason for this is if corrupt
politicians want kickbacks from rent seekers (for example like the private
prison which paid off a judge).

> Much like Apple the only things that should be outsourced are manageable
> isolated pieces, not core parts of the project.

Actually Apple proves that you can outsource the core part (manufacturing) -
provided you have the in house staff for management and oversight of the
project. The only lapse in quality stemming from a lack of oversight is the
NVIDIA GPU debacle back a decade ago, but to be fair: that one bit the whole
industry.

> You also can see why people are pro-gutting public agencies when these
> disasters are all they can produce - while at the same time there are
> certain areas private firms won’t naturally account for.

The reason for people (in practice: Republicans) wanting to gut and then
privatize public agencies is, as I wrote above, corruption. Demolish the
funding during the last days of a Republican presidency, have it take effect
during the Democrat term, then campaign with "we should privatize XYZ, it
doesn't work", win the vote, privatize XYZ, get kickbacks / "donations".

An old, tried and tested playbook, and for what it's worth not even US-
specific - our German Conservative party is a real expert at that, too...

~~~
dmix
I never proposed public infrastructure should be private only. I’m suggesting
both are solutions for different problems. Just not mixed together besides
small exceptions.

I’m fine with tax money going entirely to public run firms. I just may
disagree on what areas the government should be getting involved in - which is
most things outside of a few obvious like public infrastructure, healthcare
insurance, law enforcement/justice system, etc where private incentive
structures, real competition (see the phoney US health insurance
‘competition’), and where other functions of markets don’t exist or will
practically excel.

------
jeffbee
The bridge is for cars. The rail authority really should not build it. They
should budget for it and block-grant the money to a local authority who can
then take responsibility for building it. That way the LA Times can write a
scathing article about how Caltrans went over budget, except they would never
do that because they never have done that, even when the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge
went 800% over budget.

When you look at the budget of this project, a lot of the cost and complexity
is due to accommodating cars and drivers. The rail authority really needs
better strategic PR so the public begins to understand what's being spent on
what.

~~~
coderintherye
Uh except they did: [https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bay-bridge-
spri...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bay-bridge-springs-
hundreds-of-leaks-20140210-story.html)

and again: [https://www.latimes.com/local/la-xpm-2014-jan-24-la-me-
bay-b...](https://www.latimes.com/local/la-xpm-2014-jan-24-la-me-bay-
bridge-20140126-story.html)

and again: [https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bay-bridge-
repo...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bay-bridge-
reports-20140731-story.html)

and again: [https://www.latimes.com/local/la-xpm-2013-jul-08-la-me-
bay-b...](https://www.latimes.com/local/la-xpm-2013-jul-08-la-me-bay-bridge-
delay-20130709-story.html)

and again: [https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bay-bridge-
repo...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bay-bridge-
report-20140123-story.html)

and again: [https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-bay-bridge-
troll-2013090...](https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-bay-bridge-
troll-20130901-story.html)

~~~
gok
And even if they didn't...why would an LA paper be writing about SFBA much
anyway?

------
tr33house
As someone who studied civil engineering but then turned to computer science,
I'm surprised the bridge wasn't designed to fail more gracefully. Designing
how structures failed was emphasized over and over again in my classes.
Unfortunately, I'm also reminded of some of the reasons why I left the field:
takes forever to do anything and getting any new major projects is more
politicking than anything else, nowadays.

------
supernova87a
I was a big supporter of CA high speed rail until the mismanagement situation
became clear, and the costs became apparent that the value for money was not
materializing for this project.

In the beginning, when I tried a back of the envelope calculation that the
distances were just beyond economical for high speed rail systems (versus air
travel), I was willing to support it. However, the gradual resistance to
acquiring the right of way cheaply, and the financial mismanagement (along
with engineering mismanagement) caused me to lose faith in the CAHSR
leadership capabilities. And now honestly, I think the money would be much
more efficiently spent to solve some of our other many traffic/transportation
problems.

One of the worst times that convinced me the management was not being honest
(with themselves even) was when the linked reporter's story came out about the
geotechnical problems about crossing the Tehachapi/San Gabriel range, and how
this major (really major!) problem had not been solved yet. The CAHSR CEO kept
on going on about how they'd saved $1B or something on the current Central
Valley construction costs -- as if saving a few pennies on the cost of a bolt
on the Space Shuttle they didn't know how to design the rest of, was a great
achievement.

Anyway, this is all wrapped up in the larger story of how major projects in
the US simply cannot build things cheaply and efficiently any more. It's a big
problem for our infrastructure in general... We are getting 1/3 to 1/2 of what
we could build (or maintain properly) because it's so expensive to do this
now.

------
AlexTWithBeard
Say the governor finally appoints a chief engineer who manages to drive the
project to completion - by working 18 hours a day, ignoring his (or her?)
family and ruining his health.

What's in it for him?

Recognition? Nope. He'll be blamed in problems with minorities, unions, views
from someone's mansion and for all other deadly sins somehow related to the
construction. A railroad built on time and within the budget? Come on, folks,
it's just his job!

Money? Nope. Government jobs don't pay that well.

Interesting engineering project? Again, nope. It will be a political fight, PR
project, bookkeeping exercise, endless lawsuits - whatever, but not the
engineering project.

Why bother?

------
brnt
Merced to Bakersfield? Can someone explain why a HSR project is between
nowhere and nowhere? Or will the train be on regular tracks the rest of the
way? (LA<>SF I presume.)

~~~
DoreenMichele
My recollection: LA to SF is the long term goal.

I'm guessing it's easier to start in that area and it's not "nowhere."

Merced is north of Fresno which is a larger city than many states have at all.
It has a half a million people and an international airport.

Bakersfield is also a fairly large city. They are only small by California
standards. In most states, either of them would be the biggest or one of the
biggest cities in the state.

~~~
shajznnckfke
But you wouldn’t spend tens of billions of dollars to connect cities of that
size in other states. I don’t think the plan would have been approved by voted
if they expected the project would stop there.

~~~
DoreenMichele
It's incredibly expensive and challenging to put rail routes through dense
urban areas.

I actually did a fair amount of research on rail stuff when I was a college
student hoping to become an urban planner. I wrote an alternate rail plan for
Solano County, California as a student.* So I'm not just talking out my ass
here.

No did I suggest that they would have created high speed rail just for that
area if it weren't intended to then go on to SF and LA.

But when I was homeless in Fresno, I was already reading articles about the
project and I think they were already doing some of the work at that point. So
I've actually read a reasonable number of articles about this project as well.

I think it makes sense to do the middle section first. Work out some of the
bugs in a relatively low cost leg of the project and then try to connect it to
the more dense parts of the state after the "easy" section of track is
successfully up and running. It's a test drive for the project to prove the
concept and make it more feasible to complete the more challenging sections,
basically.

* [https://solanorail.blogspot.com/](https://solanorail.blogspot.com/)

~~~
Gibbon1
Thing that a lot of people here don't realize because of course they don't
read any of the actual planning documents. Just articles someone at the LA
times is getting kickbacks to write. Some of the extra cost of the middle
segment is for grade separation projects for the existing freight rail lines.
Which is why it runs next to the frieght rail lines. The new overpasses cross
both the fright rail line and the high speed rail line. Two birds one stone.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Thank you for that. I wasn't aware of that. I haven't kept up with the details
since leaving California.

~~~
Gibbon1
When you roll it over the rail lines are on the east side of the central
valley is because that's where the farming is because there is water. The west
side being in a rain shadow. So that's also where all the popultion is as
well.

You could make an argument that the big mistake was running I5 along the west
side of the valley instead of just improving HW99. A tell is 70 years after
they built it there is still dick all nothing between Sacramento and LA.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I'm not really sure I understand anything you are saying.

Fresno only gets 11 inches of rain a year and there's a lot of farming around
there. Fresno County also has an amazingly rich history of water development,
both technologically and in terms of hashing out state laws for water rights.

California uses two different and competing standards with different
historical roots. They use both the standard of "first come, first served" and
also the idea that you can't just completely screw people over down river.

Most water in California is shipped in. Fresno County has more water security
than most parts of the state and its rich history of water development means
that in some years, it is actually raising the local water level while most of
the US is draining underground aquifers that will never recover from it,
resulting in land subsidence.

I considered remaining in Fresno permanently if only because of climate change
and the expectation that water is what future wars will be fought over. Fresno
has better water security than most of the state, and not due to rain.

It's also like closing in on 3am here and maybe I should shut up and get off
the internet. (shrug)

Edit: Some old comment by me about books I have read about water in Cali that
anyone into water in Cali might enjoy:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19782650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19782650)

------
anamax
Why shouldn't they botch the bridge? The folks who did the financial
projections botched those. (The projected ridership times the promised fare
was never enough to pay the bonds. Since it will cost money to run and
maintain...) Other than getting the bonds approved, what has worked?

It's not about the train and never was.

------
mensetmanusman
You have to assume a 10% mistake rate in all large projects.

------
monadic2
Ultimately the us government and states cannot be trusted with basic
infrastructure.

------
Cyberdog
The last election I voted in was in 2008, voting in California against this
stupid boondoggle-in-the-making. At the time, I lived in the northern third of
the state which won't even share a line of latitude with a roadmapped high-
speed rail line, but I knew my taxes would have to pay and pay and pay for
this anyway. But I've since been fortunate to move out of the state so now I
get to witness the predictable from afar.

I know we are all in love with the idea of high speed rail. I've been to Japan
and have ridden the shinkansen alongside Mt Fuji (which is even larger in real
life than it looks in pictures), so I definitely get the appeal. But I have
zero faith in any state agency to be able to do it sensibly. Get private
investors to do it. They will do it affordably, financially sustainably, and
safely, and they won't steal money from all the citizens of the state to build
something which won't be of use to many of them.

~~~
apexalpha
>Get private investors to do it. They will do it affordably, financially
sustainably, and safely, and they won't steal money from all the citizens of
the state to build something which won't be of use to many of them.

This is such a weird position to hold. Are Japanese high speed trains build by
private investors? Are American interstate highways?

Highways are build by the government because they are enablers of society.
They don't need to make a profit themselves, they lift society as a whole.

Similar with high speed train. It's infrastructure, not an investment
portfolio.

~~~
Cyberdog
> Are Japanese high speed trains build by private investors?

Early shinkansen lines were built by Japanese National Railways, a state-owned
enterprise; currently they are operated by Japan Railways Group, a private
company. Certainly there is still a lot of government integration/interference
with their operation, but JR won't, for example, build a shinkansen line which
they know will never be able to pay for itself. At any rate there is much less
of an expectation that large infrastructure projects will be over schedule and
over budget and that's just the way things are.

> Are American interstate highways?

Of course not, and that's why highways are prone to the exact same schedule
and budget overruns.

> Highways are build by the government because they are enablers of society.

Society can operate just fine without government.

~~~
mjburgess
You realise that the failure of these "government projects" is routinely down
to their hiring private companies to manage and execute them?

These _arent_ "government projects". They are private projects paid for by the
tax payer.

They fail precisely because of attitudes of this kind: private companies
interests are not aligned with taxpayers; and people like you have led to an
exodus of talent and skill from governments.

The 90s in the UK saw massive amounts of contracting out of IT, and huge
amounts of wasted money as private companies rinsed the state. Since 2010s the
gov has been dramatically expanding its high-talent IT capability, and
routinely delivering best-in-class IT systems.

The hollowing out of the state is what causes projects of this kind to fail.
The people "stealing taxpayer money" _are_ the private interests.

~~~
presentation
Eh I don’t totally buy that. While in theory it would be nice if trains and
the like were a purely public good, every transit agency in the USA has
consistently failed to deliver.

Most of the Asian train systems aside from the Chinese ones - Hong Kong MTR,
the privatized Japanese lines and so on - tend to be private companies which,
unlike the US systems, derive their profits not from the train lines
themselves but buy building giant shopping/apartment/office complexes on top
of stations, which makes a ton of sense - people ride a train to go some
where, so make the train stations be the places they want to go to, and you
will be heavily incentivized to make your trains very efficient at moving
people.

The Japanese system under JR originally was a national one but it ultimately
got a lot more efficient after privatization, not before.

I think that the incentive structures in the US are super messed up, and while
it may be possible for the government to operate systems effectively I don’t
see a politically viable way to unravel those messed up incentives.

