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Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

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Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#221

Post by trapperkeeper79 »

jaredhansen wrote: post #160
thekevan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but remember this is New York City. In the original article, when the crane was first used on jobs and word got around about it being less expensive and required fewer operator man hours, his job sites were picketed by unions. There were anonymous calls to 311 reporting violations but when the inspectors got there, they didn't find anything wrong. In my mind, I'm skeptical and it could have been the cranes or i…

Here's a fun story about union influence in NYC (with a little twist I hope you'll indulge[1]): In 2005, I moved into a 19th-floor apartment in lower Manhattan. My girlfriend and I spent about 12 hours at IKEA getting everything needed to furnish the place. By the time we finished taking (2!) taxies back from Jersey with all my stuff, it was about midnight on a Friday night. It took another hour or so to schlep every…

This reminded me of my time in NYC :)

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#222

Post by floatrock »

valuearb wrote: post #165

This is why it's so important to have government regulation, so that an interested party can use their political connections to guarantee themselves monopoly profits.

It can go the other way too. Sometimes interested parties use their political connections to guarantee themselves, you know, clean air and clean drinking water.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#223

Post by trapperkeeper79 »

VLM wrote: post #21
jakelarkin wrote: post #7

This is sort of like how when the waterless urinal was first commercialized, the plumbers union blocked it from getting approved in the general building code. Eventually a compromised was reached that involves requiring a plumber to draw an water line (unutilized) to every water-less install. Unions for skilled, high-pay jobs in highly regulated industries really extract a lot of questionable value from society.

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…

The plumbing unions made some dumb arguments about toxic gas coming up from the sewer IIRC. Why does the regulation care about costs anyways?

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#224

Post by Animats »

dzdt wrote: post #25

The New York Department of Buildings response to this article (June 2016) : Skypicker presented the department with plans for a small, truck-mounted crane... However, when we inspected the Skypicker in use at a construction site, we found something significantly different: The crane was attached to a building slab, and appeared to be a hodgepodge of parts from other cranes, mounted on a homemade, untested base. http:…

The base does look a bit iffy.[1] Only a few of the bolt holes have bolts in them.

[1] https://youtu.be/5_PjCwMEdSY?t=80

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#225

Post by kafkaesq »

notgood wrote: post #167
kafkaesq wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're openly protesting. City agencies don't just cave in to protests at the drop of the hat. Especially not NYC agencies. So again, what I request is simply: evidence , not speculation.

That's the thing about "motives", that you can't never prove or disprove one unless confessed by the "motivator" right?. So the only way to gather "evidence" would be to test the system and see if its actually dangerous or if its all bs.

That's the thing about "motives", that you can't never prove or disprove one unless confessed by the "motivator" right?

So... ya might as well just believe whichever side of the coin you like better, right?

Works for some people, I guess.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#226

Post by kelnos »

ubernostrum wrote: post #191
hoorayimhelping wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comment offers examples (that many people in New York on his site have experienced) and you fire back with some nonsense about some kind of PR campaign? Consider the possibility that people have had awful personal experiences dealing with unions (we hired a part time guy to help out cleaning our office and the office management threatened to shut down our building access because we didn't use approved union labor) th…

OK, so the comment compares to Paris, Madrid and Barcelona. Consider that in France and Spain, there are labor unions which make even the US' strongest, most ruthless and overbearing unions look like weaklings. If labor unions are the source of problems, Paris, Madrid and Barcelona would have the same problems but orders of magnitude worse. Yet the comment claims -- and note I'm not passing judgment on whether this i…

I think it's just a lot more nuanced than that.

Unions have done amazing things to increase worker pay and benefits up from horribly inadequate levels, and to increase safety standards. But they've also don't some pretty bad anti-competitive, rent-seeking, protectionist things as well. Getting rid of them certainly isn't the answer, but letting them do bad things is unacceptable as well.

No one is saying "everything that unions do is bad and they should go away". But it's equally naive to suggest that unions never do bad things at all.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#227

Post by mcguire »

flogic wrote: post #161
cperciva wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could, and did, get approved as a mobile crane. Then it was unapproved, thanks to political pressure.

Looking at the crane though. Approving it as a mobile crane seems a bit on the bonkers side. Mobile cranes are self contained units and provide their own stability through mass. This bolts to the building. Which, if memory serves, was where building cranes were failing a few years back.

It's based on a JOMAC[1] boom crane, which are intended to be used on trucks.

I can see why someone might want to have them tested before approving them.

[1] http://www.jomacltd.com/mobile_cranes/telescoping_boom/

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#228

Post by kelnos »

CPLX wrote: post #116
unethical_ban wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that unions are great in theory and in many circumstances have proven themselves corrupt to the core in practice.

Consider that [investors|police|politicians|priests|religions|banks|unions|wives|airport taxis|pets|corporations|executives] are great in theory and in many circumstances have proven themselves corrupt to the core in practice.

What's your point? We complain about corruption in all those other things as well, and no one suggests it's "professional elitism" to do so.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#229

Post by kafkaesq »

hehheh wrote: post #164
kafkaesq wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that there's no direct evidence of union shenanigans, in this case. Yes, conceivably the DOB could be in backroom cahoots with Local 14-14B, and nixing the crane on stated grounds of structural design concerns -- whilst in reality having other motives. And not only "conceivably"; stuff like this happens in NYC all the time. But we'd still need to see some actual evidence of such collusion, please; not just spe…

Ok. What laws do we need to pass and enforce to allow us to collect and share that evidence? Would any such legislation pass?

Most likely there are already processes in place to get down to the truth on matters like these. Slow-moving processes - but processes, nonetheless. You know - formal appeals, FOIA requests, lawsuits, expert testimony - that sort of thing.

But this all makes for poor ad copy, of course. "Bold, Crafty Innovator Thwarted, 'Cause Unions!" -- that's what gets people to click on your article. And share it in venues such as this one.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#230

Post by kelnos »

RangerScience wrote: post #43
fiter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kiiiinnnnda. People make bad decisions, and the only architecture that matters is the one that lets you change. It's like the dig-once fiber policy for roadways, and is all part of the "don't build to peak value" idea; it's also like a usual problem with user interface design: if you only ever built user tools to do what you imagined, users (or later owners / tenants) are limited to your imagination. I go to a gym in…

Dig-once policy for roadways makes sense because the roadway is a public good, and digging multiple times would cause problems for the public, and would cost more for the public, so the _public_ is well within its rights to require this policy.

Requiring a water line in a building is not the same thing. It's a private building, and the people who own it are well within their rights to decide to risk later disruption and cost if they need water lines. Legislating away that right is insanity and just make-work that costs the building owner money up-front for something they've decided they don't need.

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