Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

citylab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 179 posts

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

#121

Post by ska »

ucaetano wrote: post #84
ska wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US probably has the best, most efficient private sector of any developed country. All you have to do is look at healthcare to realize this is (at least a) questionable assertion. I mean, it's dogmatic to believe so as an American but it's at least worth a proper look at.

> All you have to do is look at healthcare to realize this is (at least a) questionable assertion. Healthcare companies are more profitable in the US than anywhere else in the world. Yep, "most efficient private sector" still applies.

You realize that’s not what efficient means, right?

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

#122

Post by ska »

indoordinosaur wrote: post #78
ska wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US probably has the best, most efficient private sector of any developed country. All you have to do is look at healthcare to realize this is (at least a) questionable assertion. I mean, it's dogmatic to believe so as an American but it's at least worth a proper look at.

I would argue that because healthcare is so regulated its more of a public sector thing. Also, an enormous amount of money going into the healthcare sector comes from public sources (medicare, medicaid, obamacare, etc.) Note: I'm not saying regulation is bad. Just making the point that healthcare is really not a free-market in this country and never has been.

Almost nothing is a free market - so you have to be careful of the no true Scotsman fallacy.

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

#123

Post by adventured »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #109
ams6110 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Pretty tired of "$REGION is too big and sparsely settled for transit" argument. British Columbia is over 2x the size of California, with about 1/10th the population but the city of Vancouver, the only large urban area in the province, has consistently high transit usage and investment. In fact, projections for transit usage have understated the growth in transit usage.

The lack of population density is a benefit in many regards. Texas is likely going to soon deploy high-speed rail at a cost not much higher than Western European standards or equivalent (adjusting for economic variance). There are two good reasons for that: Texas is far more friendly toward development, and there is a lot of sparsley settled, inexpensive land.

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

#124

Post by dukoid »

potatolicious wrote: post #50
rco8786 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still only $73mil/year. A small fraction of the billions.

That's the tip of the iceberg - the linked article goes into much more detail. Procurement practice and staffing practice are huge contributors to the excessive cost. The projects are massively overstaffed contrasted with comparable projects elsewhere - the article: > "The staffing of tunnel-boring machines came up repeatedly in interviews with contractors. The so-called T.B.M.s are massive contraptions, weighing ove…

The sad thing is that there would be probably more work / employment in subway construction in total if subway construction was cheaper...

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

#125

Post by adventured »

bmelton wrote: post #71
kken wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Groceries Are you serious? Groceries in the US are surprisingly expensive compared to Europe.

According to NationMaster[1], we're the 43rd most expensive. Notables that are more expensive than the U.S. include Switzerland, Norway, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Japan, Belgium, the UK, Canada, Austria, Italy. Notables with cheaper groceries are Germany, Netherlands, Greece, Spain, Poland, Ukraine. [1] - http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Cost-of-livin...

And Germany is about to work some of its grocery magic on the US, likely pushing prices down even further, as Lidl invades. Amazon will also likely have a positive effect.

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

#126

Post by humanrebar »

ska wrote: post #122
indoordinosaur wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that because healthcare is so regulated its more of a public sector thing. Also, an enormous amount of money going into the healthcare sector comes from public sources (medicare, medicaid, obamacare, etc.) Note: I'm not saying regulation is bad. Just making the point that healthcare is really not a free-market in this country and never has been.

Almost nothing is a free market - so you have to be careful of the no true Scotsman fallacy.

No True Scotsman is about moving goalposts within a conversation. Bringing up, say, a lack of transparent pricing for commodity services (x-rays or pregnancy tests, for example) isn't a No True Scotsman fallacy.

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

#127

Post by adventured »

GuiA wrote: post #46
bkohlmann wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For market based goods, the US does deliver pretty phenomenal, innovative and minimally priced outputs. Groceries, energy, technology, etc. "Local services" are almost always driven by non-market based considerations. Politics, not economics, determines contract awards for public works. It's as far from the market as you can get. And our society receives commensurate "value."

Heh. True in some ways, not in some others. Groceries for example - yes, I can buy chicken at Walmart for much cheaper than I would in the EU, for instance. But the chicken I’d buy in the EU would be of much higher quality. If I want a comparable chicken (not cage raised, not full of hormones, etc), I’ll end up going to Whole Foods or similar upscale store and end up paying roughly the same as I would in the EU.

You can avoid the steroids et al. at most any Walmart at this point. Tyson is completely removing such from their chicken products. You're primarily going to struggle to find free range inexpensively in the US.

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

#128

Post by Rebelgecko »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #109
ams6110 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Pretty tired of "$REGION is too big and sparsely settled for transit" argument. British Columbia is over 2x the size of California, with about 1/10th the population but the city of Vancouver, the only large urban area in the province, has consistently high transit usage and investment. In fact, projections for transit usage have understated the growth in transit usage.

I'm not very familiar with British Columbia, but does the whole province have public transportation on par with Vancouver? If not, that seems to support the comment about regional sparseness...

The city I live in (Los Angeles) covers an area 10x bigger than Vancouver. Even when you compare the metro areas, Vancouver is ~4 times denser

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

#129

Post by adventured »

ska wrote: post #122
indoordinosaur wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that because healthcare is so regulated its more of a public sector thing. Also, an enormous amount of money going into the healthcare sector comes from public sources (medicare, medicaid, obamacare, etc.) Note: I'm not saying regulation is bad. Just making the point that healthcare is really not a free-market in this country and never has been.

Almost nothing is a free market - so you have to be careful of the no true Scotsman fallacy.

Except that's nowhere close to a no true Scotman context.

The US healthcare system is extremely far away from being a free market style system. Healthcare hardly even crosses state lines. It's absurdly regulated. It's about as regressive in terms of markets as it gets these days. Over half the US system is government healthcare now, either directly or indirectly; eg heavy subsidies, SSD, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, VA, numerous other programs.

Part of the reason for the vast cost inflation, is that the system has gradually spread out to cover a lot more people over the last 30 years. 5% of people are half of the cost in the US system. In a market system, if you focus on covering the other far healthier 95%, the system is dramatically cheaper - that's how it worked in the 1970s-1990s, and US healthcare was radically less expensive. 50% of people in the system (in terms of cost) are only 3% of the total cost of all healthcare in the US, you can cover those people for extremely inexpensively in a free market system.

By changing the system as they have, such that you commingle government and quasi-private systems, you risk dramatically screwing up a private market system and the government system simultaneously. Ultimately you can do one or the other, you can't do both at the same time and in the same phone booth where they constantly collide. You get the worst aspects of both worlds, which is what the US now has.

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

#130

Post by astrodust »

indoordinosaur wrote: post #76
rco8786 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still only $73mil/year. A small fraction of the billions.

Realize that these projects often take up to a decade. $730 million is a lot of wasted money and probably how much an entire line costs in some countries.

It's also subject to inflationary pressure.
Post reply on HN