101–110 of 189 posts
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I would guess this is a consequence of people following orders. There's many people that should have refused the work along the way, but only the planner gets the blame, while I'd bet the planner was only following orders also.
So it’s nobody’s mistake?
Meanwhile, bay area has companies with market cap of 30T (50T?), has nonexistent/incompatible and the slowest public transit. 1) BART 'works' for a subset of the population. 2) ACE train is one route only, from Stockton to San Jose. 3) Caltrain is one straight line. Caltrain has a bullet train that takes an hour for ~20-30 miles. 4) There is a ferry service for some parts of north bay. There are probably dozens of ot…
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There are serious issues with that approach. If you don't have continuous funding from the projects, you end up with a big overhead of highly paid engineers without work for them to do. Then you have to lay them off, so you lose the institutional knowledge anyway. We tried this early on with sound transit in Washington state, and because engineering work is boom and bust on a project by project basis, the model just…
I think it is for this reason that Switzerland has a fixed budget for their railway construction. And it seems to pay off, Swiss railway is exceptional.
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There are serious issues with that approach. If you don't have continuous funding from the projects, you end up with a big overhead of highly paid engineers without work for them to do. Then you have to lay them off, so you lose the institutional knowledge anyway. We tried this early on with sound transit in Washington state, and because engineering work is boom and bust on a project by project basis, the model just…
What about renting them out to other cities? There are dozens of cities in Europe alone that are planning extensions of their metro systems, or even building ones from scratch (Cluj-Napoca in Romania, recently. Krakow in Poland soon.) A morbid equivalent from the Middle Ages: bigger medieval cities had their own headsman, and they solved the risk of underemployment by sending him on external "jobs" to smaller towns w…
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Why would anyone prefer public transit over a self driving comfortable personal car?
Because public transit, done well, is the fastest way to move around. It gets you everywhere, even to places personal vehicles can't reach. It's a lot cheaper. It generates hubs of activity that keep cities lively and relevant. It doesn't get stuck in traffic. It doesn't need to be parked. The benefits of good public transport are so mind blowing that it's difficult to explain unless you have lived on a city that has…
This is because when you are building a subway every one wants their station. The map above may look like straight lines, but if you look at the real map, the north of line 10 is not straight at all, it's more zig zag.
We are trying to make transportation work for everyone and we end up with transportation that works for no one.
Also, the subway closes at midnight, and by Spanish standards, that's early. I was stranded twice (because different stations close at different times) until i decided that I would never take public transport in Madrid again
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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
Depends on the state and the political environment. Some people will deliberately sabotage projects for political reasons. The biggest problem with metros in India is the inability to provide last mile connectivity. Some cities will run buses in competition to metro lines, or provide free bus travel to women. Both actions compete against a fast mode of travel. So, it is an India problem, not a government problem.
Look at the memes for Pune metro line 3 and for Karnataka metro (forgot which line)
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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
Metro doesn't use PPP or directly public in any Indian city I can think of, they setup SPVs and actually have stable engineering and finance teams across contracts. And most of the engineers are taken from railways only in any case. And it's a really good promotion path, ministers are known to select successful metro spv administrators for lucrative roles in the state secretariat. They even have lateral movement betw…
However, all are perpetually delayed
Pune metro line 3's construction status was 85+% for over 1yr now
Land acquisition was over a long time ago. Progress on road is just invisible despite being built by a private company which will operate it for the next 30yrs
If you look at the physical map, you will see that it visits multiple towns that are not in a straight line from Madrid. This causes the line to "zig-zag" and what should take 20 minutes in a straight line becomes a 1h 15min ride.
People use it because Madrid has started being hostile to cars and the only two alternatives are trains (which is pretty good, takes 30 min) or buses
It's also not 24/7, closes at midnight (and if you are going out in Spain, you will stay way later than that)
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>Utilities were generally public prior to this. Which utilities do you believe were government-funded or government-owned in the West? I will grant you most water supplies. Which other utilities?
NZ: Electricity, gas, public transport, telecommunications.
Where are these utilities that were public, then were privatized? Not AFAIK in the US where the intercity and freight rail lines, telegraph lines, telephone systems, natural-gas-distribution networks, electrical grid, cable-TV grid and last-mile internet networks started out private. Maybe in Britain? But if so, the person I replied to should make it clear that his critique applies only to Britain.
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What about renting them out to other cities? There are dozens of cities in Europe alone that are planning extensions of their metro systems, or even building ones from scratch (Cluj-Napoca in Romania, recently. Krakow in Poland soon.) A morbid equivalent from the Middle Ages: bigger medieval cities had their own headsman, and they solved the risk of underemployment by sending him on external "jobs" to smaller towns w…
At that point, you're just hiring an engineering firm, so there's no real benefit to government doing it.