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How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

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Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#91

Post by inglor_cz »

Schiendelman wrote: post #79
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…

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 where executions were rare.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#92

Post by dspillett »

mentalgear wrote: post #69
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…

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'.

> often Conservatives

Almost always conservatives, the key exception in recent history being Tony “Tory Lite” Blair's time in office (who pretty much ignored many years of promises to undo the direction Thatcher and Major had taken NHS and university/student funding should Labour be returned to power, greatly irritating many of us who voted for them that time around). Unfortunately this is a common pattern: parties like Labour get control and realise how hard it is going to be to fight what has been set in motion so do too little or actively push on in the existing direction (just applying a little lipstick to the pig for public appearances). The current lot are trying to do better in that regard, but are failing so impressively elsewhere that they likely won't have a second term and one term is not enough to build momentum, so their replacement will just put a stop to any good that has actually been achieved. The scary thing is that their replacement (assuming Refrom don't rip themselves apart from the inside between now and the next election, which is something there is still hope of happening) might make the old Tories look extremely moderate.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#93

Post by throw0101a »

Aerolfos wrote: post #76
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…

Sounds like Spain all right. The article also makes a big deal out of country-level factors like the system of autonomous communities, governance, in-house expertise etc. But all of those should apply to Malaga as well, which also built a metro in the 2000s. But that one became a city-wide joke for always being supposed to open "this year" and that continued for at least 5 years... There was definitively none of the…

> in-house expertise

This is under-appreciated.

> I believe that the U.S. suffers from a distinct lack of state capacity. We’ve outsourced many of our core government functions to nonprofits and consultants, resulting in cost bloat and the waste of taxpayer money. We’ve farmed out environmental regulation to the courts and to private citizens, resulting in paralysis for industry and infrastructure alike. And we’ve left ourselves critically vulnerable to threats like pandemics and — most importantly — war.

> It’s time for us to bring back the bureaucrats.

* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-needs-a-bigger-better-...

Even if you do outsource some level of tasks, you still need in-house folks who know something so you don't get fleeced.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#94

Post by sofixa »

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.

The price difference isn't 2 or 3 times though. We're talking about x10 easily.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#95

Post by joe_mamba »

BrenBarn wrote: post #83
pibaker wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I mean, if you can have higher unemployment but still build good subways and overall have a good quality of life, maybe that suggests unemployment isn't a great metric for evaluating societies.

>if you can have higher unemployment but still build good subways and overall have a good quality of life

How are you having a great quality of life if you're unemployed?

>unemployment isn't a great metric for evaluating societies.

IDK man, being unemployed is not great. Not having money sucks.

What metrics do you think are better?

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#96

Post by chmod775 »

rob74 wrote: post #88
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…

> the tunnelling machines that had all the pieces replicated inhouse Wait... did you build your own tunnel boring machines? Or just spare parts for them?

If you have the capability to manufacture heavy machinery, building it by copying an existing design is not rocket science. They're not crazy complicated and often built or adapted to a dig specific tunnel anyways.

Now, operating a tunnel-boring machine, that's a different beast, but you'd have to do that either way. Probably should get outside help if your engineers and scientists haven't planned and dug a tunnel in their life.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#98

Post by globular-toast »

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?

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

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#99

Post by rob74 »

mentalgear wrote: post #69
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…

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.

Re: How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)

#100

Post by vvillena »

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?

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 it.

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