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Why American Construction Costs Are So High

pedestrianobservations.com

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Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#121

Post by ci5er »

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…

I'm super happy that you are happy.

I'm less than sanguine about the fact that you and your people compel others to bear the burden of your personal value choices.

As well as paying for the burden of the corruption involved in Bostonian construction projects that (at least) doubled the cost of what it should have gone for.

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#122

Post by ars »

arthur_pryor wrote: post #85
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…

less constructively: taxpayers who complain about bad infrastructure but who don't want to pay taxes to fund better infrastructure can shut the fuck up. please, , take my money. build me a decent public transit system and provide high quality services.

How much money though?

It's impossible to pay for everything. The way you talk you want unlimited funds spent on public transportation - but then what happens to all the other expenses? Just don't fund them?

> but who don't want to pay taxes to fund better infrastructure can shut the fuck up.

Or maybe, they want limited funds spent. There is nothing at all wrong with that.

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#123

Post by acchow »

ben_jones wrote: post #99
vinay427 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Van Ness in SF has been torn up for years and multiple businesses have closed as a result while most manage to stay open. I think access to roads is less important in places like SF because parking is impossible anyways - people who were going to shop there are already walking. Plus there's a minor surplus of business provided by the construction workers who have to stand around in groups of five for 7 hours a day in…

The irony of Van Ness is what they're building isn't even underground.

How does bus rapid transit take so many years to build?

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#124

Post by xfitm3 »

wwweston wrote: post #101
nck4222 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that the attitude shown in the quote is undesirable, I think it's more a symptom of the problem, not the underlying problem itself. He's essentially right. Infrastructure projects are constantly shot down because of cost concerns, yet we have crumbling infrastructure that needs to be replaced. If estimates became higher, approvals would decrease. One other piece I haven't seen mentioned yet: large const…

One factor in play is that many people only have experience with household-scale budgets. An intuition about what "millions" (let alone "billions") actually represents in terms of economic power is hazy at best. Business scale budgets sound extravagant; metropolis-scale or state-scale budgets are mind-boggling. How does such a person know what's "too much"? Absent a reasonable working model of costs involved in infra…

I think you have a great point but it’s only part of the problem. I can affirm your sentiment with anecdotal experience. At my company cost discrepancies of less than 20k are considered a rounding error.

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#125

Post by xfitm3 »

chii wrote: post #100
nck4222 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that the attitude shown in the quote is undesirable, I think it's more a symptom of the problem, not the underlying problem itself. He's essentially right. Infrastructure projects are constantly shot down because of cost concerns, yet we have crumbling infrastructure that needs to be replaced. If estimates became higher, approvals would decrease. One other piece I haven't seen mentioned yet: large const…

Why can't the cost of materials be hedged against rising? Costs above initial estimates should only happen when there's an unknown (e.g, digging discovered a really hard rock layer that nobody knew about). Or weather issues beyond prediction (like tornadoes or hurricanes).

Are you assuming cost increases are due to materials? labor is a huge cost, it might even exceed materials.

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#126

Post by icebraining »

bane wrote: post #84
MarkSweep wrote: post #74

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…

I think part of it has to do with how the lines are financed and built. In Japan and Korea for example, individual companies own the lines and stations and basically use them to funnel customers to shopping areas where they actually make their money. 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…

As far as I know, stations in Western EU are also mostly public works, and they do have shops. As an example, Brussels-Central has multiple coffeeshops (including a Starbucks), a waffle kiosk, a fast-food joint, a newsstand, and even a small supermarket.

And funny you should mention libraries; my local public library has a private café inside (not in the reading area, of course).

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#129

Post by eropple »

aero142 wrote: post #77
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?

Profoundly, yes. Downtown Boston was a dismal place when I was a kid. It was dark. The overheads sucked so, so hard.

I've worked downtown for years now and it's a pleasant place to be.

Re: Why American Construction Costs Are So High

#130

Post by paulddraper »

the_economist wrote: post #6
paulddraper wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, residential/commercial construction costs are actually relatively low historically speaking. (The land that you build it on is another matter.)

https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/whats-up-with-construction-co... Real construction costs are 50% higher than they were in the 1950s, according to our analysis.

That is attributed entirely to increased labor costs and almost all of that in increasingly large urban centers (which also have a lot of construction).

So basically.... Apples to apples it hasn't gone up. It's simply that people are buying more construction in urban areas.

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