How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

In 1968, Garrett Hardin wrote a paper called "The Tragedy of the Commons" [1]. Many people seem to think this term dates further back to Adam Smith or earlier it does not. Well, this became hugely influential in noeliberalism and was used as the justification for governments to sell off their assets in the 1980s and 1990s in particular, all based on this (flawed) idea that private industry was more efficient. This was the era of public-private "partnerships". What that really means was privatizing the profits and socializing the losses while guaranteeing profits.

Utilities were generally public prior to this. Now we have private equity buying up utilities because the profits are guaranteed [2]. While electricity prices are regulated, capex on infrastructure isn't so they can simply boost profits by "investing" in the network ie creating extra capacity for data centers to be sold electricity at sub-market rates.

Lots of expierments were done and empirical data analyzed on the tragedy of the commons and it never matched the theory. Ultimately, this resulted in Elinor Ostrom winning the 2009 Nobel Price for Economics for disproving it with empirical data. Yet people still quote it.

Look at the list of metro systems sorted by length [4]. They're almost all Chinese. The 4th largest is in Chengdu, which only opened in 2010. In 16 years it's now the 4th largest in the world.

Pretty much any argument you can use about how China is different will have a contradiction by counterexample. Difficult terran? Chongqing. Old cities? Beijing, Shanghai. City too large? Good one.

It's not any single factor that allows for this. It's managed at every single level. For example, China has standardized rolling stock to a handful of variants so you avoid an entire procurement process (and grift). The UK spends billions of pounds to build an otherwise completely unnecessary tunnel under the Chilterns to protect the views of something of the most expensive property in the country [5]. Not in China. Audits of the Second Avenue Subway showed a host of corruption such as so-called "ghost jobs" [6]. Beverly Hills and Santa Monica fought the LA Metro extending into their areas because it might bring in the poors.

[1]: https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/tragedy_of...

[2]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pe-buys-utilities-power-ai-18...

[3]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/artcarden/2019/08/07/elinor-ost...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems

[5]: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/19/hs2-tunnels...

[6]: https://secondavenuesagas.com/2018/01/01/inside-times-deep-d...

In metropolitan areas, people want to be close but not too close to train/metro stations or railroad/tunnels. 5-10 minute walk is ideal. Anything closer, people have vibration/noise and crowd/security concerns.

In US suburbs, a lot of people are going to drive even if they live next to a train station. So there’s no convenience or property value benefits. To them, they only see downsides.

> Cost of labor is insanely high due to cost of housing

This is not the reason. Labor is expensive even in parts of the US with low housing costs.

The real, simple reason is the US has a more prosperous economy where the average worker has more opportunity than their Spanish peers. Just look at unemployment rates. The US is at 4.3% right now compared to Spain's 10%. Even at the peak of the GFC the US barely had over 10% unemployment. In the meanwhile Spain has had over 10% employment almost the entire time the past four decades. Of course labor is cheap when that many people are jobless.

Visited China recently and it's pretty astonishing what can be achieved if you just ignore the whiners, complainers, environmentalists, and local governments. NIMBYs? Get lost. Have unique local culture? Funny but no. There's a special kind of beetle living there? Tough shit. It's ugly? So is your face. Etc. This is how the West built its infrastructure back in the day - nobody consulted NIMBYs or the native Americans on railway construction - but now we're too good for this, and we reap the consequences.

I'm still on team democracy, and we'll see how long it takes before China regresses to the norm of dictatorships. Xi has already broken the term limits. Nothing suggests he won't slowly lose his grip on reality like most dictators. But for now China has its charms.

The transit times seem long, but often beat driving times especially during rush hour

Thw CalTrain being “one line” makes perfect sense because it runs parallel to the Valley

No the system is not perfect, but it is still one of the best in the country, except for NYC and maybe Boston