This article is a bit clueless. The state has more than adequately provided the MTA with money. The place where the state failed is providing sufficient oversight to make sure the MTA isn't wasting it.
Paris spent 1.3B euro on the 14 line, which has 9 stations. The MTA spent 2.4B on a single stop on the 7 line. MTA construction costs drastically exceed worldwide norms - the MTA spends $1B/kilometer.
Apparently the only project outside NYC to cost more than $1B/KM is London's Crossrail. Even the Jubilee line extension is only $0.45B/km, and that's pretty pricey.
Funding is adequate, costs are simply out of control
Yeah, that's the bottom line. Govt funded infrastructure projects are totally out of control, it's not just NYC.
My favorite example is local, in Oregon. In 1982 a very fine bridge was opened across the Columbia River. It cost $170 million.[1] Fast forward to recently. Before the plug was finally pulled, estimated costs for a second bridge a few miles away were $2.8 billion.[2] And that was for a scaled down version. Other estimates were as high as $10 billion.
Yes we've had some inflation in the last 30 years. But the cost increases far outpace inflation. And nobody in government cares. All they do is say "we need it", without doing any critical thinking. What they really mean is "we want it".
It's like the teenagers in my house. They want everything, they don't care how much it costs. They haven't earned the money they want to spend, so to them any possible costs are meaningless.
We don't build like that in America anymore. Partly because it is more expensive (safety standards and such). Partly because population growth hasn't demanded it. But those things not withstanding, 10 years and a billion dollars for a one station extension is unambitious to say the least. And don't even get me started on the cluster-fudge that is BART / muni / AC / whatever.
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|10 years ago|reply
Paris spent 1.3B euro on the 14 line, which has 9 stations. The MTA spent 2.4B on a single stop on the 7 line. MTA construction costs drastically exceed worldwide norms - the MTA spends $1B/kilometer.
http://www.systra.com/IMG/pdf/metro_meteor_en.pdf
https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp...
Apparently the only project outside NYC to cost more than $1B/KM is London's Crossrail. Even the Jubilee line extension is only $0.45B/km, and that's pretty pricey.
https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...
tl;dr; Funding is adequate, costs are simply out of control.
[+] [-] PhantomGremlin|10 years ago|reply
Yeah, that's the bottom line. Govt funded infrastructure projects are totally out of control, it's not just NYC.
My favorite example is local, in Oregon. In 1982 a very fine bridge was opened across the Columbia River. It cost $170 million.[1] Fast forward to recently. Before the plug was finally pulled, estimated costs for a second bridge a few miles away were $2.8 billion.[2] And that was for a scaled down version. Other estimates were as high as $10 billion.
Yes we've had some inflation in the last 30 years. But the cost increases far outpace inflation. And nobody in government cares. All they do is say "we need it", without doing any critical thinking. What they really mean is "we want it".
It's like the teenagers in my house. They want everything, they don't care how much it costs. They haven't earned the money they want to spend, so to them any possible costs are meaningless.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_L._Jackson_Memorial_Brid... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River_Crossing
[+] [-] pcurve|10 years ago|reply
Compared that to $500 million Japan spent renovating their Tokyo Station a few years ago which involved:
- Adding 3rd floor level, raising roof.
- reconstructing intricate decorations and motifs before it was bombed in the war.
- station hotel renovation
- installation of earthquake proof underground seismic buffers and dampers. (hundreds of them)
- 5 year long
All that for $500 million. In the middle of Tokyo.
Construction cost in the U.S. is a complete joke.
[+] [-] morgante|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IIAOPSW|10 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro#/media/File:SHM...
We don't build like that in America anymore. Partly because it is more expensive (safety standards and such). Partly because population growth hasn't demanded it. But those things not withstanding, 10 years and a billion dollars for a one station extension is unambitious to say the least. And don't even get me started on the cluster-fudge that is BART / muni / AC / whatever.
[+] [-] Gravityloss|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] empressplay|10 years ago|reply
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/30/nyregion/trouble-with-diag...
[+] [-] hownottowrite|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kirklove|10 years ago|reply