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How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

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Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#141

Post by victorbjorklund »

boxed wrote: post #52
thelastgallon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India has the most interesting construction projects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcRDsIjG3g8 I guess this is what vibe coding in the real world looks like.

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.

People need to be able to think for themselves. I once stayed in an apartment house where I noticed a door 1.5 m up in the air on the outside of the building. When opening the door there was a small bathroom with a toilet. With no way of accessing it from the inside. Just that normal inside door on the outside wall up in the air. 100% someone in the chain made a mistake and said the door should be on the wrong wall. But no one that actually built the house stopped and say ”eh are you sure?”

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#142

Post by joenot443 »

rr808 wrote: post #3

A lot of the price difference between Europe and USA now are wages. US wages for construction workers in NYC or SF are 2 or 3 times that of Madrid. Lots of things are cheap just for this reason alone.

This is an interesting one. I live in NYC and have spent lots of time in Spain - the cost of living differential is easily within the 2-3x range, maybe more if you're talking housing specifically.

I can't confidently say whether one feels more comfortable working construction in a globally VHCOL city like NYC or SF or in a MCOL city like Madrid.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#143

Post by DennisP »

cladopa wrote: post #71

As an engineer myself working for them 20 years ago, we were certainly not well paid like the article said. Quite the contrary: I was still on University(had not finished the final project) and had to do most of the hard technical work myself for someone else to just overview the results and sign. My salary was miserable. Once I had finished I could earn 3 to 4 times more on several places. They were also extremely c…

Don't students usually have miserable salaries? I would expect any engineer's salary to go up a lot after getting some experience and graduating, so it's hard for me to tell how much this data point generalizes to the whole project.

As for the patent side, I kinda give them kudos for that.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#144

Post by porridgeraisin »

alephnerd wrote: post #139
thewhitetulip wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In some way, it works out. Because of LARR being the way it is, the system descends into things being built on politician owned land and them pocketing the money, or politicians buying up land near an upcoming project where they know LA is done. While that sounds bad, overall this leads to positive infra development. Much better than the alternative of a principled politician who doesn't indulge in such corruption, but due to the inherent difficulty of LA also gets nothing done. Also considering the politicians are voted for, you also get a little bit of alignment to public interest. I.e Mr. X knows he can campaign on a sports center in the corner there without worrying about LARR on the existing old office building - his brother owns it.

Of course this is not business friendly at all... And you end up needing SEZs and special "Foo Cities" for land acquisition to even be remotely feasible for Foo companies. But hey atleast SEZs/special cities don't face the same problems.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#145

Post by otikik »

rr808 wrote: post #3

A lot of the price difference between Europe and USA now are wages. US wages for construction workers in NYC or SF are 2 or 3 times that of Madrid. Lots of things are cheap just for this reason alone.

It's the amount of middlemen adding their cut to everything, don't blame it on the workers.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#146

Post by hylaride »

zipy124 wrote: post #126
KaiserPro wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

That depends how you define political money scandals. Just looking in recent history you have COVID-19 and the associated scandals [1] which includes the govt trying to get £122 million + extras back from a company run by Baroness Mone in the house of lords. That's a political money scandal. Or you could go for the Greensill scandal [2] with David Cameron who may have made as much as up to $60 million from it. Nick c…

> Nick clegg received $20 million + from working for meta after being in power.

That's not corruption. That's just proof he had no principles.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#147

Post by graemep »

matt-p wrote: post #135
graemep wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True, but that is why I am sceptical about benefits of re-nationalisation. The skills are not going to come back.

The default assumption these days is that everything will be contracted out. It needs a cultural change and a lot of investment to change things.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#148

Post by alistairSH »

rob74 wrote: post #99
mentalgear wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the standard privatisation playbook, also used with the NHS: first, politicians (often Conservatives) underfund and fracture a world-class public system (e.g. healthcare). Then, once it's struggling, their private-equity and investor allies swoop in to 'save the day' by privatizing it for profit as the 'only option to restore quality'.

...and then everyone acts surprised that things become more expensive.

Maybe when I was 18. I haven't been surprised by this play by conservatives in a loooonnggggg time.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#149

Post by zipy124 »

hylaride wrote: post #146
zipy124 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends how you define political money scandals. Just looking in recent history you have COVID-19 and the associated scandals [1] which includes the govt trying to get £122 million + extras back from a company run by Baroness Mone in the house of lords. That's a political money scandal. Or you could go for the Greensill scandal [2] with David Cameron who may have made as much as up to $60 million from it. Nick c…

> Nick clegg received $20 million + from working for meta after being in power. That's not corruption. That's just proof he had no principles.

It doesn't have to be, but it probably is at least a form of soft corruption. If he wasn't the ex-leader of one of the coalition parties do you think he'd have got the job?

He isn't paid well because of his skills or anything else, but because of who he knows and his access. Whilst you can make the argument this is just lobbying, I would make the argument that a well-functioning democracy with no corruption would not value his access at such a high price. See the revolving door [1] and how that links to corruption and how these could be seen as examples of it.

For this specific example, Nick Clegg set the precedent, that a current high-standing MP might decide to push for laxer regulation on big tech, knowing that it will get them the high paying job afterwards as was already established in other industries like Defence. I am not saying he pushed for laxer regulation, but a current MP can now see it as a valid exit-opportunity and would be incentivised to do so.

This is corruption just on a longer time-scale as they are using their political power and position for personal gain.

A specific quote from the wikipedia entry below shows that this exact issue happens: "The Channel Four Dispatches programme 'Cabs for Hire', broadcast in early 2010, which showed several sitting members of Parliament and former ministers offering their influence and contacts in an effort to get lobbying jobs, has generated renewed concern about this issue."

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#150

Post by HEmanZ »

anovikov wrote: post #18
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aggressive deployment of eminent domain and exemption from CEPA and all the other “think of the children” NIMBY rules.

I understand housing construction, but why would a NIMBY be against metro construction? Being close to a metro station means real estate prices skyrocket and that's what NIMBYs are after.

Have you not met Americans? The very first thing 95% of Americans will say if you propose public transport closer to their house is that you are bringing crime. Also if the transit comes close then someone might build condos or apartments near it! Oh the horror!

I had a lady parade around my neighborhood handing out fliers saying that extending the bus stop to our neighborhood was going to bring rapists and pedophiles into the neighborhood. I thought she was an odd one out and insane so I made a joke about it at a neighborhood event a few weeks later.

Turns out, I was the odd one out…

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