I assumed the reason was going to be poor urban planning resulting in sprawling cities which need longer routes. From a scan read, this didn't appear to be the point made in the article.
No, the issue is more bidding process shenanigans and regulatory overload from labor to environmental to local. It’s become prohibitively expensive to do large public works in the US of all sorts due to these things. It’s not just subways, it’s bridges and tunnels and all other infrastructure that would be amenable in sprawling megalopolises.
Not a substantive article, but important topic and there are better resources out there. TLDR: big rail projects get overloaded to become job creation programs and satisfy pet political agendas
Everything is substantially more expensive to build in the US than nearly anywhere else.
There’s a long list of reasons for this. Sadly, we can’t fix it because we have lacked real leadership for decades (pick a number).
The fitness function that drives our governmental system and process does not have a set of variables that measure good outcomes, particularly in the long term. Instead, we have devolved into a system full of idiots (politicians) lying, scheming and throwing fecal matter at each other.
As long as people keep voting for these clowns nothing will improve. And, yes, there is a point of no return.
Note that I have not identified a single political party.
The high costs of American infrastructure projects (the problem goes well beyond just transit) really stems from how we pay for them. In most other countries, there are national or regional bodies of civil engineering experts who either directly lead or heavily advise decision makers for any projects that want funding. Generally they go where the work is and can spend their whole careers gaining highly specialized experience on numerous projects. When a project is proposed they know the potential pitfalls and solutions to common problems so their estimates tend to be reasonable. If local officials come around with a ridiculous request, they tend to get shut down.
In the US management of projects is generally handled at the local level with state and federal governments only lending financial support. In any given location, any particular type of project is unlikely to be done more than once every few decades, so it is likely that none of the people involved in management have much if any experience with the specific subdisciplines a project would require, nonetheless up to date on best practices. Further, local governments simply can't afford to retain large staffs of highly specialized engineers. They may hire extremely costly consultants but there's no guarantee those consultants actually know what they are doing and their insight may be disregarded anyways. There is fairly little incentive to rein in budgets as they try to appease as many local stakeholders as possible, again none of whom are likely to recognize that their requests may be impractical. Contracts are likely to be awarded to local companies who have little experience and will need to reinvent the wheel when they inevitably face unexpected but common issues. These issues cause massive delays which are the real source of expense for most projects. Because the costs are consistently higher than expected, the higher level governments need to be willing to dispense larger grants, which in turn leads to a normalization of excessive costs.
While it is a well recognized problem, overhauling how the US finances its projects is no easy feat. For the federal government especially there are concerns about their ability to make decisions about local projects beyond offering voluntary grants, and more generally people do not like a remote government's interference in local affairs. There's also the fear that in rejecting a grant for a necessary project (even if the plan for that project is terrible) it appears to oppose the idea of fixing the underlying problem. Finally, the US gives an enormous amount of power to individuals and private organizations to legally challenge public plans which means any top down effort to impose restraint on local decision makers is basically doomed to failure.
People can call it graft or incompetence or mismanagement but this puts the blame on the specific people involved, and implies that if it were different people we would no longer have these issues. Unfortunately it is an issue with the system, which is why we see exactly the same issues across the country no matter who is in charge. We shouldn't throw our hands up in defeat, but we need to recognize the issue is real and will not be trivial to deal with.
Good points: local governments are often out of their depth when it comes to significant infrastructure projects.
> local governments simply can't afford to retain large staffs of highly specialized engineers. They may hire extremely costly consultants
But...
My father spent much of his career working as a government consultant on early-stage infrastructure projects, usually requirements analysis and grant writing.
This is not lucrative work.
My father started his career as a state government employee, a pool of analysts who are in turn tasked with helping local government agencies. In later years, he was a private sector consultant, covering the entire western region of the United States. His office was a corner of the living room. Southwest Airlines does not have a business class.
By no means do I wish to complain, or deny the existence of government pork. I'm proud of his work and the improvements I got to see in some of the impoverished communities he managed to help, and I learned one way that local infrastructure projects can be undertaken efficiently.
I wish my Dad were still around so I could ask him about this.
There are consulting groups who specialise in infrastructure work and can provide the engineering oversight, cost analysis and most importantly have lawyers who can effectively negotiate the contract. It's often the lack of experienced lawyers that allow for projects to go off the rails without any recourse.
As often as they are utilised in the planning stage, they are also called in as expert witnesses and negotiators when projects do go off the rails.
How did the US end up with such a system? It seems to be rather an outlier in the negative sense when it comes to government efficiency. Winner-takes-all elections?
I have to bring up Switzerland again - just as much resistance to authority, resulting in an even more insane level of local government rights. Imagine a smallish US state being an independent nation where every county can set its own tax law, school authority, public infrastructure etc.
And yet, here these things work all quite well. There must be something else. Maybe a continuity problem in government where a party switch leads to many public officials being replaced? Or are they just not paid enough, so you get the bottom of the barrel?
I'm not Swiss, but I get the impression they pride themselves on compromise, stability, and independence.
Public infrastructure has positive feedback loops, so if your neighbor canton has good train stations, you also want to have good train stations to connect to them.
You also don't want to depend on importing expensive oil, especially as a land-locked country.
A lot of this may come from the due process clause of the US Constitution. You have to ask everyone what they think for years before you can move forward.
Amazingly, some of it also comes from union contracting requirements. There’s some good reporting on NYC transit issues - hiring a dozen people to do the job of two, for instance.
Yes it's inefficient, but our founders did not prioritize efficiency. The US simply didn't go through the post-industrial revolution reforms that most other countries did. This was due in turn to going through many reforms just before industrialization really took off due to the civil war, and then only a limited domestic effect of the world wars. Thus we have a constitution designed for a primarily agrarian society combined with a government handling revenues from the world's largest and arguably most advanced digital-age economy. Unfortunately the issue is complex and a solution requires changes to multiple facets of government, most of which are not sexy and certainly not the makings of a slogan you can put on a hat. It doesn't help that there are a number of other desperately needed reforms. I imagine things will improve, but probably not soon.
One aspect that strikes me about the US system compared to other nations is its rigid nature. Maybe due to lessons learned (since almost all democratic Republics are younger than the US) and maybe from a cultural angle (less Evangelicism?), other nations typically don‘t set e.g. their constitutions in stone and e.g. election process reform is a real thing. I think the biggest change the US could & should strive for is to be more open to change itself.
E.g. one thing I‘d wish every legal system would introduce is an expiry date for laws - if a majority cannot be reached again after a set amount of time, the law would be removed. For efficiency this could be combined with an exponential backoff algorithm - e.g. the expiry dates are set 10, then 20, then 50, then every 100 years in the future.
Umm I'm sure they didn't include the North South line in Amsterdam in this comparison. It took decades, was billions over budget (total bill around 3.1 billion euro), collapsed houses. All for 9.7km / 6 miles of subway with 8 stations.
Didn't read TFA but if the US is more expensive than that per mile then yeah you're really doing it wrong :P
Ok wow. So yeah you have a problem lol. This line was one of the worst infrastructural projects there. The other one was the high speed train line to Belgium which is hardly used for high speed trains because they cheaped out on rolling stock that kept falling apart and got banned. So the whole line was basically wasted.
Yeah, the Bay Area is uniquely bad at infrastructure. The Bay Bridge replacement was (and still is) an embarrassment that keeps on embarrassing. So far we've spent about $2.5 billion on a bus station in downtown San Francisco (yes, yes, it's supposed to have rail service as well but that obviously hasn't happened yet).
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. The recently completed Second Avenue subway on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and the 2015 extension of the No. 7 line to Hudson Yards also cost far above average, at $2.5 billion and $1.5 billion per mile, respectively.
Many of the Metro rides in DC are $5 or more. Some people are saying that it's cheaper to drive to work and pay for parking -- something that is also jamming the roads. One study found that drive times are 20% longer than before COVID -- and that's despite the fact that many are working from home.
People are afraid to be an early victim of the next pandemic - so lots of people who were on transit before covid are driving today. In Seattle I think we have more car commuters to downtown now than we did in 2019 with far fewer in the office - because in 2019 less than half of downtown workers drove alone.
BART's a bad example of pretty much everything. In terms of fares the price per mile goes down the longer you ride while the price to run that service goes up.
Most of BART's ridership is between San Francisco and Oakland, which is what the most recent service cuts targeted. The suburbanites that see their fares subsidized by the urban riders got service increases. Go figure.
Truly nearly all the public transit infrastructure we have in the US was built decades ago (close to 100% if we’re talking about heavy and commuter rail).
This is a shame because comprehensive metros would transform our cities, enable infill housing, and help abate the housing crisis that is at the root of so many issues we’re facing.
How much of this is because European salaries, land value, often pales in comparison to the US? It seems extremely unlikely to me that as Europeans we are 7x more efficient than the Americans, having witnessed the motivation of the construction workers building my nearby light rail transit...
I give you a counter example: Switzerland. Salaries and land easily on par, in many areas exceeding the US. And yet, public infrastructure projects are about the same as in EU - usually a bit late, roughly within budget and generally high quality.
Also, a lot of infrastructure projects in Switzerland are done while keeping rail services running on that route. Most European countries shutdown service as it can cost a lot more and there is a safety risk.
Subways just aren’t necessary in most US cities. Buses and dedicated surface busways are the answer—using new clean technologies such as electric or hydrogen.
In a way only the US can do, we need to kill the romance with trains and subways and just be practical. Wheels are wheels. Put the money into comfortable new buses; keep them clean and well-maintained; and reduce car traffic in the city centers by creating designated busways and major parking facilities.
It was honestly be great if I could drive to within 15 miles of LA and park my car in a secure parking lot and get on an an express bus into the city center. That’s my dream.
Busses are way too slow. I live in NYC with the subways. We do have dedicated bus lanes and express busses in NYC and they are way too slow.
There is something called, "traffic"
A 45 minute drive during rush hour, which is when most people take transit and which is faster than buses, is 15-20 mins door-to-door by subway including some walking.
This is just hard to believe
I understand it's your dream but it's not real. You have people ban the original without the alternative being viable. Banning gas stoves. Banning gas cars. California has been working on HSR since 1996 and all they have to show for it is 0 viable miles of track and endless Stone Henge miles of track
I’m not sure why there is such a negative opinion of rapid bus service. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is a modern, established and well-researched alternative to subways. In fact, when implemented similar to light-rail, the speed of BRT can be comparable to subways.
With BRT, city traffic flow must be adjusted. But this is a good thing: less cars in the inner city encourages use of public transportation.
Commercial interests have traditionally balked at reducing car traffic in the inner city. There is fear that if people can’t drive to their store, they won’t come at all.
But in the post-Covid reality, retail in the inner city is primarily for inner city dwellers-not for suburbanites. Work-from-home keeps many in the suburbs anyway. And finally, online retail is continuing to grow.
The time has come for commercial real estate interests to recognize that the value of their properties is in the uniqueness of the most valuable aspect of the city experience. Their commercial spaces need to become “experience destinations”. This experience can only be enhanced by clean and comfortable rapid transit.
Same in Canada. Maybe because all major public transportion infrastructure projects in North America use European and Japanese technologies, emanating from say, three different - yet very convergent - conglomerates?
42 comments
[ 6.8 ms ] story [ 334 ms ] threadThere’s a long list of reasons for this. Sadly, we can’t fix it because we have lacked real leadership for decades (pick a number).
The fitness function that drives our governmental system and process does not have a set of variables that measure good outcomes, particularly in the long term. Instead, we have devolved into a system full of idiots (politicians) lying, scheming and throwing fecal matter at each other.
As long as people keep voting for these clowns nothing will improve. And, yes, there is a point of no return.
Note that I have not identified a single political party.
In the US management of projects is generally handled at the local level with state and federal governments only lending financial support. In any given location, any particular type of project is unlikely to be done more than once every few decades, so it is likely that none of the people involved in management have much if any experience with the specific subdisciplines a project would require, nonetheless up to date on best practices. Further, local governments simply can't afford to retain large staffs of highly specialized engineers. They may hire extremely costly consultants but there's no guarantee those consultants actually know what they are doing and their insight may be disregarded anyways. There is fairly little incentive to rein in budgets as they try to appease as many local stakeholders as possible, again none of whom are likely to recognize that their requests may be impractical. Contracts are likely to be awarded to local companies who have little experience and will need to reinvent the wheel when they inevitably face unexpected but common issues. These issues cause massive delays which are the real source of expense for most projects. Because the costs are consistently higher than expected, the higher level governments need to be willing to dispense larger grants, which in turn leads to a normalization of excessive costs.
While it is a well recognized problem, overhauling how the US finances its projects is no easy feat. For the federal government especially there are concerns about their ability to make decisions about local projects beyond offering voluntary grants, and more generally people do not like a remote government's interference in local affairs. There's also the fear that in rejecting a grant for a necessary project (even if the plan for that project is terrible) it appears to oppose the idea of fixing the underlying problem. Finally, the US gives an enormous amount of power to individuals and private organizations to legally challenge public plans which means any top down effort to impose restraint on local decision makers is basically doomed to failure.
People can call it graft or incompetence or mismanagement but this puts the blame on the specific people involved, and implies that if it were different people we would no longer have these issues. Unfortunately it is an issue with the system, which is why we see exactly the same issues across the country no matter who is in charge. We shouldn't throw our hands up in defeat, but we need to recognize the issue is real and will not be trivial to deal with.
> local governments simply can't afford to retain large staffs of highly specialized engineers. They may hire extremely costly consultants
But...
My father spent much of his career working as a government consultant on early-stage infrastructure projects, usually requirements analysis and grant writing.
This is not lucrative work.
My father started his career as a state government employee, a pool of analysts who are in turn tasked with helping local government agencies. In later years, he was a private sector consultant, covering the entire western region of the United States. His office was a corner of the living room. Southwest Airlines does not have a business class.
By no means do I wish to complain, or deny the existence of government pork. I'm proud of his work and the improvements I got to see in some of the impoverished communities he managed to help, and I learned one way that local infrastructure projects can be undertaken efficiently.
I wish my Dad were still around so I could ask him about this.
As often as they are utilised in the planning stage, they are also called in as expert witnesses and negotiators when projects do go off the rails.
And yet, here these things work all quite well. There must be something else. Maybe a continuity problem in government where a party switch leads to many public officials being replaced? Or are they just not paid enough, so you get the bottom of the barrel?
Public infrastructure has positive feedback loops, so if your neighbor canton has good train stations, you also want to have good train stations to connect to them.
You also don't want to depend on importing expensive oil, especially as a land-locked country.
Amazingly, some of it also comes from union contracting requirements. There’s some good reporting on NYC transit issues - hiring a dozen people to do the job of two, for instance.
E.g. one thing I‘d wish every legal system would introduce is an expiry date for laws - if a majority cannot be reached again after a set amount of time, the law would be removed. For efficiency this could be combined with an exponential backoff algorithm - e.g. the expiry dates are set 10, then 20, then 50, then every 100 years in the future.
Didn't read TFA but if the US is more expensive than that per mile then yeah you're really doing it wrong :P
- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
Quite a lot more expensive per mile.
The average BART fare is $3.96 and that's average, it can go up to double that of you go a long distance.
A get you anywhere in the system ticket on the Paris Metro is 2.10 euros/2.34 USD.
London is a bit more, it's 3.5 pounds/4.6 usd
Tokyo looks cheaper
New York is 2.90.
I think it's just the bay area that's particularly expensive here. Suprise.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/09/22/dc-...
Most of BART's ridership is between San Francisco and Oakland, which is what the most recent service cuts targeted. The suburbanites that see their fares subsidized by the urban riders got service increases. Go figure.
Totally, and with the stabbings, not good. They had 2 in 48 hours at one point.
This is a shame because comprehensive metros would transform our cities, enable infill housing, and help abate the housing crisis that is at the root of so many issues we’re facing.
I’m not sure about that. Real estate in Western Europe isn’t really cheaper.
Also I doubt any of this is particularly related to individual construction workers, their motivation or lack thereof.
In a way only the US can do, we need to kill the romance with trains and subways and just be practical. Wheels are wheels. Put the money into comfortable new buses; keep them clean and well-maintained; and reduce car traffic in the city centers by creating designated busways and major parking facilities.
It was honestly be great if I could drive to within 15 miles of LA and park my car in a secure parking lot and get on an an express bus into the city center. That’s my dream.
https://thecityfix.com/blog/are-trains-better-than-bus-rapid...
With BRT, city traffic flow must be adjusted. But this is a good thing: less cars in the inner city encourages use of public transportation.
Commercial interests have traditionally balked at reducing car traffic in the inner city. There is fear that if people can’t drive to their store, they won’t come at all.
But in the post-Covid reality, retail in the inner city is primarily for inner city dwellers-not for suburbanites. Work-from-home keeps many in the suburbs anyway. And finally, online retail is continuing to grow.
The time has come for commercial real estate interests to recognize that the value of their properties is in the uniqueness of the most valuable aspect of the city experience. Their commercial spaces need to become “experience destinations”. This experience can only be enhanced by clean and comfortable rapid transit.
BRT is roughly 20% of the cost of subways.
https://www.masstransitmag.com/bus/infrastructure/article/21...
[0]: https://transitcosts.com/transit-costs-study-final-report/