How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

What would need to be true for SF to replicate this? Would we need alignment at the mayor, state assembly and SFMTA levels?

- Figuring out NIMBY-ism. Anywhere you run a tunnel you're gonna have people suing you and stalling for decades. Less so if you use a tunnel bore machine, but cut and cover is pretty much a non-starter.

- Cost of labor is insanely high due to cost of housing. Short of jumping straight back into the 19th century, setting up temporary housing and bringing in guest laborers this is pretty much non-negotiable.

- Not a ton of expertise left in the country since there's 2 new subway tunnels a decade AFAIK.

- The grift has got to be worse here than in Spain. There if you get $40k in kickbacks that's a nice bonus, here that barely covers your rent for the year.

And then even if you bring the costs down, you have to figure out the taxation. Several billion per mile is the running rate and you may be able to bring that down but then you have ongoing costs. Muni's farebox recovery is only 1/4 of its budget so unless you're making existing lines redundant, there's new ongoing cost. Obviously the choices there will be to go into the pockets of the middle class or not do it at all.

It is difficult. I think the key is that Spain has a large corps of civil engineers working for the government. They plan all projects with great detail and then oversee their execution.

Agile regulations against NIMBYism and a world-class civil engineering industry with HQs in Madrid also help.

A good analogy is to ask what would need to be true for Madrid to replicate the AI hub in SF? Great VC, top engineers, certain risk-taking mentality, etc.

So, it's not easy. The environment that creates a fabric for radical innovation is quite different from a statist mentality, although hopefully, both are not mutually exclusive.

> Unlike infrastructure projects in Britain or America, which are heavily reliant on external consultants to handle all stages of the project, this group of well-paid in-house engineers led much of the Madrid Metro expansion. The team stayed largely the same throughout the different projects, meaning that they were able to learn from their experience and apply it to future projects.

Imagine that: building expertise in-house and within the governmental org results in better planning and management and thus outcomes.

In India metro is either built by private companies in a Public Private Partnership

Or by govt orgs by contracting it out.

Both styles have resulted in massive delays so much so that it has become a meme that metro will be inaugurated 100yrs into the future

Maybe if Govt hired actual engineers like they do for railways then metros will be prioritised