
Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much - mtviewdave
http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-infrastructure-costs-so-much
======
bradleyjg
I don't have any love for NYC construction unions and their ridiculous work
rules, but the fact that France -- France! where strikes shutting down the
whole country is a national pastime -- does better means that can't be the
number one answer. Similarly we can rule out corruption because even Chicago
is a piker compared to Shanghai. I think both unions and corruption play a
part but not of the first rank.

The first candidate I'd propose for the top slot is diffusion of
responsibility stemming from a US obsession with localism. An MTA project
might well be paid for by: the federal government, NY state, NYC, and bonds to
be paid back by a dedicated tax in 10 downstate counties. There are
contracting rules imposed by each of those sources. And it is administered by
the MTA board, a monstrosity with appointments from eight different sources.
The buck stops nowhere.

The second candidate is, paradoxically, the progressive era procurement rules
designed to rein in corruption. They leave too little discretion. In a two
sided competitive game, if one side is hampered in by slow changing inflexible
rules the other side is going to dominate. That's exactly what happens.
Government contractors play the system like a fiddle and there's little the
government negotiators even when they are supremely competent and diligent can
do about it.

~~~
humanrebar
> The first candidate I'd propose for the top slot is diffusion of
> responsibility stemming from a US obsession with localism

If it were _only_ localism, there would be localities that were fantastic at
investing in their own infrastructure. Responsibilities, even funding local
schools, have been nationalizing slowly over the years without an explicit
change in the U.S. Constitution. So the national government has to 'hack' the
system with grants and taxes to indirectly get national policies enacted. It's
a corruption of the system to work around the Constitutional protection of
federalism.

One solution would be to amend the Constitution to make things like education
national policy once and for all. Another would be for the national government
to leave things like building roads and funding schools to the local
governments.

~~~
imglorp
The feds could also do some easy, central infrastructure things that would
reduce school and local govt funding needs in the first place. If the schools
or localities want to buy their own, great. Three examples:

1\. It seems every school uses a mishmash of Moodle, Schoology, and some
Sharepoint abortion. If the feds would spend around the cost of 3 or 4 F-35
helmets ($1.6M) they could build and offer a decent school site. You know,
homeworks, attendance. It could be the same software everywhere, even if you
changed schools. Teachers wouldn't need retraining and kids would have their
stuff follow them.

2\. Fund a decent central, unbiased curriculum with open source text books.
Kansas can suck an egg. Localities really _don't_ need their own curricula.
The 3 R's don't need to vary with district.

3\. Same as 1 but for local government operations software. Do they really all
need their own?

~~~
humanrebar
On paper that's interesting. I'm skeptical that the national government can do
that well, however. The rollout of the ACA websites makes it clear that the
government isn't good at producing that sort of product.

Furthermore, the premise of the article is that the government is very
inefficient. I'm not sure $1.6M is a fair estimate for the cost of this sort
of product. There are millions of teachers in the U.S. not to speak of
parents, administrators, and kids.

I'm open to providing incentives to make this sort of progress more feasible.
I'm partial to better support of open source software that meets these ends
(like tax deductions for time or cash contributions to OSS projects the
government uses).

~~~
thoth
>The rollout of the ACA websites makes it clear that the government isn't good
at producing that sort of product.

You mean that the private contractor hired to do the HealthCare.gov website,
CGI Federal, did a lousy job?

~~~
caseysoftware
Most of the things the government "produces" are not produced by the
government. They're sent out for bidding by private companies - roads, guns,
websites, whatever - and the government is in charge of oversight.

And the fact that they've been proven incapable at oversight and management
should figure into the planning.

~~~
emodendroket
But what makes you so sure the government wouldn't do better taking it in-
house? And even if we throw out that possibility, we're talking about
implementing off-the-shelf software here, no producing custom software.

~~~
caseysoftware
Great point! And since - as described - it's all open source, there doesn't
even need to be Federal oversight or management.

If the only thing standing between now and doing it is the will and tech
support, that's an easy problem to solve.

------
JumpCrisscross
We just had a novel crane/derrick start-up in New York shut down by the
reigning tower-crane union [1].

I also noticed, when I lived on West 49th Street, how street-paving frequency
( _e.g._ paving a road right before putting in a water main then re-paving it
right before installing Citi bikes then re-paving right before making a change
to the water main...) ticked up in election years.

[1]
[http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160515/REAL_ESTATE/16...](http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160515/REAL_ESTATE/160519910/why-
is-this-little-construction-crane-illegal-in-new-york-city)

~~~
stcredzero
_how street-paving frequency (e.g. paving a road right before putting in a
water main then re-paving it right before installing Citi bikes then re-paving
right before making a change to the water main...) ticked up in election
years_

Houston has the same problem. This is a form of corruption.

------
padobson
I find it worrisome that the author starts from a place of advocating
borrowing to support building more infrastructure. I was pleased, at least, to
see that he seemed to believe that infrastructure funds needed to be invested
prudently.

I don't have a lot of faith in the levels of governments to choose the right
projects. The infrastructure rot we're seeing right now seems to be a result
of the fact that economic growth is not what it was when everything was built
in the first place.

I think it's clear the stuff that was built in the 50s, 60s, and 70s was not
sustainable outside of 6% GDP growth, and what we need now is sustainable
infrastructure initiatives, rather than trying to bandaid the stuff we can't
afford anymore.

~~~
jessriedel
The benefits for the infrastructure accrue to citizens in the future, so its
sensible to borrow money (at the very low rates that the government can
obtain) and pay for the benefits as they are enjoyed. If the additional cost
of the interest makes the project not worthwhile, then this means the project
shouldn't be undertaken, not that it should be paid for upfront.

~~~
padobson
Agreed. I won't discount the benefits of infrastructure now, pay later, so
long as the infrastructure being built is economically maintainable later.

------
zeveb
I think this is similar to the issue that Americans tend to pay relatively
high taxes and get relatively little in return, compared to citizens of other
countries. I don't know to what extent this is a result of a few folks gaming
the system to their own advantage (e.g. by paying very little taxes on a lot),
or to the fact that by and large America is responsible for the security and
peace of the global (and hence other states need not spend as much on global
issues), or to the extent that American civil service appears from the outside
to be very much a handout to people who can't get honest employment, or to the
extent that government contractors are experts in milking tax dollars, or
what.

It completely doesn't surprise me that we spend more on less infrastructure.

~~~
ido

        by and large America is responsible for the security and 
        peace of the global
    

A task it took on itself mostly unasked for and unappreciated by the rest of
that globe.

~~~
jsprogrammer
The northern hemisphere was blowing up and both the Axis and Allies begged the
US to intervene.

~~~
navait
1939 was a long time ago, everyone who made important decisions then is now
dead. The world was completely different back then in technology, culture and
economy. No country that has been around greater than 20 years has held a
consistent foreign policy. While what you said is true, it is completley
irrelevant to a discussion of modern US foreign policy - we aren't the
isolationists we used to be.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Where we are today is a direct consequence of what happened in the past. The
US did not have military posts in Europe or Asia prior to WW2, yet they have
been there since.

Further, that is when the US _actually secured_ (that's what we are talking
about, right?) peace on two continents (after being asked).

------
bluedino
I'm always amazed when there's a story about road construction in the local
news, and it costs like 1.5 million dollars to repave 4 blocks of some
street..how is that possible?

I had a friend have his average-sized driveway re-done with cement and it was
like $60,000 which I thought was insane. Remove old cement, grade the dirt,
pour new cement, smooth it out...and wait.

~~~
chadgeidel
Finally! Here's where my extensive background in concrete construction pays
off! :-D (Seriously though, my father and brother run a concrete construction
business and I have worked on both residential and commercial jobs for 10+
years of my "youth")

For starters - $60k is a LOT for a driveway. My brother's company charges $10
per square foot (at the top end) to remove and replace a driveway. This
assumes the ground is appropriate (drainage is acceptable, no need for fill,
etc.) This is based on 4" of concrete and steel reinforcing mesh and no
subgrade prep. As with anything there are "price boosters" but that's a
reasonable estimate. Average driveway is maybe 20x40, so that works out to be
$8 grand max. This is in suburban South Dakota, so it might be more in larger
metro areas.

A highway is nothing like a driveway. As others have pointed out, the
thickness of concrete alone is double or triple (probably a minimum of 8
inches - more like 10 inches) and the reinforcement is considerably more (3/4
inch steel rebar mat 16-18 inches on center). You have to also consider that
the subgrade needs at least a few inches of gravel, which is fairly expensive.
It doesn't stop there - once the concrete is poured, there is typically a
curing agent applied on top of the surface, and then the expansion joints have
to be sawed and sealed. This is just for the road surface. I'll bet this cost
also has to take into account curbing and sidewalks.

I've personally worked on both kinds of jobs - residential driveways and
suburban streets. It's at least 10x more work "per foot" to do a road over a
driveway. It's the difference between building a weekend "hacker project" and
a production ready ecommerce website.

~~~
angersock
Our highways will probably last centuries if not millenia once cars and trucks
stop banging on them. The Romans would be envious.

~~~
chadgeidel
I would guess that within about 10-20 years of non-use they would be overgrown
to the point of invisibility. Joints are tooled/cut every 20 feet (I think?)
and grass has a habit of growing everywhere. The individual "sections" would
remain in place of course, but growing things and erosion would push the
joints further and further apart every season.

IMHO - the pristine unbroken roadways would be like that for only a few
years/maybe a decade.

~~~
angersock
I'm not sure about that...the highways they put into are often more than three
feet deep all told.

~~~
chadgeidel
It's highly unlikely (due to cost of materials) that there would be more than
12 inches of concrete on a highway. There would maybe be 3 feet of depth
including base material (dirt, gravel, or other engineered fill types). You
would only see that depth of concrete on an airport runway or where the
aircraft are parked.

I can't seem to find anything definitive about US road depths ATM.

------
jbob2000
Well that was disappointing. I thought he was on to something regarding
projects being difficult to complete because of the common law system. But
nope, it's the unions! Please...

~~~
HCIdivision17
I thought it was at least going to be something interesting about US
infrastructure, but it's really focused on NYC. Unsurprisingly, the US does
not place getting costs down for subways to be one of its higher priorities.
Anecdata, admittedly, but _I 've_ seen very little talk about controlling
union costs for MTA workers in the rural midwest; those poor guys are
supporting a subway system that's barely there!

Really, though, infrastructure stuff is _neat_ , and we probably should start
fixing it up. The main problem is the size of the US infrastructure is
outstandingly staggering. There's an article [0] that's an argument for
pouring money back into the highway funds (and the like), and the cash
involved is worse than astronomical. At the very least, I didn't know there
were over 600000 bridges in the US... I honestly don't know where we put them
all. (Are overpasses included?)

[0]
[http://www.budget.senate.gov/democratic/public/index.cfm/rep...](http://www.budget.senate.gov/democratic/public/index.cfm/repairing-
our-infrastructure) I don't go to senate.gov much, so I'm guessing this is
pretty partisan, but there's a crapton of followup links that are at least
interesting.

~~~
jbob2000
On that note about bridges; When I was in Cuba, the tour guide made a special
note to point out this bridge they had that connected one part of the island
to another over a large valley. Apparently it was a big deal to get this
bridge built? The Russians built it for them in the 80s, but before that, it
was a nightmare moving around. It didn't look like much to me, a regular
bridge that I've seen a thousand times here in Canada.

It put in perspective for me how expensive bridges really are. They couldn't
afford to build _one_ , crucial bridge. It took a major super power to do it.

~~~
VLM
I pulled the data and superficially a random square mile of Cuba is about 100x
more likely to get hit with a mag 7 earthquake than a similar square in Canada
gets hit by a mag 6. Cuba gets spanked every two or three decades with a
serious mag 7 or so.

Your 80s bridge survived the '92 quake, assuming you saw it after '92 of
course. That was a biggie.

Earthquake proof bridges are no joke to build.

------
mschuster91
It's not just the US that is expensive and riddled with cost explosions. This
seems to be a failure of pretty much every political system - for example,
Germany, where construction costs explode (BER, Stuttgart 21, Hamburg Opera
House).

The most common cause why costs have exploded is that, unlike "old times",
where either the state itself has employed all kinds of construction planners
and workers or awarded a specific company all construction projects in a given
timeframe, now everything has to be available for bidding - usually the lowest
bid recieves the contract. This, in turn, creates incentives (often lined with
kickbacks for the responsible politicians!) for the construction companies to
underestimate the bids and charging the government for each and every change
to the contract, to cut corners and generally mismanage the projects.

Also, in the EU, projects above a certain threshold have to be advertised in
the entire EU - leading to projects with little to no "native" people employed
on site, and regular language problems and misunderstandings due to different
legal requirements in the EU states (e.g. training of the work force,
different specifications - what may very well be an acceptable project under
Polish regulations is totally unacceptable by German standards).

Furthermore, regulatory oversight has been on a massive decline as competent
people leave or don't even enter state service, so that too few people in
government employment are available to properly assess and control
construction process.

~~~
sageikosa
Well, maybe Europe built itself with government projects, but apart from some
dubious transcontinental rail lines, America's "original" heavy and light rail
systems were built by combinations of corporate, municipal and state entities.
Roads were municipal matters, heavy trucks were seldom seen as that channel
grew in symbiosis with the Eisenhower Highway system. Heavy trucks drive the
need for durable roads, and they just weren't the norm until the Fed
subsidized the crap out of inter-city highways and regulated the rail (most
predominantly: the Pennsylvania RR) until if collapsed. Light-rail had its own
similar history with roads and busses (and the fight for "right-of-way" at
street level).

~~~
mschuster91
Weren't the beginnings of cross-US rail lines laid back at a time where
regulatory frameworks (esp. cross-county/state, and noise emission) weren't
that strict as today?

Also, back in the time it was customary to create stock companies where people
bought shares to actually BUILD something of value?

When was the last time that a stock company was founded to build long lasting
infrastructure?

Stock companies, these days, in my opinion focus WAY too much on creating
short-term gains on the back of employees and unsuspecting investors...

~~~
dragonwriter
> Weren't the beginnings of cross-US rail lines laid back at a time where
> regulatory frameworks (esp. cross-county/state, and noise emission) weren't
> that strict as today?

The major cross-US rail lines were laid down when government (IIRC, both
federal and state governments) were handing out money like candy for building
railroads. It was no more free market than today, its just the orientation of
the government involvement was different.

And a lot of the companies created at that time in the industry were mostly
created to funnel money from those subsidies into the hands of investors.

You really shouldn't idealize the early cross-US rail period either as one of
an absence of regulatory involvement or one of noble value building vs. short-
term extraction by capitalists.

Sure, even with all the outright corruption, rail lines to nowhere, and other
abuses, there _also_ happened to get some useful, long-lasting infrastructure
and organizations with long-term value built. But its wrong to overly
romanticize the process that went into that.

~~~
flubert
For more details on transcontinental railroads financing:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad)

------
transfire
Trickle-down contracting -- the many guys on top rake in big $$$, while the
guy on the bottom who actually builds the thing gets a few cents.

~~~
betaby
This. Costs go x10 because of layers of subcontractors and machinery rentals
up to the smallest screwdrivers.

------
MicroBerto
In general, we _do_ make the worst deals. I know this place hates Trump, but
that statement is not false.

The major issue of having a business-driven economy is that the best (or most
"tactical") businessmen are running businesses, not the government.

As it stands right now, there is very little incentive for US government
officials to run things efficiently. Whether they're promoted for
incompetence, applauded for employing so many government employees, or getting
paid by dirty contractors, it all leads towards the corrupt situation at hand.

I don't know the solution, but true campaign finance reform, removing
corporate money from politics, would be the best blanket to start with. Good
luck with all that, though...

Take a look at how Hong Kong's rail system operates, that's the best model
I've seen.

~~~
Bartweiss
There's also an argument that a mandate to select the lowest bid massively
increases cost overruns, even when everyone in government is sincere and not
corrupt.

If you're selecting a crappy company that lied about their bid over a
competent, accurate higher bidder, you tend to get massive cost overruns that
outweigh the promised savings. Everything looks good up front ("we'll build a
new railway for only $XXX,000,000!") but in practice it's a disaster.

~~~
MicroBerto
That falls under the category of "bad deals" too.

~~~
Bartweiss
It does, I don't disagree, but it seems worth separating "bad deals we
actively picked" from "bad deals our laws forced us to make".

~~~
MicroBerto
Correct, and leads me back to my original point. Our nation's best minds are
simply not in politics - they're in business, engineering, finance, or are
retired.

Anyone even _suggesting_ that we take the lowest bid by default is unfit for
office.

~~~
nikdaheratik
Except that is exactly what the law says they must do in some cases. In some
cases it is left up to discretion, or we are allowed to choose a U.S. company
bid over a foreign company, but government procurement does not work the same
as private enterprise.

OTOH, the scale we're talking about is also _vastly_ different, and the
companies involved are ultimately responsible to the taxpayers rather than
just being responsible to their shareholders so there is more overhead and
paperwork as well.

------
exelius
It's simple: there is so much money in our political system (and there always
has been) that unless you're donating to a candidate / party machine, your pet
projects don't get done. This means a lot of things that matter to average
citizens like roads, schools, parks, etc. don't have anyone championing them
-- unless there are investors who want to build up the area and want to
externalize some of their costs.

So they make a small investment in getting some friendly candidates elected to
city council or smaller county positions to ensure the access to the various
groups they need to lobby to get their projects approved. In return for this
investment, they get 100x in public money.

What it also means is that unless your project (or collective projects as
often the case in gentrifying neighborhoods) promises a big return, it's not
gonna get done. What's more is that so much of our infrastructure is so old
and in such poor condition that it's often cheaper to just build new stuff in
another area than it is to rip out what's already there and replace it. In
Philadelphia where I live, large parts of our water and sewer infrastructure
date back to the early 1800s.

------
scotty79
Usually question "Why X is so expensive in US?" can be answered with "Because
such and such for-profit entity wedged itself between buyer and a seller and
siphoned so much money that can buy off politicians that in other
circumstances would kick it out."

I guess case with infrastructure is more complex.

------
baron816
One thing people don't realize is that Union affiliation is actually still
quite high in New York state--25%, and probably higher in the NYC area.

New York YIMBY address the topic two years ago:
[http://newyorkyimby.com/2014/09/the-mta-wants-second-
avenue-...](http://newyorkyimby.com/2014/09/the-mta-wants-second-avenue-
subway-downpayment-but-cant-tell-us-how-much-itll-cost.html)

In it, they cite union rules that require _four times_ the necessary personnel
on underground construction projects. They don't blame it all on unions, but
I'm definitely in the camp that unions do much more harm than good.

~~~
mikeyouse
It's hard to blame unions in the US for any substantial part of the cost when
areas with much cheaper infrastructure costs have much stronger unions and
equivalent salary levels.

~~~
baron816
My point is that New York HAS strong unions, especially for the MTA. And
regardless of their salaries (which are higher than their European and Asian
counterparts), they have to employ 4x more people to complete a similar job.

------
ChemicalWarfare
With things like subway stations it's not easy to compare the cost because
more 'extravagant' design will drive the cost up.

Apples and apples type comparison would be comparing things like cost of
building one mile of the highway.

If you look at those figures they are very comparable with US having a slight
edge over the EU - $6-10 mil per mile vs. €7-12 mil per km.

------
saosebastiao
This is a serious issue, and I think the author does a disservice to it by
focusing on unions as the problem. At their very worst, they are only a
problem for operations costs, which rarely explain why infrastructure doesn't
get built. It is true that public service unions do have disproportionate
political power, but they are also rarely the ones building the
infrastructure, because construction is always up for bid by private
contractors. And even if public unions _were_ building these things, labor
typically only accounts for 20-30% of construction costs, so they couldn't
possibly account for much of the 2-5x increase in costs compared to Spain or
France.

The real issues at hand are bad planning, extravagant station designs,
nominally-environmental NIMBY blockades, and plain old backwards procurement
rules that affect all levels of US government. Alon Levy might claim that he
doesn't know the answers, but I've been following his blog since he started it
and it makes it pretty clear how those things contribute. Hell, the
extravagance of the stations alone probably account for 30% of the difference
in costs. Nobody seems to blink an eye at massive underground stations with
huge art installations and expensive tile facades...yet they end up costing
10-20x more than basic stations that serve their purpose just fine.

This is a severe problem for how much we build too. Those on the left like to
blame blame conservatives for not wanting to build transit infrastructure, but
one of the most conservative regions in the country serves as a counter-
example: the Salt Lake Valley. Sure, SLC itself is slightly blue, but step
outside the city itself by a mile and you're in some of the reddest land
you'll find in the US. And yet those outlying conservative areas have been
throwing their votes and money at UTA to build more and more. And if you look
at what they're voting on, it starts to make sense. They are building a very
low cost, utilitarian, at-grade light rail line. They are optimizing signal
priority and grade protection so they can get about 90% of the speed that a
subway would give. Their stations are nothing more than simple concrete
platforms. Simply put, they are getting a ton of transit for their money.

Compare that with Seattle, one of the most liberal cities in the US. We're
likely going to see a new transit initiative soon, and it is going to be voted
down just like every other transit initiative in Seattle since the 50s. It's
gotten so bad than transit activists are worried that they won't even have
majority support within Seattle city limits. Gee, maybe the fact that it is
going to cost $50B and take 40 years to build has something to do with it. I'm
fairly liberal and inclined to vote for transit in general, but I just can't
justify paying hugely increased taxes for 40 years so I can finally have a
subway stop in my neighborhood once I retire.

~~~
rayiner
It's crazy how overdone the new Silver line is in D.C. It rides on a massive
raised concrete platform:
[https://www.google.com/search?biw=1188&bih=726&tbm=isch&sa=1...](https://www.google.com/search?biw=1188&bih=726&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=silver+line+dc+tysons&oq=silver+line+dc+tysons&gs_l=img.3...20436.21283.0.21434.7.7.0.0.0.0.84.420.7.7.0....0...1c.1.64.img..0.1.81...0j0i30j0i8i30j0i24.S1bllHj56LY#imgrc=8eiwrhkB9mCvJM%3A).

This is the rickety sort of elevated track that has held up just fine in
Chicago for nearly a century:
[http://www.chicago-l.org/trains/gallery/images/2400/cta2483....](http://www.chicago-l.org/trains/gallery/images/2400/cta2483.jpg).

~~~
gamblor956
The elevated steel tracks have not "held up just fine" in Chicago. They've
been neglected for decades, and they recently had to shut down a major line
for almost two years just to perform necessary deferred maintenance--
essentially, rebuild the line--to keep it go.

~~~
tptacek
Which one?

~~~
falsestprophet
The Red line between Cermak-Chinatown and 95th Street [1] was reconstructed
over 5 months [2] in 2013.

[1] None of the reconstructed line was elevated steel structure.

[2] Not "almost two years"

~~~
coddingtonbear
Also, the Green Line between 1994 and 1996.

~~~
tptacek
I was wondering if they were referring to the Green Line stuff, which I
remember from that weird HODAR/LEJACK PR campaign CTA ran in the '90s.

------
maxerickson
I wonder how much of it goes back to the attitudes of decision makers.

A theme of this essay[1] is that decisions makers will outright reject ideas
they are uncomfortable with.

So say someone believes that businesses in the aggregate will, say, do the
right thing rather than mercilessly and rationally responding to maximize
their benefit from a contract. It's going to potentially be difficult to
convince that person that the structure of bidding and contracts is important.

I agree that this is seemingly absurd and terrifying.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11577074](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11577074)

------
Symmetry
Generally people buy more of things that cost less per unit and I expect this
would apply to track miles just as much as it applies to , e.g., video games.

~~~
saalweachter
It depends heavily on the product.

Video games cost a certain amount to produce and then $0.25 to copy.

A track requires a certain amount of iron or other raw materials; these raw
materials are already being produced at scale. A certain amount of economy-of-
scale can be gained on the track-specific overhead (amortize the cost of the
track-factory, amortize the management/sales overhead) but there is a certain
floor on the minimum cost for a unit of track, and that floor is much higher
(relative to its base cost) than the cost of a video game.

~~~
Symmetry
All the facts you bring up are true but it doesn't make supply and demand less
applicable to public works projects.

Recently the Green Line Extension near me was partially abandoned because
estimated costs to complete it had gone up from $2 billion to $3 billion. If
the project had a reasonable (by international standards) price tag there's no
way it would have been canceled even if the overrun had been 100%.

------
PantaloonFlames
If only we had more unions, and.... the unions seem to be presenting obstacles
to getting projects done.

Which is it?

~~~
sageikosa
Neither. Collectivism of labor is a symptom of centralization of budgets.
Large companies and large departments need large workforces.

~~~
randyrand
> Large companies and large departments need large workforces.

yet, google, Apple, Facebook etc all have non-unionized employees.

A large work force does not necessitate a union. What a silly argument to
make.

~~~
sageikosa
I wasn't making the argument you are denigrating, any more than I'd make the
assertion that clouds mean rain.

------
redthrowaway
I thought the reason NYC cost so much to build subways in was because it's all
granite bedrock, which is expensive to tunnel through, and there's a ton of
spottily-documented crap already down there.

------
gvb
We need a corollary to Betteridge's law: newspaper headlines that start with
"Why..." do not answer the question.

------
zaroth
Perhaps the NYC subway is a special case in the cost-per-kilometer club but
how about something more run-of-the-mill like the MA green line extension [0]
which is $2-$3B for 4.3 miles of above ground track? [1]

They recently had to go back and try to slash the budget since the Fed and
State have pledged $1B each and no more. Some of the reasons given for rthe
explosion from $2N -> $3B were poor oversight over the bidding process [2].

To cut cost they scaled back the station designs (apparently people were
complaining after some stations became little more than a platform without
even shelter from the weather), kept some bridges they originally planned to
replace, and shortened a walk/bike path.

Nowhere in the news do I see anyone talking about labor rates, unions, health
insurance / pension, or eminent domain issues causing the cost overruns.

I've been on the board of a small condo (27 units) which did a major residing
project a few years ago. The process of spec'ing, bidding, overseeing the
construction was hugely involved for the huge for us but relatively tiny
project. The contractor bids, which were against a very detailed 3rd party
specification, had a huge spread. During the project there were significant
work items which were outside the spec and ended up being negotiated to
control costs. The takeaway for me is that these projects are insanely
complicated and cities just don't have the expertise and dedication to tightly
manage them and wring out the cost savings. The experts outmaneuver the
municipality and we end up paying far too much.

What's interesting about the Green Line Extension is the nature of the funding
means the first $2B is almost like free funny money but every dollar
thereafter is like spilling blood because it comes from the locals. So at
least the funding structure is trying to impose some limits. And lo-and-behold
if the choice is for a city to cough up the extra cash versus cutting costs,
they cut the cost by 1/3rd.

I think the biggest problem is cultural. The people overseeing the project are
not spending every dollar like it's their own. If the cost isn't "real" to the
people running the project, it completely changes how the project is run.
Human nature.

[0] -
[http://greenlineextension.eot.state.ma.us/docs_about.html](http://greenlineextension.eot.state.ma.us/docs_about.html)

[1] -
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Line_Extension](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Line_Extension)

[2] - [http://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2016/01/15/report-
gree...](http://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2016/01/15/report-green-line-
extension-budget-issues-brewed-long-before-crisis)

------
excalibur
Red tape.

------
jcoffland
> New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority operates commuter trains that
> require higher staffing levels -- but as Smith wrote in another 2012
> Bloomberg View piece, those higher staffing requirements are the result more
> of union rules than of necessity.

This is also true for construction. Anyone who's seen construction in progress
in the US knows that there are usually 5 guys standing around for every one
working. Everyone one of them is getting health care, a pension and a decent
salary if they are standing around or not. And they are getting the best
health care and pensions of just about any group in the US.

~~~
Shivetya
You want a true transit authority horror story go read up on Washington DCs.
The unions are not their big issue though they do cost the TA a lot of time
and money, its the money games that came about because of years if not decades
of mismanagement by government appointees and officials.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/met...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/metro-
sank-into-crisis-despite-decades-of-
warnings/2016/04/24/1c4db91c-0736-11e6-a12f-ea5aed7958dc_story.html)

and its not just infrastructure. Canada privatized into a non profit entity
their air traffic control to good success. We have the TSA running security in
airports where if you want timely service it will cost you hours of time and
nearly a hundred bucks for membership and even that is not guaranteed. The
worst example of how government mismanages everything is sadly still not
fixed, the VA

There is just too much up front cost in government projects that weighs down
the economy but the real danger is all the deferred costs from maintenance to
pensions.

------
JacobJans
This article seems quite specific at first – but when you dig down, it is
actually rather vague.

For example, the author complains that his mother needs a license to bake
food. What kind of license? What state?

Maybe a food handlers license? These are incredibly common, and very easy to
obtain.

Maybe a business license? Again – most states are falling over themselves to
make it easy to give you a business license.

It's hard to tell exactly what is being argued against.

Food safety is incredibly important – and food handler's licenses are easy to
obtain. States need to collect taxes, that's the basic reason a business needs
to get a license. Neither of these things are controversial. That's why I'm
guessing the author of this article didn't go into specifics.

~~~
zanny
> Neither of these things are controversial.

I'll give plenty of controversy, because your point is fundamental to the
runaway problem of licensing and certification in the US and elsewhere. You
_think_ it is just _one_ (well, you list two) licenses, but then you find out
you also need commercial permits for the building, you need permits for the
imports of most of the ingredients, you need certification to serve certain
kinds of foods (especially in many states alcohol), and by the end you do not
have just _two_ licenses you need to get, you can have dozens of them.

And there is no established canonical way to find out which you need, because
they vary not only by state but by _municipality_. And even if you somehow
"ask" your regional better business bureau for all the licenses and
certifications you need, if _they_ get them wrong, _you_ are still liable and
at fault for _not knowing_.

Food safety is incredibly important. If every distributor of food needs a
license, the barrier to entry by its nature either must be insanely low or a
huge amount of potential productivity lost to the licensing process. If the
barrier to entry is low, violating such a license is painless and easy. It is
a meme now that restaurants will only clean up the cockroaches the week of
food and safety inspections in New York, and that applies everywhere.

In the end, the _only_ safeguard against unethical business behavior is an
informed consumer. And those do not come from annual state inspections where
the inspector is often bought off in the first place. They come from consumers
having communication channels to better inform themselves and others about
what is or is not trustworthy. We would have significantly higher standards of
food safety if instead of state agencies doing it restaurants sought
certification from highly respected private firms that do such inspections,
because then the reputation of both inspector and restaurant on the line, and
consumers can dynamically create or trust any number of inspectors to meet
demand. Compare that to how well trusted the state is for just about anything
by anyone, and consider which would be better, aside from the lovely side
effect of there being no outdated over-saturated government bureaucracy around
food inspections.

~~~
maxxxxx
" highly respected private firms "

If the financial crisis has taught us anything it's that those highly
respected firms tend to get corrupted easily. See rating agencies. Who
verifies that the private firm is clean?

~~~
zanny
Consumer confidence. The problem with financial institutions is a systemic and
intentional policy of using law to prevent competition. You need the, again,
certification nightmare to be legally _allowed_ to even make a loan, let alone
a home mortgage. If those barriers to entry did not exist (and again, it is
death by a thousand cuts - only Wall Street institutions have the army of
lawyers to stay compliant) we might have a hundred major banks again like we
did fifty years ago than the five we do now.

~~~
maxxxxx
That still doesn't solve the problem of corrupt private institutions. A lot of
people trust Yelp or the BBB but from whatever I know their ratings can be
bought.

~~~
zanny
So inform other people not to trust Yelp because the ratings are bought,
provide alternatives (I usually use a mix of Foursquare / Trip Advisor /
Google Reviews) and tell them to tell their friends not to use Yelp because
they are fraudulent.

 _Most_ techies with any news awareness know not to trust Yelp, that right
there is proof it works. It is just the onus of the informed to educate those
not.

------
kolapuriya
I found Node.js a much simpler platform to use, mainly because there is no
worrying about concurrency.

Because of the asynchronicity of Node, don't you explicitly have to worry
about concurrency issues? I understand that with callbacks you can make things
essentially linear from an execution standpoint (per connection), but I guess
I'm a little confused by this statement.

~~~
gherkin0
Did you reply to the wrong post?

