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When did New York start building slowly?

constructionphysics.substack.com

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Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#161

Post by h2odragon »

zdragnar wrote: post #59
klooney wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alon Levy and the transit costs project are a great source of actual hard analysis on this- https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/02/25/the-issue-of-c... has a great concise breakdown, pasted here because no one will click through: Based on around 100 interviews and many diagrams and reports, we managed to decompose the New York construction cost premium over low-cost countries, which is about a full order of magni…

I can't speak too much to the first several points, but noting - agency micromanagement of contractors - general red tape is very fitting and a direct contribution to - too little competition I worked with a startup company ~8 years ago that wanted to go after government contracts. According to the owners, everyone they demo'd the product to said it was very clearly superior to what they were currently using. Unfortu…

> the people who would use it are not the people that sign off on paying for it.

Reminds me of a demo I did for some Congresscritters once. The staffer said "It'll take $50k per record to bring this database online" so they refused to look at the live, running demo I had of the database online. I heard, later, that someone else got "$50k per record" as a contract.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#162

Post by amval »

dazc wrote: post #138
throwaway2037 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spain's high speed rail is criminally underrated. It is an amazing achievement.

Is laying rail across a desert that hard?

Spain is the second most mointanous country in the European Union after Austria. And not a desert. It also seems to be particularly efficient at building infrastructure.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#163

Post by wildrhythms »

eru wrote: post #148
nine_k wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the people that sign off on paying for it. Those people had checklists of irrelevant requirements, slow response times, almost certainly pressure to select "certain" vendors This reads like a lack of democratic influence and even direct corruption. That is, these "stakeholders" are not concerned that the voters would be unhappy with their performance, and would fire them (directly or through an action of a newly el…

I'm not sure. Too me it reads like why too much democracy..

How do you figure that?

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#164

Post by enkid »

nicbou wrote: post #128
Arainach wrote: post #6

Speed is affected by process, and process evolves in reaction to abuse. In the beginning, it's quick to do everything, but as people take advantage - routing contracts to friends, taking safety shortcuts - rules get put into place and those rules affect the time to complete. For New York specifically there's another factor that it's strange the article omitted: Robert Moses. Prior to the mid-1960s, it was fairly simp…

This reminds me of what Dan Carlin called "rolling the monarchy dice" in his Hardcore History podcast. If you get a good dictator, things get done with little friction, because the power rests on a single person's shoulders. But if you get a bad one, you're stuck with it. Democracy might be slower and less inefficient, but it's reliably slower and less efficient.

What's an example of a good "dictator"? I can think of are individuals who willingly gave up power or set up a democratic system after they left, i.e., George Washington, Ataturk, etc. I can't think of a single historical example where someone actually improved the people's situation in their country, but that could be my bias when I think of someone who is good or my ignorance.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#165

Post by waswaswas »

enkid wrote: post #164
nicbou wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of what Dan Carlin called "rolling the monarchy dice" in his Hardcore History podcast. If you get a good dictator, things get done with little friction, because the power rests on a single person's shoulders. But if you get a bad one, you're stuck with it. Democracy might be slower and less inefficient, but it's reliably slower and less efficient.

What's an example of a good "dictator"? I can think of are individuals who willingly gave up power or set up a democratic system after they left, i.e., George Washington, Ataturk, etc. I can't think of a single historical example where someone actually improved the people's situation in their country, but that could be my bias when I think of someone who is good or my ignorance.

Lee Kuan Yew comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#166

Post by wayne »

enkid wrote: post #164
nicbou wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of what Dan Carlin called "rolling the monarchy dice" in his Hardcore History podcast. If you get a good dictator, things get done with little friction, because the power rests on a single person's shoulders. But if you get a bad one, you're stuck with it. Democracy might be slower and less inefficient, but it's reliably slower and less efficient.

What's an example of a good "dictator"? I can think of are individuals who willingly gave up power or set up a democratic system after they left, i.e., George Washington, Ataturk, etc. I can't think of a single historical example where someone actually improved the people's situation in their country, but that could be my bias when I think of someone who is good or my ignorance.

I've often heard Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore cited as an example.

As usual, there's a Wikipedia article listing some others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#167

Post by drchickensalad »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #44
chitowneats wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a simplistic take. European and East Asian democracies build infrastructure far faster and cheaper than the U.S. Often with even more stringent safety regulations and higher standards of quality. The question we are tasked with answering is: why?

Japan (Tokyo, at least), is crazy fast. I remember staying at the Shinagawa Prince, three years in a row, and it overlooks that big-ass office park, on the other side of the station. One year, I look out, and there’s a huge empty lot. The next year, there’s a steel frame, for several buildings. The next year, the lights are on, and the buildings are obviously occupied. Also, their standards are very high. They weathe…

Tokyo standards for residential are legendarily low. People demolish and rebuild when they buy a home because nothing is built to last even a moderate amount of time.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#168

Post by drchickensalad »

asdff wrote: post #85
m0llusk wrote: post #13

Everyone who wants to find fault with modern constructions trots out the Second Avenue Subway as an example. This subway is an obvious route for convenience and as such was first proposed more than a hundred years ago. At that time analysis of the geology and hydrology along the route as well as the very large amount of infrastructure including other subways already in place resulted in the conclusion that a subway a…

The second ave subway was supposed to be a replacement for the elevated train they tore out. At this point, they should consider just building a modern elevate train down second ave if digging is such a boondoggle. I think the only reason it was torn down is that business owners thought it to be unsightly.

0% chance that will happen. It greatly lowers property values which will cause every single owner on the path to come out swinging.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#169

Post by Weneedlead »

winter_blue wrote: post #51
throwaway2037 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. He is probably talking about Hongkong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, China. They all build infra much faster than the US. If we move south, then Malaysia and Singapore also build very fast. For Europe, France builds much faster than the US, but it is more centralised.

What's their secret? How do they keep their standards up, but still build so fast, and so cheap (compared to the US)? It would be amazing if someone could research this, and publish a paper on exactly what reforms the United States needs to make†. † to get to the same speed/quality/cost-efficiency as these countries

[dead]

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#170

Post by [deleted] »

wongarsu wrote: post #150
nicbou wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of what Dan Carlin called "rolling the monarchy dice" in his Hardcore History podcast. If you get a good dictator, things get done with little friction, because the power rests on a single person's shoulders. But if you get a bad one, you're stuck with it. Democracy might be slower and less inefficient, but it's reliably slower and less efficient.

Interestingly, in situations where a bad roll of the monarchy dice isn't a big deal because people can just leave, dictatorship tends to become the preferred form of government. See for example open source projects with their BDFL; if you have a bad BDFL the project gets forked with new leadership. Another example are small to medium sized businesses, where customers and employees can just go elsewhere if the CEO tur…

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