He should try peddling it in Toronto. There are over 100 high-rises under construction in the area.
Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
61–70 of 312 posts
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#62tl;dr - It's like a crawler (mobile with a boom, street level crane) but you put it on top of something already there. Since its on top of something, it's not a "mobile" crane and couldn't get certified as one, however, it also didn't fit into the tower crane (tall, lifts things) certification. So it got stuck in between two classifications and as a result made it too hard for construction companies to bother includi…
It could, and did, get approved as a mobile crane. Then it was unapproved, thanks to political pressure.
Apparently the regulators thought it was mounted on a truck, but when they went in person to inspect it they discovered that he had built some sort of jury rigged contraption to move it around instead. This made it fall outside of their definition of a mobile crane.
The article insinuates that the union was behind it all, but I'm not convinced he didn't just piss off the regulators in this case.
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#63They do a really good job of painting the union as the culprit here without any evidence whatsoever. The first comment on the article suggests a competing crane company was responsible. I think that is just as likely.
Anyhow, as others in this thread have pointed out, the skycranes are back in business.
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the answer, much as it was in ancient times: By exploiting workers - and often letting them die.
Europe and Korea still manage to build subways 10-20x cheaper than New York. As far as I know they don't have tons more worker deaths. With all our modern technology, we should be able to achieve what our ancestors did. Even with our higher standards for safety.
It is far from 10-20x difference. And many or most of those nations have stronger worker protections than the US, calling into question the idea that labor law is really the main driving force there. It's probably more like propertyholder protectionism (i.e. NIMBYism) dominating local politics.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-i... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2015/03/31/high_costs_ma...
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is this an absurd generalization? This type of crap happens all the time. And people should absolutely talk about this stuff constantly because this kind of stuff shows the true colors of the union(s) and what they really stand for. And people need to be constantly reminded of that. All of these unions that center around apprenticeship programs or requiring special training that is near-impossible to get without…
Of course! Unions are a way to balance the scales against corporations. Controlling the supply of labor is very important if you want the wages to be at all decent. But the parent is right that anything questionable done by unions is labored over and repeated again and again and again and again while corporations (for the most part) don't face the same scrutiny.
I agree corporations get off far too easy. And that is the fault of the government in many cases for not prosecuting them or letting them off with fines far below the profits of illegal activity.
"Controlling the supply of labor is very important if you want the wages to be at all decent." - I interpret that sentence very differently. I see it as controlling the labor supply is a great way to prevent the flow of labor that may be just as good and willing to work for less from entering the job market for this activity. It's also a great way to force higher prices upon your customers because no matter which provider/firm they go to they are likely to all have members of the union working there forcing the same wages.
This behavior at its core it anti-competitive. If they were in fact corporations this activity would be a felony. But as employees it is not. Just a thought.
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#66> The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 14-14B lays out the wage floor for its operators at $73.91 per hour. That’s $150,000 a year before overtime, plus benefits equal to $32.50 an hour. When the operator is behind the controls of a tower crane, he gets a $2-an-hour bump. On weekends, when cranes are moved, pay doubles. With overtime, many union members earn half a million dollars a year. And they don…
It'd should be a undocumented person getting paid 6.50 an hour. Looks ripe for some disruption eh? Send in the VC money and sociopaths! Whatever the market will bear!
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#67The first subway in New York City cost about $100 million per kilometer in 1900 (adjusted for inflation of course). The new subway line being opened this year cost $2.2 billion per kilometer. This is despite over a century of improvements in technology. Here's an interesting HN post, "Forty Percent of the Buildings in Manhattan Could Not Be Built Today" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11736696 In that article is…
And the answer, much as it was in ancient times: By exploiting workers - and often letting them die.
So many "accidents" over the last century, and most of them were because the construction companies just didn't care. The life of a sandhog was probably the worst (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhog).
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#68The first subway in New York City cost about $100 million per kilometer in 1900 (adjusted for inflation of course). The new subway line being opened this year cost $2.2 billion per kilometer. This is despite over a century of improvements in technology. Here's an interesting HN post, "Forty Percent of the Buildings in Manhattan Could Not Be Built Today" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11736696 In that article is…
We're still fascinated by the properties of Roman concrete which has, in many cases, survived 2000 years mostly unscathed.
Meanwhile brutalist buildings from the 1950s are crumbling.
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#69Dumb admission of the day: the domain name, crainsnewyork.com, combined with a story about cranes caused a temporary brain short circuit. I thought "holy shit, this is a really impressive website for NY crane wonks".
Ha! I didn't even register that the domain was not spelled cranesnewyork. I, too, saw the URL and thought "a story about a crane on a crane blog, I should be a bit wary of a bias of some sort"
It is, however 1am for me currently and I did not sleep well last night (beware drinking Armenian homemade vodka (a.k.a. Moonshine made with things other than corn) with native Armenians, they don't allow empty glasses until the vodka is gone), so I'm not firing on all cylinders.
Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
waterless ones are patented and without a water line you'd be locked in to higher priced products and/or have to spend a lot of extra money to run a new water line after the walls go up. Generally the situation with waterless ones is people endlessly social signal their green superiority about them, then the incredible stench makes them install real urinals. Even if only 5% or so install real urinals the net cost is…
I think it's very important to be able to let people make these decisions. It's inefficient to add a water line if it's never going to be used. You might believe I'm going to use it, but I might know I'm not going to use it. Maybe you're right, but I am the one paying the bill to tear off finishings to run water lines in the walls.
The problem is that cities don't want buildings torn down every 10 years because it's cheaper for the buyer to just rebuild from the ground up than to fight what essentially amounts to a heap of technical debt. Well-constructed buildings can last centuries: future-proofing is a pretty big deal.