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The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

citylab.com

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Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#111

Post by shard972 »

pcurve wrote: post #103
narrator wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it cost 1 billion dollars a mile to build a subway in San Francisco? Where are all the costs coming from? It's the same with healthcare. Nobody knows why it's so ridiculously expensive. I wish they could hire some smart forensic accountants to figure out what is behind the ridiculous cost and then actually fix the problems by replacing the guys who are price gouging or work with the government to change regu…

Agreed, but the article does explain why it costs absurd amount cost per mile. Unnecessary roles that don't reflect modern construction techniques, high union labor costs, regulations, and concession to people to minimize quality of life disruptions, etc. I'm all for fair wages, but $110+/hour or $225,000/year? Give me a break. You'd have lines going out to NJ if they open up the job to everyone at $85,000/year. I wo…

I wish people could start with that premise in healthcare, that there isn't 1-2 big things causing the US healthcare system to be so expensive.

So many people seem to always have a point about "Oh if we just moved everything to medicare" or "if we just repealed obamacare" as if there is a silver bullet.

The only thing i think we can know for sure about why the US healthcare system is expensive, it's because of what you said, so many special interests groups that all work within the system and gouge each other every day to keep their heads above water.

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#112

Post by [deleted] »

ams6110 wrote: post #104
twblalock wrote: post #75

This ultimately has to come back to voter standards. Other first-world countries in Europe and Asia manage to create comprehensive public transit systems cheaper and faster than the US does -- yet they also have environmental reviews, safety standards, unions, contractors, etc. They are able to do it simply because the people running the city fear that they won't be reelected if they fail to provide comprehensive, pr…

The USA is pretty big and has a lot of sparsely populated area compared to Europe. People living outside major metro areas don't care about public transit, because public transit only works and makes sense in dense urban areas. So people in Upstate New York don't care about mass transit in NYC, and so the representatives they elect to NY state government don't care about it. Public transit honestly is not even on my…

[deleted]

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#113

Post by kasey_junk »

JustAnotherPat wrote: post #88
ucaetano wrote: post #39

The US probably has the best, most efficient private sector of any developed country. And the worst, most inefficient public sector of any developed country. It chooses to prioritize the private sector over the public sector. Other countries choose otherwise. Each model has its advantages and disadvantages. This (efficiency of building public transit) is the outcome of the US model.

We enter public sector with the expectations of the private one. Every public sector worker 'deserves' to be high middle class, which today is defined as 300k+ income easily, and we strive to have as many public sector workers as possible.

Most any definition of upper middle class you find will say that it’s over 100k per family.

Important to remember that when comparing SV tech salaries to the rest of the country.

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#114

Post by lend000 »

twblalock wrote: post #75

This ultimately has to come back to voter standards. Other first-world countries in Europe and Asia manage to create comprehensive public transit systems cheaper and faster than the US does -- yet they also have environmental reviews, safety standards, unions, contractors, etc. They are able to do it simply because the people running the city fear that they won't be reelected if they fail to provide comprehensive, pr…

It comes down to the size of the country, combined with a political voting system that favors incumbents and naturally organizes into a duopoly: First Past the Post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

Approval voting is the future of democracy, if we can manage to get our elected officials to change the law out of their favor. Semi-direct democracy would be a nice addition, too.

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#115

Post by dragonwriter »

lend000 wrote: post #114
twblalock wrote: post #75

This ultimately has to come back to voter standards. Other first-world countries in Europe and Asia manage to create comprehensive public transit systems cheaper and faster than the US does -- yet they also have environmental reviews, safety standards, unions, contractors, etc. They are able to do it simply because the people running the city fear that they won't be reelected if they fail to provide comprehensive, pr…

It comes down to the size of the country, combined with a political voting system that favors incumbents and naturally organizes into a duopoly: First Past the Post. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting Approval voting is the future of democracy, if we can manage to get our elected officials to change the law out of their favor. Semi-direct democracy would be a nice addition, too.

> Approval voting is the future of democracy

Approval voting is good for lots of things, but public elections by secret ballot aren't among them, because outside if open ballots and some kind of defined consequence of a particular vote, “approve” vs. “disspprove” doesn't mean the same thing on different ballots.

For single-winner elections Condorcet-satisfying methods are pretty much the gold standard; but minimizing single-winner elections for ones that can use proportional systems (not necessarily party-list; candidate-centered options like STV are viable) is also an important technique.

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#116

Post by jessriedel »

ucaetano wrote: post #86
jessriedel wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see why we should expect any tradeoff between the two. Most efficiency innovations would transfer.

It isn't about "enfficiency innovations". You always have to make tradeoffs between the collective and the individual, the private and the public. Allowing private companies to extract economic rents from the public is good for the private sector, bad for the public. And vice-versa. Take social expenditures, for example. The US spends 80%-90% of what Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland spend per capita PPP, yet the…

Economic rents benefit owners of entrenched corporations, but they don't make them more efficient. They also don't explain why US corporate practices make foreign companies more efficient when they are exported. And you haven't addressed the difference in public service efficiency since 10% in scale is not nearly large enough to explain order-unity inefficiencies in the US public sector. (And in absolute terms the US is larger, anyways.)

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#118

Post by keithnz »

jorblumesea wrote: post #101
twblalock wrote: post #75

This ultimately has to come back to voter standards. Other first-world countries in Europe and Asia manage to create comprehensive public transit systems cheaper and faster than the US does -- yet they also have environmental reviews, safety standards, unions, contractors, etc. They are able to do it simply because the people running the city fear that they won't be reelected if they fail to provide comprehensive, pr…

Here in the US voters don't punish any elected officials for anything because half don't vote and the other half that do are more concerned about their side "winning" and less concerned about practical day to day considerations like corruption. People would gladly accept a corrupt Democrat over a Republican and vice versa purely based on political lines.

It's difficult to get people out of that mentality even after making changes. Here in NZ we changed to MMP many years ago but many people still vote along party lines. It is slowly changing, but there's still a long way to go.

Re: The U.S. Gets Less Subway for Its Money Than Its Peers

#120

Post by Johnny555 »

bsder wrote: post #31
Hasz wrote: post #6

NYT has a great writeup on the East Side Access tunnel. In short, the costs work out to 3.5bn/mile (!), there's ~200 "ghost" workers, and the usual spot of corruption and favoritism. It's a mess, and the MTA is deferring regular maintenance to pay for it. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

Agenda much? Is anybody in this thread doing basic math? 200 ghost workers at $100K per year (probably a bit high, thanks) is $20 million per year. Um, so much for that causing the cost overrun. Project management is generally the failure. And, generally, it starts with the asinine "low bid" rules. Everyone successful at dealing with the government knows that you bid as low as possible to get the contract and then yo…

Um, so much for that causing the cost overrun.

When there's such blatant fraud, like ghost workers, why do you assume that's the only fraud?

That sounds s bit like the guy that carries a bomb onto the plane because the chances of a terrorist carrying a second bomb and having 2 bombs on the plane must be astronomical.

But his reasoning is as equally faulty as yours -- if he finds it so easy to get a bomb on the plane, so will others.... likewise, if there's blatant fraud going on, it's likely that there's even more, hard to find fraud too.

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