
California’s high-speed rail project was ‘captured’ by costly consultants - petethomas
https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-california-high-speed-rail-consultants-20190426-story.html
======
redwood
I experienced this in my first job... A regulatory decision around approval of
a new power line in California... where the consulting and regulatory costs of
simply discussing whether the line should be built literally ran over $100
million. Paid for by all California power users in their rates.

The sad thing is the state of affairs can be used by any party that for any
reason wants to fight anything it want (with money): just leverage
environmental protection laws even when it's intellectually dishonest to do
so, and win by miring the process in hundreds of millions of dollars of total
waste.

Of course that's just the abuse of law/process side of things. Separately
we've seen the loss of expertise in house within governments and the rise of
consulting firms required to do everything.

There was a time when cities built their own transit! Now you have to hire
expensive Consultants from Europe or Asia because the idea that people could
figure this out on their own with their civil engineering degrees and
experience in adjascent fields is simply verboten.

If anyone hasn't read The Power Broker about the rise of Robert Moses, it's a
great read: You can disagree with much of his methodology/power hunger/abuse
of people, and you can certainly disagree with what he built, but what he did
demonstrate is that the people with the plans who can execute while everyone
else is talking about grand dreams can GET STUFF DONE.

We need more people in government who actually have a plan, that are actually
willing to take bets on people, to hire high-quality people, to see hard
projects through, not to punt everything off to consulting firms.

Let's be honest, consulting firms never feel ownership. Their deliverable is
that beautiful PDF. No PDF ever built any grand infrastructure.

And the Golden Gate Bridge, and the New York subway, never even had the
glorious joy of benefiting from either PDF or PowerPoint.

Let's admit it, when it comes to building infrastructure we've completely
failed and we need to have a serious wake-up call.

Sadly most people have no idea how bad it has gotten because when they spend a
hundred million dollars collectively deciding whether to build a power line in
the San Diego desert, they barely notice that they're paying an incremental
portion of a penny more for every kilowatt-hour of power.

~~~
maehwasu
> We need more people in government who actually have a plan, that are
> actually willing to take bets on people, to hire high-quality people, to see
> hard projects through, not to punt everything off to consulting firms.

I share your frustration, but there are evolutionary pressures at work here.
The people most likely to be in government are those most likely to survive in
it.

Seeing hard projects through does not increase your "fitness" much.

Knowing how to manipulate bureaucracies, build up little fiefdoms, acquire the
pull to bring in expensive consultants, manage the reciprocal relationships
with those consultants, etc. -- all this stuff _does_ increase your fitness in
a bureaucracy.

The only two proven ways to cut this Gordian Knot are smaller sovereign
jurisdictions (suddenly those bureaucrats have to answer to people who are
many fewer degrees removed) or executives with more unilateral power
(authoritarianism/CEO-style governance). For better or worse, the American
system has evolved in the opposite direction on both those poles.

~~~
protonfish
That's not "evolutionary pressure", it's corruption.

~~~
maehwasu
If you're going to comment, make it substantiative. Arguing over the
definitions of words, and not the underlying phenomenon, is the opposite of
that.

If "corruption", as you prefer to call it, leads to selection pressures and
selects for those most "fit" in the arts of corruption, then "evolutionary
pressure" is a perfectly adequate metaphor, and likely helpful for analyzing
the situation.

On a related note, the knee-jerk application of moral terminology rather than
clear analysis to government issues is one of the principal hacks that corrupt
bureaucracies use to perpetuate themselves.

------
tomohawk
Consultants get paid to do what you want them to do.

If the government contracts for some consultants and lets them "take over",
then it's their fault. They were either unclear in their direction, providing
incorrect direction, or incompetent at managing the contract.

If they do not have the expertise to act as their own general contractor, they
should hire one.

Really, since federal funds went into this, the agencies managing this should
be investigated by the federal government and the state should have to pay
back the funds that they mismanaged.

~~~
commandlinefan
Even the ones who saw this coming probably had no real way to work around it.
I read a quote once - I can’t remember who said it and am too lazy to google
it - but it was something along the lines of “people will forget what you
said, people will forget what you did, but they’ll never forget how you made
them feel”. It’s supposed to be inspirational, but to me, it’s the most
depressing fucking thing I’ve ever read in my life because it’s so accurate.
They won’t remember that when you said “this timeline is unrealistic” that you
were right, all they’ll remember is that you made them feel bad. The brutal
accuracy of it, though, has definitely inspired me to stop trying - I do what
I’m told and no more, because trying to be helpful or actually be forward
thinking is a surefire recipe for disaster. I do make people “feel” good,
though, except on here where I’m “salty”.

~~~
cmpolis
Quote is from Maya Angelou

------
Reason077
There are some parallels here to London's troubled Crossrail project.
Politicians and civil servants took their eyes of the ball and turned project
management almost completely over to the private sector. For years, everything
was apparently going fine and the project was on time and on budget. Suddenly,
just weeks before it was supposed to open in 2018, it was revealed to be years
behind and potentially billions over budget.

[https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/true-scale-of-
crossr...](https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/true-scale-of-crossrail-
problems-laid-bare/10038753.article)

(And, for an even more crazy civil construction project failure, see Berlin
Brandenberg Airport)

~~~
dvdkhlng
For the Berlin Brandenburg Airport story, have a look here:

    
    
      https://onemileatatime.com/berlin-brandenburg-airport/
    

Everybody expected it to open in 2012, people even got plane tickets for
flights departing from there, but then it never opened. With all the cost
accumulated since then, it would have been cheaper (and faster) to just tear
it down and rebuild from scratch.

~~~
oftenwrong
[https://onemileatatime.com/berlin-brandenburg-
airport/](https://onemileatatime.com/berlin-brandenburg-airport/)

------
Reedx
It's amazing how terrible we've become at public works.

The Golden Gate Bridge was built in 4 years. Ahead of schedule _and_ under
budget!

The Bay Bridge took 5 years, also ahead of schedule and under budget.

This was the 1930s. Imagine what people thought would be possible in the
futuristic 2000s. Surely we've gotten a lot better at building things in
nearly a century? Better technology, machines, engineering, materials...

Well, recently we rebuilt a small portion (just 2.2 of 8.2 miles) of the Bay
Bridge. It took 11 years to build. Years behind schedule and 2,500% over
budget.

Seriously, why isn't this considered unacceptable? It's such a shame compared
to what we could be accomplishing.

~~~
mapt
Largely because we decided not to build public works.

When we do get one, the pressure is so high to succeed and to cut costs that
people reliably focus on outsourcing responsibility and notional cost-savings,
and then when that falls through on recrimination and fixes. We pressure
private profit-seeking companies to make "bids" without putting up any kind of
collateral, on the chance that if _we did it_ we might waste money employing
some extra labor or employ a union.

Something like 50% of the politicians in this country simply _doesn 't believe
we should do anything_ as a public work. They do not believe in public works.
They will actively sabotage public works in the hope that they will go
overbudget and prove their philosophy correct. Compromising with these people
instead of cleansing their ideology with holy fire nets "public-private
partnerships" and "bid processes" and "inquests" and "deadlines" and "being
cancelled in disgrace" and thus further anxiety about the next project, but an
inability to compensate with higher bids.

Things would be a lot easier if we just wanted to build things, and paid
people to build things, even if this meant getting into the business of
building things. Instead, we want to be dramatic in our compromises, pretend
that waterfall infrastructure planning is viable and can achieve perfect
efficiency and predictability, treat limited liability corporations as moral
actors which can be held culpable for giving us the lies we asked for, and
regularly re-avow our faith in the market.

~~~
DuskStar
Oh, let's not let the other half of the politicians off the hook entirely
either. I mean, there's a reason that some proportion of each contract must go
to minority owned businesses, or that employers must be union shops that pay
at least the median wage, or...

And if we were still willing to kill people when making those projects, they
might go a little bit faster.

------
rayiner
Calling a lot of these contractors "consultants" is rather misleading. WSP--
the biggest contractor--is the "rail delivery partner." They're responsible
for overseeing everyone else, dealing with environmental review, dealing with
engineering contingencies, etc. $700 million sounds like a lot for a
"consultant" but seems pretty reasonable for what is basically the general
contractor on a $50-100 billion engineering and construction project.

~~~
1024core
> on a $50-100 billion engineering and construction project.

That rangeright: they "estimated" the project would cost $33B and be done in
12 years .... 12 years ago. And now they want $100B and 30 years.

Such companies have an obvious profit motive to cause overruns.

------
rayiner
Okay. So the project is $44 billion over budget, and the consulting contracts
(not just the overages, but the entire contracts) add up to less than $2
billion. Where does the other $42 billion in overages come from?

~~~
jdhn
I'd assume that it comes from land acquisition, lawsuits, and general
underestimation as to how much this would actually cost.

------
chrisseaton
Wow I had no idea they were actually already constructing this rail line, and
it's actually going to go all the way into central San Francisco, that's
great! I thought it was all just a vague idea and people wanted a hyperloop
instead.

~~~
redwood
Sadly, Newson actually cut off the ends so now that it's going to be only in
the Central Valley.

Of course I think it's a political stunt on his part where he probably figures
if we build the Central Valley bit it'll be politically nuts _not_ to complete
the ends where all the population state lives later.

But basically it's a fiasco.

And by the way, liberal blue Peninsula residents from Palo Alto etc have been
the primary blocker for this entire project from the very beginning using
environmental impact statements to try and kill high speed rail line going
through their environments, something that would increase the value of their
cities. It's really sad. Basically another version of we don't want to see
housing built NIMBYism at its worst.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Newson actually cut off the ends so now that it's going to be only in the
> Central Valley.

No, he didn't. Newsome announced that construction would proceed on the part
that was already an announced as the initial construction segment with federal
construction funds committed and that only design and environmental work would
proceed on the rest _while additional federal and /or private funding was
secured for construction._

Which was pretty much a big nothing announcement, since that was pretty much
already how things were working (sure, it was theoretically possible for the
state to fund construction on other segments without outside funds, but it
hadn't planned on doing so), but was quickly seized on by enemies of the
project (including the Trump Administration) as being something other than it
was.

Which is all not to excuse Newsome; at best, his handling of the matter was
grossly incompetent.

~~~
rayiner
That doesn't sound quite right: [https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-
government/capitol-aler...](https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-
government/capitol-alert/article226151030.html)

> “Let’s be real,” the new Democratic governor said as he announced a scaled-
> back plan for high speed rail. “The current project, as planned, would cost
> too much and take too long.”

If there is not a concrete plan that is viable, the project could sit in the
"design and environmental review" phase indefinitely without moving forward.

~~~
dragonwriter
> That doesn't sound quite right:

Yes, the non-substantive framing language around the substantive announcements
sounds very different than what was actually announced, but what was actually
concretely announced—that construction would proceed as committed on the ICS
and that design and environmental clearance activities would proceed on the
rest while the state sought federal and private funding—is _exactly_ a
continuation of the status quo ante.

Whether Newsome was trying to be seen as “doing something” about an issue that
was perceived as a problem without actually concretely doing anything or
whether he was trying to kill the project by giving political fuel to it's
enemies while being able to say to supporters of the project that he had take
no concrete steps against it is unclear or whether perhaps he planned concrete
changes that somehow were below the level described in the announcement but
his staff drafted an announcement that was too high level to capture the
substance of the change is hard to say.

------
conanbatt
Public officials need to start going to jail for wasting money like this.

------
daemonk
Sounds like no one person or group wanted to take responsibility for the
project. If the project fails, they wanted the blame to be distributed among
as many people as possible.

~~~
conanbatt
Sounds like..government.

------
upofadown
If you contract out your design work you need to then hire people as smart or
smarter then the contractors to oversee that work.

------
randyrand
And some people want government to run healthcare? the mind boggles.

------
SN76477
Where there is money there are people trying to get a piece.

This is why we need regulations.

------
C1sc0cat
Sounds like the problems Hertz had with Accenture

------
netcan
This is sorta tangential...

I immediately thought of these sort of flops when I musk/spaceX announce the
boring company.

These things happen all the time. Where I live (dublin), the overcoat scandal
du jour is a big hospital build that is costing 300% over budget, due to this
sort of failure.

Then follows the finger pointing, moral righteousnous, promises that heads
will roll, long, boring speeches (we are very good at these here) about greed
and accountability.

But... like enterprise software contracts... all the agreements are carefully
designed so that liability doesn't stick to you when failure inevitably comes.

Anyway... Musk. Being this name-brand business magnate makes avoiding
liability much harder. If they were contracted to do a boring priject, they'd
naturally have something riding on success. Boring company is just an example,
but name brand contractors for city level projects may be useful... A good
name to put on the line.

Just a thought.

