81–90 of 164 posts
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 ve…
Government. I didn't read it, but that's the reason.
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…
I hope the irony of this topic being discussed on a (mostly) software-related forum isn’t lost on anyone.
or rather, is it even ironic? it seems totally germane to a forum full of geeks with a wide spectrum of interests, many (most?) of whom are software devs.
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 ve…
In the U.S. they are built as public works projects and owned in the end by some local municipal authority. Since they are public property, there's no incentive/ability to conduct commerce there. It would be like having a McDonalds inside of a library.
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…
please, , take my money. build me a decent public transit system and provide high quality services.
NYC MTA is a great example of why. We need to put blame on all parties involved politicians, corporations and labor unions. Anyone who unconditionally defends labor is naive at best. NYT reports: “Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsew…
http://gothamist.com/2017/06/28/new_south_ferry_subway_stati...
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 ve…
Regarding point 9 about the inability to look outside North America. I always wondered why it seems transit agencies haven't looked to bring in teams of people who have managed/built successful projects in Europe, Asia, or even closer like Mexico City. California HSR for example went to solicit bids from foreign operators and selected Deutsche Bahn/German Railways. But AFAIK the initial design work/RFP/proposals were…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> urban sidewalk, sewer and road construction In many places in the US, these smaller infrastructure projects are done by city crews, not contractors. These crews employ friends and friends of friends hired by political managers, not people who know what they are doing. Where I live for example, the quality of any street paving done by the city vs. done by a private contractor is markedly inferior.
Why does this happen? I thought US was famous for favoring small government and zealous for tax dollars to be well spent.
In reality local government has almost zero transparency and people don't care about local government as much so it's a massive exercise in grift. Money disappears, contracts are given out to someone's friend at a jacked up price, a few officials can block a project completely, safety specs are ignored, etc. etc. etc.
If a project ordered at the state or federal level ever makes it into existence you can guarantee hundreds of hands have squeezed every dollar out of it for themselves or their friends long before a shovel ever broke ground.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Every single tax dollar can be raised to relieve poor sick children of their ailments.