How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024) • Hacker News Board

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#131

Post by graemep » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

darreninthenet wrote: post #59

thatmf wrote: post #8

> 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 i…

The UK used to have that with its railway projects - the old government owned British Rail had massive and extensive knowledge on large rail infrastructure projects and no need for expensive external "consultants". That all got lost when the Tories tore it apart into private companies... hopefully now they are being renationalised as their contracts expire, at some point in the future they can regain all that experti…

The rail infrastructure was re-nationalised in 2002 - Network Rail is government owned.

The train operating companies are mostly privately owned but they do not build the infrastructure. Quite a few are state owned though (LNER, Thameslink, Scotrail, Northern...)

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#132

Post by graemep » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 1:56 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #113

gib444 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK infrastructure projects are about creating jobs and making their friends rich first, and providing some kind of useful infrastructure last (and also optional) There is so much thievery of public funds it's just corruption disguised as incompetence and the public believe it every time

> the UK infrastructure projects are about creating jobs and making their friends rich first, So out and out corruption is rare in the UK. For example Farage has just received 5 million in dodgy money, which is more money than all of the previous political money scandals since Mandelson. But to your point, most of the time and money in uk infra is spent trying to navigate planning laws and nimbys

With Mandelson its not so much the amount of money directly received, it is the damage done by leaking information.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#133

Post by otikik » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

aianus wrote: post #60

thelastgallon wrote: post #19

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…

Why would anyone prefer public transit over a self driving comfortable personal car?

Well, trains and underground public transit usually are impervious to traffic.

Even buses get exclusive lanes in some cities.

You can zip over people trapped in traffic on their personal cars. It is quite satisfying.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#134

Post by otikik » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

gonzalohm wrote: post #105

vvillena wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hmm I disagree. I lived in Madrid. In fact in one of those cities that this article mentions from the new subway construction. Subway takes 1h15min to reach the city center. Car only takes 30 minutes. 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.…

> Car only takes 30 minutes

That is not rush hour time, though.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#135

Post by matt-p » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 2:05 PM UTC

graemep wrote: post #131

darreninthenet wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK used to have that with its railway projects - the old government owned British Rail had massive and extensive knowledge on large rail infrastructure projects and no need for expensive external "consultants". That all got lost when the Tories tore it apart into private companies... hopefully now they are being renationalised as their contracts expire, at some point in the future they can regain all that experti…

The rail infrastructure was re-nationalised in 2002 - Network Rail is government owned. The train operating companies are mostly privately owned but they do not build the infrastructure. Quite a few are state owned though (LNER, Thameslink, Scotrail, Northern...)

OK, but network rail don't have any in-house building skills. Actually they don't even do much truly in-house maintenance/fix work - it's mostly contracted out.

Network rail are not building east-west rail, let alone HS2.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#136

Post by jodrellblank » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #24

jmyeet wrote: post #21

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 wa…

>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?

Here's 114 companies formerly nationalised in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Former_nationalised_i...

or currently nationalised: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-owned_enterprises_of_the...

Electric, Gas distribution, British Petroleum, British Telecom, Bank of England, other banks like Bradford & Bingley, Royal Mail, regional water companies, shipbuilding, aeroplane, car, iron, and steel manufacturing, nuclear power, canals and waterways, coal mining, munitions factories, pubs, zinc smelting, airlines, Ordnance Survey Mapping, National Highways, BBC and Channel 4 broadcasting, The Crown Estate, Nuclear Laboratory, UK Hydrographic office, Meteorological Office, Genomics England, Student Loans Company, Civil Aviation Authority, Porton Biopharma...

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#137

Post by bluGill » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

Schiendelman wrote: post #103

0zer0 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With a small country, stable government, and national level funding, that's perfectly feasible. I wish that would work in the US, but we have hundreds of transit agencies that do capital projects.

Each of those hundreds of transit agencies are small, but many of them cover populations similar to Switzerland. Some of them cover much larger populations. They should be able to do what so soon as doing entirely within their little agency and yet they are not.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#138

Post by gonzalohm » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

otikik wrote: post #134

gonzalohm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I disagree. I lived in Madrid. In fact in one of those cities that this article mentions from the new subway construction. Subway takes 1h15min to reach the city center. Car only takes 30 minutes. 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.…

> Car only takes 30 minutes That is not rush hour time, though.

Oh yeah, I'm talking about recreationally. I would never accept a job offer that requires a commute to the city.

100% agree that commuting to work in public transport is way better

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#139

Post by alephnerd » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

thewhitetulip wrote: post #129

porridgeraisin wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All Indian metros without exception are managed by SPVs. Land acquisition is not something that gets over. It is a continuous process. Then the court cases if any always show up with some delay, and that can revoke transfers. Then you have to look for alternative land parcels, which may involve minor reroutes in the worst case. It's the same with finances, everything comes in tranches, land, money, everything. > Pune…

Interesting. So do they not work on the things were land acquisition is solved? I see at least 4 stations daily where there has been literally 0 progress in the past few months. They could finish rest of the job right? Until land issue is resolved (which don't revokve around that land like stairs etc)

> I see at least 4 stations daily where there has been literally 0 progress in the past few months

Where do you live? Delhi Metro has been quietly expanding rapidly over the past decade, and you can see fairly constant construction and execution. Same with the Gurgaon Metro.

If you are in Bangalore, its metro was a victim of the Siddarmiah-Shivakumar rivalry (Siddaramaiah backed Mysore and Mangalore at the expense of Bangalore to undercut Shivakumar who has significant investments in Bangalore).

> Until land issue is resolved...

This is the biggest timesink for any Indian infrastructure project. Eminent Domain is basically impossible in India under the LARR, which has constantly delayed infra projects across India.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#140

Post by porridgeraisin » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 2:22 PM UTC

thewhitetulip wrote: post #129

porridgeraisin wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All Indian metros without exception are managed by SPVs. Land acquisition is not something that gets over. It is a continuous process. Then the court cases if any always show up with some delay, and that can revoke transfers. Then you have to look for alternative land parcels, which may involve minor reroutes in the worst case. It's the same with finances, everything comes in tranches, land, money, everything. > Pune…

Interesting. So do they not work on the things were land acquisition is solved? I see at least 4 stations daily where there has been literally 0 progress in the past few months. They could finish rest of the job right? Until land issue is resolved (which don't revokve around that land like stairs etc)

Two possibilties, one, less likely: typically they work on the bottleneck things first and redeploy the people there.

Two: most likely, an earlier contract to construct the station (and especially for interiors like stairs, it's always a different contract) was cancelled[1] and they have decided to postpone tendering a new contractor for that station, until the nagging land issue is closer to being solved, lest the same issue happen again with the new contractor.

If you meant why can't it be decoupled, well that's because in general some entity in the chain won't give you a completion certificate trusting that you will integrate the two decoupled projects properly later. If you want to make the integration a separate step, no contractor will assume responsibility for it and sign it since the two components are done by others and it becomes a game afterwards of who takes the blame. It's also extremely low margin work. Sometimes, you will see TATA led businesses take the risk and somehow do it, out of altruism towards nation building, but I have not seen any one else do it.

In general the rule with govt contracts is that if there's any problem at all with the contract, all work even if it's unrelated physically speaking, will stop. Because it's related contractually speaking. Such is life.

[1] e.g because the timeline after delays stops being viable for him