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

Why American Construction Costs Are So High

pedestrianobservations.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 164 posts

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#71

Post by thisisweirdok »

The Big Dig in Boston was originally estimated to cost $8 billion. People were upset about this.

There were multiple problems along the way. It ultimately ended up costing $22 billion. People were also upset about this.

At the end of the day? It was an awesome project. They completely buried a highway that cut through the city, and added a ton of green space downtown (The Greenway).

The city is better for it. Taxpayers would never have allowed it if they had their way.

We need a similar program to revitalize the MBTA. It should be done regardless of the cost. I will happily pay more real estate taxes and highway tolls for the rest of my life to support it.

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#72

Post by danp »

vinay427 wrote: post #33
alwaysdoit wrote: post #32

> In Paris, as well as Athens, Madrid, Mexico City, Caracas, Santiago, Copenhagen, Budapest, and I imagine other cities for which I can’t find this information, metro stations are built cut-and-cover... There is extensive street disruption, for about 18 months in the case of Paris, but the merchants and residents get a subway station at the end of the works. The cost of using a more expensive method ($750M per statio…

I'm actually curious: how do those businesses, particularly smaller ones, survive 18 months of highly impeded traffic?

As an example, the Los Angeles Metro actually has a "Business Interruption Fund" that they use to help small businesses in areas impacted by street-level construction (like subway station construction sites).

https://www.metro.net/projects/business-interruption-fund/

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#73

Post by jessaustin »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #38
bluedino wrote: post #12

One of my first jobs in IT was for a big general contractor. We built schools, hotels, restaurants, you name it. Whenever we had a government project, like a building for the county, a jail, new secretary of state/dmv office...we went way over budget and way over schedule. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. We'd have a 'groundbreaking ceremony' and then not be able to actually dig at the site for 12 more days because permits got t…

"the government" is more a loose confederation of public agencies. They're not a monolith that has the ability to know everything about everything, especially at the local and county levels. I don't know the specifics of that case, but last minute citizen protests or protests that weren't able to be resolved quickly enough are another issue. It's also not like this doesn't happen in the private sector. A company boug…

What are they putting in, a slaughterhouse? Maybe a brothel? What horrible business can't be accepted on "the main road"?

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#74

Post by MarkSweep »

The part about mezzanines struck me. BART has huge barren mezzanines. There is not one shop in the entire station. The other subways I've visited in the US (Boston, DC, NYC) also don't have any shops except in some of the largest like Grand Central or Penn station.

Compare this with subways and train stations in Japan which often have shops in the mezzanines and sometimes at the platform. There are always at least vending machines at the platform. I don't think this is unique to Japan, I recall there being shops in the station in Korea, Taiwan, and London too.

Why do the stations in our supposed capitalistic society not have any shops?

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#75

Post by shereadsthenews »

conanbatt wrote: post #26
jonawesomegreen wrote: post #11

News that the Transbay Terminal is something like $300 million over budget should not come as a shock to anyone. We always knew the initial estimate was way under the real cost. Just like we never had a real cost for the Central Subway or the Bay Bridge or any other massive construction project. So get off it. In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost…

Thats purely corruption. I always explain to my argentinian friends, used to the petty corruption of putting friends and family in public positions, that the us does corruption at a much bigger scale: at the legal one. The transbay terminal is one of the biggest rip-offs ever. It cost the revenue of sales taxes of the city for years. And it doesn't even work, while the "transient" station that must have cost almost n…

Transbay was financed via the TJPA by auctioning off the rights to build very tall buildings near it. It wasn’t financed by sales taxes.

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#76

Post by acomjean »

thisisweirdok wrote: post #71

The Big Dig in Boston was originally estimated to cost $8 billion. People were upset about this. There were multiple problems along the way. It ultimately ended up costing $22 billion. People were also upset about this. At the end of the day? It was an awesome project. They completely buried a highway that cut through the city, and added a ton of green space downtown (The Greenway). The city is better for it. Taxpaye…

It is a great project and allowed the city to expand into places that were very inaccessible (south boston). Having a second tunnel to the airport is actually the best part in my opinion.

People here are VERY untrusting of any government projects because of this project. See the Olympic bid that was supposed to have all sorts of public sector improvements rejected (well who rejected who is another story)

But traffic on 93 (the tunneled highway) is back or worse than pre-upgrade levels (some of the worst traffic in the country here in Boston), the public transit promised as part of the project is finally being worked on (green line extension) but it all seems like its not enough. Housing prices in the Boston area are at SanFran/NYC levels.

We need more infrasturure in boston. We have good proposals (North-South rail link, south shore rail) but lack a governor /politicians who will be honest and tell people they need to pay for this stuff.

Public transit is so bad here that a running club raced one of the green line trolleys (I'll let you guess who wins)

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/04/race-pits-runne...

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#77

Post by aero142 »

thisisweirdok wrote: post #71

The Big Dig in Boston was originally estimated to cost $8 billion. People were upset about this. There were multiple problems along the way. It ultimately ended up costing $22 billion. People were also upset about this. At the end of the day? It was an awesome project. They completely buried a highway that cut through the city, and added a ton of green space downtown (The Greenway). The city is better for it. Taxpaye…

But is it $22 billion better?

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#78

Post by lsllc »

thisisweirdok wrote: post #71

The Big Dig in Boston was originally estimated to cost $8 billion. People were upset about this. There were multiple problems along the way. It ultimately ended up costing $22 billion. People were also upset about this. At the end of the day? It was an awesome project. They completely buried a highway that cut through the city, and added a ton of green space downtown (The Greenway). The city is better for it. Taxpaye…

Agreed on the MBTA. However rather than build new lines (e.g. Green line extn) let's put in overhead electrification on the commuter rail and let Green line style trolleys go out to the all of the 'burbs inside 128.

Also, we have tolls on the tunnels & bridges around Boston for the locals, but those who live in southern NH (presumably avoiding MA taxes) and are pounding up and down 25 miles of I-93 every day don't pay anything. They probably don't even buy their gas in MA.

Put electronic tolling on I-93 & Route 3 just south of the NH line. That would raise funds for the MBTA and spread the cost to those actually using the roads.

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#79

Post by arthur_pryor »

jonawesomegreen wrote: post #11

News that the Transbay Terminal is something like $300 million over budget should not come as a shock to anyone. We always knew the initial estimate was way under the real cost. Just like we never had a real cost for the Central Subway or the Bay Bridge or any other massive construction project. So get off it. In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost…

besides the inherent difficulty of estimating the resources required to finish a large project that hasn't been done before...

i think what willie brown describes here is also part of the problem providing estimates for the time required to complete software projects: if we gave more honest answers as devs, bosses and people signing contracts would blanche, so instead of standing firm, we go lower, or cut corners, or both.

i think the two things compounded together (inherent difficulty of estimating large unique projects, aversion to seeing real costs) are why estimates so often skew too low when we're trying to predict how long it will take to write a thing.

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#80

Post by klyrs »

toephu2 wrote: post #64
wrs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope the irony of this topic being discussed on a (mostly) software-related forum isn’t lost on anyone.

It is lost on me. What do high construction costs have to do with HN?

The title itself is deficient -- this isn't an article about general construction costs, it's specifically about rail transit construction.
Post reply on HN