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When did New York start building slowly?

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Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#221

Post by dsfyu404ed »

edgyquant wrote: post #215
eru wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The revolution was a result of taxation by the British Parliament, [...] It's a bit more complicated. Colonials paid lower taxes than people back in England, too. See also https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/12/bruce_bueno_de.html > His stories about George Washington, none of which I knew, are even more fascinating. Bueno de Mesquita claims, quite plausibly, that a huge part of George Washington’s motive for fig…

This seems like a pretty irrelevant derail of the GPs point, no? Regardless the revolution was about their rights as Englishmen being infringed upon, not the amount of taxes paid.

Spending the 1770s paying doing business as usual and paying taxes would have made all the big personalities much wealthier than dragging armies across their place of business and having a country to show for it wound up making them.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#222

Post by dsfyu404ed »

moduspol wrote: post #171
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…

> It's easy to criticize process, but many of the rules were written in blood with the best of intentions. Respectfully, we already know this part. It's at the top of every single thread like this. The more important questions are: * Are all of these rules still necessary? * Are any of these rules more obstructive than beneficial? * Could any of these rules be refactored for a better benefit to obstruction ratio? The…

The problem is that the pro-process people usually have some concrete reason, no matter how bad, outdated or obviously irrelevant for their process. The anti-process people don't have anything because there is no identical control group without the dumb rule.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#223

Post by cyberax »

ryan_lane wrote: post #116
cyberax wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cities that allow for lots of sprawl (eg Houston) are not very nice places to live in many people’s viewpoints. "Many peoples' viewpoints" is a cop-out. You can apply it to ANY phrase: "In many people's viewpoints we should drop a nuke on Manhattan and rebuild it from scratch". If you look at objective data, Houston beats NYC handily in pretty much any important metric. Houston commute is 26 minutes vs 33 minut…

Texas has one of the highest drunk driving scores, and New York has one of the lowest: https://zutobi.com/us/driver-guides/the-us-dui-report . That's just one of the things that makes living in cities with public transportation and less sprawl so much nicer. > Houston commute is 26 minutes vs 33 minutes for NYC. I'd take a 33 minute train commute over a 26 minute car commute any day. I'd take a 1 hour train commute o…

> Texas has one of the highest drunk driving scores, and New York has one of the lowest

And so?

> When you commute by car you have to be paying attention the entire time.

Self-driving software will fix this within a decade. It's technically already legal to read books and watch TV in a car, if you own one particular high-end car model.

> You need to also include the cost of transportation, which brings this figure a lot closer

Cost of transportation is a whole another issue. Because then you need to include the local taxes that are used to build and maintain transportation infrastructure.

> You also have to take into consideration the fact that sprawl forces you into that car pretty often. You need to use the car to go grocery shopping, whereas you can walk to a grocery store in a dense city.

Yes, and? Car also allows me to just do 2 trips a week to the store to get groceries for 4 people for several days. I had to do a grocery run every day when I lived in a dense city. That's easily another 30-40 minutes wasted every day.

> On a total usage basis, public transportation is considerably cheaper than roads, because as a whole, public transportation tends to be very highly used

That's not true. The average bus load in the US is 16 people. This makes it close to the car cost, only just a bit more efficient. It also does not consider the cost of wasted personal time.

> When roads are heavily used, the throughput decreases, commute times increase, and expanding roads doesn't help that situation.

It does, actually. More roads/lanes almost always increase throughput. They don't necessarily increase the average _speed_.

But guess what, the transit speed is _slower_ than cars pretty much everywhere.

Have you personally lived in Houston or another car-oriented city in the US? Or are you just reading the horror stories about "car hells"? Try it yourself to see the drawbacks and advantages.

I personally had lived in Europe and used transit and biking a lot. Including the bike hell of Amsterdam. I got my driving license at the age of 30 and my first car at 32.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#224

Post by mike50 »

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

A functional central government comes to mind.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#225

Post by cyberax »

JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote: post #216
cyberax wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sprawl leads to cheaper housing at the cost of more expensive infrastructure costs Nope. Sprawl's infrastructure cost is about the same as urban cost over time. This is because maintenance of city infrastructure is way more expensive. "Expensive roads" are also a myth. As I said, one mile of NYC subway can cost as much as 1000 miles of 6-lane freeway. Or another point, Seattle is building subway expansion at the co…

Your choice of metrics is so nonsensical it can only be bad faith. For the other readers, I'll submit some more relevant questions. NYC subway is more expensive per meter? No shit. What's the ROI? How many passengers per day? What do you think are the economic payoffs for those investments ? What survey showed 80% of respondents preferring suburbs? A suburb versus what ? What kind of respondents do you think they got…

> NYC subway is more expensive per meter? No shit. What's the ROI? How many passengers per day? What do you think are the economic payoffs for those investments?

I don't think infrastructure in NYC is cost-effective. For that matter, infrastructure in Seattle (where I live now) is not cost effective.

Its ROI is in fact negative, as it forces further unsustainable agglomeration of wealth in a small area, while starving smaller cities.

> What survey showed 80% of respondents preferring suburbs?

It's a metric that is pretty constant with only small variations: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/america...

> A suburb versus what?

Dense urban areas.

> What happens if/when the cities stop subsidizing the completely financially insolvent surrounding areas?

Sigh. Cities do not subsidize suburbs. Most of the US wealth is generated by people living in suburbs.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#226

Post by mike50 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #114
debacle wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France has real unions. The US has graft disguised as organized labor, and New York has some of the worst.

Graft, maybe, maybe not, but the real hallmark of US unions is their general refusal to be political organizations, unlike their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere. Oh, sure, they throw money in the pot for candidates, but in Europe, unions take actual political positions on important matters. They do not often get their way, but they act as an important counterweight in politics to the interests of the rich and po…

Not select public sector unions in New York. PBA and NYUST get whatever they want.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#227

Post by eldritch_4ier »

It seems like so much of society is affected by mutual trust. Without mutual trust, inevitably that gap is made up with contracts, and processes, and laws, and rules, because that's the only way people can coordinate on the same page.

As the US becomes more and more divided on every level: ideologically, religiously, ethnically, culturally, etc this is only going to continue.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#228

Post by Symbiote »

Retric wrote: post #217
Symbiote wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> still continuing with only 12.7 miles in operation No, 23.7 miles are in operation. 12.7 miles is the amount that opened in the first stage in 2002. Washington DC has a population greater than the whole of Denmark, and the DC metro was opened decades ago, so I don't think it's a useful comparison.

How are you getting those numbers? The original line M1 is 13.9 km. The total length of all lines adds up to 20.4 km counting the shared 7.7km section used by M1, and M2 once. “The metro consists of four lines, M1, M2, M3 and M4. M1 and M2 share a common 7.69-kilometre (4.78 mi) section from Vanløse to Christianshavn,[3] where they split along two lines: M1 follows the Ørestad Line to Vestamager, while M2 follows the…

I read the first line of the second paragraph ("The original 20.4-kilometre (12.7 mi) system opened in October 2002") and the "System length: 38.2km (23.7mi)" bit from the infobox.

The paragraph you quoted mixes up the situation from before M3/M4 opened with the situation after. I also see where you have taken 13.9km for M1, but on M1's own article page it says 14.3km. Danish Wikipedia gives different figures again.

M1's total length is around 14km, M3 is 15.5km. Christianshavn to the airport is 7km by road, Østerport to Orientkaj about 3km, so the total is roughly 40km.

57 million annual riders on the Washington Metro doesn't seem so much for such a large city. There must be a good chance of getting a seat :-)

Copenhagen's metro claims 107 million annual riders, but the older and more extensive S-train also has 116 million annual riders. Supposedly the total comes to 183 million riders of either/both annually.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#229

Post by rr808 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #30
rr808 wrote: post #10

I was surprised to see most construction sites only have one shift working. Sites work around 8->4, 5 days a week. Not sure if that is city regulation or union workforce.

That’s when most people want to work. Do you want to work 4-midnight or midnight-8? Even if you do, many other people don’t want the noise of a working construction site at those hours.

I regularly work until midnight. I'd think lots of construction people are young and/or immigrants without families here. If you offered them a night shift with overtime pay is a good choice.

Re: When did New York start building slowly?

#230

Post by ryan_lane »

cyberax wrote: post #223
ryan_lane wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas has one of the highest drunk driving scores, and New York has one of the lowest: https://zutobi.com/us/driver-guides/the-us-dui-report . That's just one of the things that makes living in cities with public transportation and less sprawl so much nicer. > Houston commute is 26 minutes vs 33 minutes for NYC. I'd take a 33 minute train commute over a 26 minute car commute any day. I'd take a 1 hour train commute o…

> Texas has one of the highest drunk driving scores, and New York has one of the lowest And so? > When you commute by car you have to be paying attention the entire time. Self-driving software will fix this within a decade. It's technically already legal to read books and watch TV in a car, if you own one particular high-end car model. > You need to also include the cost of transportation, which brings this figure a…

> Self-driving software will fix this within a decade.

And it'll be powered by fusion energy!

> It's technically already legal to read books and watch TV in a car, if you own one particular high-end car model.

This isn't true. No car has reached level 5, which means that you're required to be able to take over. I'd really hope you're not doing this. If this is legal anywhere, those politicians are truly idiots.

> Cost of transportation is a whole another issue. Because then you need to include the local taxes that are used to build and maintain transportation infrastructure.

This one actually hurts a bit, because a very large percentage of road infrastructure is funded by federal taxes, which I'd really love to reduce, whereas a majority of public transportation is funded by local or state taxes. Another thing to note is that public transportation is partially funded by usage, whereas road infrastructure is not.

You need to include cost of transportation, because the cost of a car is extremely high, and this disproportionally affects the poor.

> I had to do a grocery run every day when I lived in a dense city. That's easily another 30-40 minutes wasted every day.

> Yes, and? Car also allows me to just do 2 trips a week to the store to get groceries for 4 people for several days.

The grocery store is just one example. You also need to fill your gas tank 1-2 times a week, wash the car, take it in for maintenance, etc. Every restaurant trip is a car ride, when you want to go to a bar, a car ride (or hopefully a taxi/lyft/uber). Thanks to density, I can walk to all of these things in ~10 minutes.

> The average bus load in the US is 16 people.

Again, using an average here isn't reasonable, especially when you're averaging across the US. You need to look at cities that have good public transportation that ubiquitous enough for use. NYC, and SF, for instance have considerably higher bus loads. When you look at train loads it's not even close to comparable.

See a comparison of the BART and the bay bridge, where the BART is 2x more efficient during rush hour: https://twitter.com/SFBART/status/1121516583409446912

The BART isn't even a great system to consider. The NYC subway's ridership is far higher.

> More roads/lanes almost always increase throughput.

No, they increase bandwidth. Throughput is how much is moved over a period of time. There's a lot of studies about this. See this article for just one example: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/widen-highways-traffic...

> But guess what, the transit speed is _slower_ than cars pretty much everywhere.

Not in cities with subway systems, or in cities where transit is prioritized over cars.

> Have you personally lived in Houston or another car-oriented city in the US?

I grew up in New Orleans (until around 30). I've lived in SF, NYC, and Tokyo. I've traveled lots of places. I have enough experience between both to know which is obviously superior in terms of general life quality.

Cities with sprawl are less fun. Commuting sucks (especially during commuter hours, where you get stuck in traffic). Parking sucks. Maintaining a car sucks. Paying the expense of cars sucks. Not being able to walk anywhere because cars are the priority sucks.

Walkable cities are more fun. There's a reason that people go to vacation to these places, and not places like houston.

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