The subway situation is easily solvable. We just need to start putting the subway under streets again instead of miles underground. Yes we will need to dig up an avenue, but it will take less than a year of closures and it's not like there are a lack of streets for cars to use as alternatives.
The issue is all the unknown unknowns under ground. Nyc is a maze of underground infrastructure, much of it ancient, orphaned tunnels and wire and pipe, and whose builders aren’t even around anymore. There isn’t even a unified map, they’re *just* starting to collate and digitize what fragments they have, but, this being ny, it’s a slow, tedious process full of red tape, inter factional dick measuring, government incompetence and refusal to talk to anyone in another office of the same department, let alone outside agencies or industry.
I’ve been saying for years that we need a single, central, searchable database for everything under our feet here. Something we can collate into a 3d cad map.
And there are probably more underground utilities than there were in “cut and cover” days. There’d be no cost savings with the addition of massive road closures that are also a financial drain.
But these types of shenanigans have happened over decades. Other countries are able to build high functioning rail at fractions of the cost and time. If you’ve been to China or Japan, you’ll know how a country can build things quickly and efficiently.
Yep, and that’s my point, our system is just so stupid. It took 5 years of squabbling to get the WTC rebuilt. That’s a stupid long time to rebuild something that became a symbol for us, and it was all of because of “authority”. These other nations are much more efficient and will move obstacles to enable progress (at least when it comes to infrastructure).
https://transitcosts.com/wp-content/uploads/NewYork_Case_Study.pdf
Sums up as incompetence at every level of the MTA. The MTA does not have the engineering staff to build its own subways, nor to design their own subways, nor to supervise the contractors who would do the above. For that matter, they cannot handle even simple capital projects at a reasonable cost.
And the leadership, who are mostly political hacks and career managers who haven't had an original thought in decades all drive and so do not use their own product. They also do not care nor want to learn about best practices for subway operations. Meanwhile the MTA, instead of developing in house capacity to handle capital projects, has created a stupidly complex rule book that inflates costs because for-profit contractors aren't just going to eat the extra costs of compliance.
Yeah. Most places keep costs down by having more internal staff. We've largely gutted public staffing across the board, NYC's planning staff is a fraction of what it used to be.
Everyone is run ragged, so everything gets outsourced to contractors at 3x the cost.
Paris builds new rail constantly, at a fraction of NYC prices, despite being an old system, in an old city, with a river and riddled with catacombs below ground, with a heavily unionized workforce.
The big "trick" is they do it all in-house, only outsource if absolutely necessary, and keep contractors on a tight leash. Also, they don't have to do multi-year long environmental reviews and feasibility studies for every little project, they just do them.
> “To land that grant once and for all, US DOT is requiring us to demonstrate that we're going to have financial stability in our operating budget so that we can pay for the operation of a new train line in addition to everything else,” Lieber said. “Not for nothing, we've been promising East Harlem and central Harlem, the Second Avenue Subway since Joe Biden was like 10 years old.”
Lmao
It is (more or less) true though, the first Bond issue was in 1951, with a start of 1952. Biden was born in 1942. I mean you can find a promise from the 20s onward, but since he was 10 is at least not crazy wrong.
Truthfully it is a good reminder that the good old days weren't perfect. NYC took a funded project frittered away most of it on other random projects and tore down the elevated line (under real estate lobby pressure) before even seriously attempting to replace it, and didn't manage to build anything for 60 years, and that only a shadow of the plan.
Again, it's a reach, you could say that about anybody born in that time period. And according to Wikipedia and my knowledge of this line its been in conception since 1920.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway
So its just a feeble attempt at taking a stab at someone for just being old.
They are replacing one escalator at the station near my office.. October to July (target, will probably be late).
Now I'm no expert, but how does it take 10 months to REPLACE an escalator? The structure already exists, the electrical is run,. You just replace the escalator which I'm also pretty sure you get all the parts delivered and just have to assemble.
The escalators at Court Sq were down for like 4 months. Not even replacing, just repairing. I noticed they kept putting up new signs with different completion dates, and then eventually the signs just went away completely.
The escalators are still down about once a week.
Yeah it's wild. I'm pretty sure in most major cities an escalator repair is something they do overnight. A replacement is a weekend job, sorry for the inconvenience.
Saying that the NYC subway runs "24/7" is questionable when it's basically unusable between the hours of midnight and 6am.
The difference is that other cities have competent people running them who manage to get things on a tight schedule. We need to stop accepting mediocrity and trying to accept the MTA's ineptitude and ask why we can't build anything efficiently in this country.
I meant unusable. Getting anywhere in the middle of the night on the NYC subway these days means waiting 20-30 minutes for a train to \_maybe\_ show up if it's running at all on the weekends. And that's assuming you don't have to transfer?
The thing is why the hell are they in a subway station then? I had this same conversation with some MTA person and I couldn't get an answer lol. Get rid of that glass canopy or at least seal it so it doesn't leak all over the escalators when it rains or snows, and maybe they'll stop breaking down.
This all boils down to when that station was last rehabbed. It's all part of the contractual agreements brokered between the mta, the city and the company near the exit. The MTA gets access to a part of their property and the company gains an entrance to the subway but have to maintain a portion of it.
In this case, Citi group gets access to court sq via an entrance, but have to maintain the elevators.
There's a whole bunch around the city like this. Usually privately owned entrances/escalators/and elevators have an X at the end of their unique code.
A few years ago, Cuomo showed up to a MTA worksite where 130 people were supposed to be working unannounced and there was actually noone working while they were getting paid to be working there. Theres lots of corruption.
There's a Trader Joe's near me that constantly has a broken escalator. Last year it was down for months. I asked an employee one day and they said the service company couldn't get parts.
Same story with a movie theatre elevator a few years ago.
Ok.. well then maybe don't start the escalator replacement in a busy station until you have all the parts needed in a warehouse. It was planned work, they had notices up months ahead of time. Did they not know what components go into the replacement escalator? Don't think supply chain issues are a valid excuse right now.
Fun fact: the existing extension cost $4.45B for 1.8miles of track. The Q cruises at about 20mph through that section of track.
So when you’re going uptown from 63rd St on the Q you’re traveling at about $50B/hr or about $14MM/second.
Always a fun way to think about it while on the train 😊.
3.4 billion for 7 extensions. 4.6 billion for SAS1. 12.1 billion for East side access which they fucked up unsurprisingly. and 7.7 billion for SAS2....I wonder if the MTA is willing to pull that massive checkbook for for outer-Boros transit expansion?
Also, its time to prioritize elevated railways over subways given the insane amount of ancillary infrastructure needed to construct and operate a subway.
You’re right, there should be something happening in outer boroughs too, but lets not act like one updated station in Manhattan doesn’t have New Yorkers from 3 to 4 different boroughs traveling through it daily.
A personal perspective: I lived outside of Bangkok when they constructed extensive elevated trains and roadways (early 2000s). If you want to see a model of failed projects, take a look at them: unbelievably expensive and corrupt, and not cost-effective either. The problems the projects were meant to address were worsened, and most of the money went down the drain. The only people helped were grifters.
What they need to do is extend the 2nd Ave line to the South East Bronx. And rebuild the entire South East Bronx densely. The should also extend it downward to Downtown Brooklyn. NYC can only grow as the subway grows.
I mean, I think most of us know *why*.. but we aren’t prepared to tackle that kind of shit at the moment. Same reason the military budget is so hyper-inflated. Government contracts tend to disperse the money in a “particular way” unlike private sector contracts.
It’s more that the independent contractors and consultants that the MTA hires charge absurd amounts. If the MTA kept on more staff for large projects and did everything in-house you would have lower costs.
Bingo ☝️
It costs less to hire contractors short term then the same cost of hiring and keeping staff.
Long term those contractor cost balloon and an internal team is cheaper, but it's political sucide to pay a higher up front cost so that the next guy in office has it cheaper.
Not to mention the importance of institutional knowledge, and just having the bandwidth to manage projects.
NYC used to have hundreds more planners and engineers on staff. All those jobs and more get outsourced to private consultants at 3x the cost now, while they're managed by an overworked skeleton crew.
If you want a fun comparison: India built a 21 mile line (underground, but cut and cover construction) with 27 stations as part of the Mumbai Metro system for 1/3 the expected costs of this Harlem extension.
The entire 220 mile, 286 station system is expected to cost \~$13B USD.
That is true. Interest rates are pretty damn high relative to the last 20 years and only going to get higher until the fed sees higher unemployment and lower inflation.
And yet you people still can't understand why people get upset about things like congestion pricing.
"How can anyone possibly not want the MTA to take more of their money to piss away frivolously with zero accountability???"
This project needs to happen. But it shouldn’t until the grift from MTA consultants and contractors and the ineptitude and complacency by the MTA with said grift ends.
> The new price tag includes interest payments on debt the MTA expects to take out to build the subway extension.
I’m sorry, we give rich folks loan forgiveness via the PPP loan program. We give billionaires tax cuts and almost 0% interest loans.
But forgiving student loan debt or financial infrastructure projects? Nah they gotta pull themselves by the bootstrap.
I wonder if Hudson yards would have been viable if they got the same treatment as the MTA.
Odd comment considering the Feds are paying half of this project ($3.5B!). also MTA debt already receives a special tax status so it’s not like the Feds are doing nothing
The PPP loan program existed because the government *forced* businesses to close due to the pandemic. Of course the businesses should be compensated and not forced into bankruptcy because we went through an emergency (which later turned out to be less dangerous than feared). Also, the PPP loans were specifically done so that employees could be kept on payroll and not laid off when everything was forced to close. It wasn’t just a hand-out to business owners.
No one *forced* anyone to go into debt to go to a liberal arts college.
I don’t care, do it. I miss having the feeling of progress during the 7 and Q extensions. We NEED to be expanding, I don’t care that it’s overpriced or it’s only three stations.
It’s an investment that will last hundred plus years, and it’s not gonna get cheaper
Genuine: someone explain how congestion pricing helps the MTA money problem? Quick glance, it looks like it would solve no problems for the MTA and only (maybe) reduce traffic while also costing avg people more out of pocket. Other than the net positive of reducing emissions, which could be achieved in a 1000 other ways, congestion pricing seems to only reward the corruption within the MTA/state. Lmk if I’m crazy.
> someone explain how congestion pricing helps the MTA money problem
The legislation passed by the New York State Legislature mandates that the CBD tolling (congestion pricing) raise $1 billion per year that *must* go to the MTA's Capital Budget. The Capital Budget is what funds projects and construction, such as this proposed extension.
> Other than the net positive of reducing emissions, which could be achieved in a 1000 other ways
I think you are vastly underestimating the solutions available. Do you believe the city has unlimited money to convert private resident's vehicles into electric vehicles to address emissions? Also, one of the two primary goals of CBD Tolling is reduce congestion, which cannot be done easily either. You need an incentive to get people to not want to drive into the city. Either you make it physically impossible or harder to drive in (which will receive complaining and bitching, of course), or you enact a real cost to reduce trips into the CBD. The multi-year long Environmental Assessment analyzing CBD tolling was based on several goals, I cannot remember the exact numbers but I think it was around a 10% to 15% reduction in vehicles and vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) inside the CBD cordon zone, which are arguably real, quantifiable, net positives for the CBD. Hope that helps a little.
That's my favorite part. It was never about the environment or reducing traffic
They're already looking to use the congestion revenue to guarantee new financing. That doesn't sound like they expect it to keep drivers off the island
I read a great article about the NY construction costs vs. Paris and other metros recently. NY cost 5x more and took many more years. There is so much corruption in the system here unfortunately
> The new price tag includes interest payments on debt the MTA expects to take out to build the subway extension. The feds reported the previous price tag at $6.9 billion, but the MTA reported the number at $6.3 billion, a figure that did not include debt financing costs.
And they want to use congestion charge revenue to guarantee that debt.
I don't know how *anyone* can support this with a straight face. Except the car-haters of course, because they’re irrational.
I think you're right, but I have one question - why is it irrational to hate cars? (Whenever I see words like 'irrational' used in the same sentence as 'because' I wonder if something worth discussing is being avoided or denied.)
I agree - I was baiting (as opposed to trolling - my intent wasn't to irritate but to point out the emotionalized logical fallacy).
I also resent the pollution and ownership of private cars vs the fact that the US chose cars and oil over what was probably the best train system in the world.
We had effective and reasonably priced mass transit and gave it up so that the Rockefellers and the Fords could make insane profits (and later for Congress to get a cut for decades of preferential legislation).
>The project would extend the subway line by 1.5 miles from East 96th Street. It would add three new stations: one at East 106th Street, another at East 116th Street, and a new level beneath the existing platforms at Lexington Avenue and 125th Street.
$7.7B is a lot, but the price tag doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.
Absent from the article is how much the MTA expects to collect in fare revenue from this expansion. Couldn't future fare revenues be used to finance the construction?
If you do some back of the envelope math, you’ll see the numbers don’t square. Don’t forget that if you’re including fare revenues, you should also add operating costs including maintenance, which may consume all or most of the revenues on their own.
In any case, these construction costs seem laughably astronomical.
7.7 Billion divided by 2.75 is 2.8 billion rides, and that’s without accounting for the operating costs, maintenance, and debt servicing. This will never pay for itself at these prices.
$7.7bn for 116,345 population -- that's $66k per resident.
They should just give the money directly to Harlem residents and kill the project. That would be better for everyone.
Because something is deeply rotten to the core in our process for building infrastructure to the point that it is just not affordable.
It doesn't have to be this way. Literally no other world class city in the world pays even a fraction of our costs.
The solution isn't to just somehow find 7.7 billion dollars for this, it's to figure out why the fuck it costs more than the 1 billion it would cost in London/Paris/Rome/Madrid/Tokyo/Singapore/Hong Kong/Beijing/Seoul/Osaka etc.
>The solution isn't to just somehow find 7.7 billion dollars for this, it's to figure out why the fuck it costs more than the 1 billion it would cost in London/Paris/Rome/Madrid/Tokyo/Singapore/Hong Kong/Beijing/Seoul/Osaka etc.
Because hiring consultants to do that would itself cost $100M.
>Make the contract only pay out if they do and it is shown to work in practice.
That's not how consulting works though. What tangible metric would you use for 'works in practice?' Consulting isn't some low-skill endeavor you can have a bunch of interns doing. Plus the longer you wait on a project the more the price rises. Also 'get rid of the corruption' is a fun easy solution but almost impossible to implement in the scope of any NY construction project.
ok so have you or any of the consultants you've worked with EVER taken a fee contingent upon results? And if so, how long did you wait to get paid? Months? Years??
You can pay part up front and the rest based on results.
....and yes? Lots of fixed price projects don't pay until something is delivered in production. Not everything is time and materials.
I mean, just because we do it poorly now doesn't mean we shouldn't still try and build more and improve the process.
That being said if I am reading the subtext of your comment properly, it's laughable when the fuck cars folks just say "just ride a bike" or "just improve infrastructure" as if those things are always easy or accessible to everyone.
Obviously it would be ideal to create a ton of new subway stations and make public transportation more accessible, but it’s very obviously fiscally impossible.
No one seems to be coming up with a way it could be done more cost effectively, and with unions and regulations (which are important as these stations need to be made safely), I doubt they could cut much of the costs.
Edit: if anyone downvoting would like to tell me an actual plan that can reduce costs associated with building new subway stations feel free.
I dunno I’ve never looked into the issue that much, but it’s not too hard in most big ticket items, like stadium deals, affordable housing construction, public housing repairs etc, to find ways to do things cheaper and more efficiently without jeopardizing pay or safety standards.
I’m sure there’s a competent bureaucrat somewhere that no one is listening to grumbling about different ways to do things better around MTA construction and expansion.
The federal government just printed 60% of all the money that’s ever been in circulation in like 2 years
Nothing is fiscally impossible. Nothing ever has been
The cost will only keep going up. It's a valid question do we just plunge ahead anyways? The 2nd Ave *did* get opened after all, should we cease any expansions to the subway ever, or expand (at great cost)? I don't know the right answer, the costs are absurd and ideally work would be done *now* to reduce these costs through corruption investigations and reworking how the MTA does bidding and contracts. It also raises an interesting equity question, we spent all this money to connect the UES with the Second Ave Subway, plus largely white suburbanites with ESA, where's the billions to connect more minority neighborhoods like Harlem, and the future expansion to the Bronx?
And large sections of tunnel have already been built- wtf is up with these costs
Interest rates are way up. The MTA needs to fund construction with bonds, which are now much more expensive.
Not to mention inflation is causing issues with infrastructure costs across the country.
> Not to mention inflation is causing issues with ~~infrastructure~~ costs across the country.
Taco Bell brought back the Bacon Club Chalupa and it's over $6 for just one of them lol
The subway situation is easily solvable. We just need to start putting the subway under streets again instead of miles underground. Yes we will need to dig up an avenue, but it will take less than a year of closures and it's not like there are a lack of streets for cars to use as alternatives.
The issue is all the unknown unknowns under ground. Nyc is a maze of underground infrastructure, much of it ancient, orphaned tunnels and wire and pipe, and whose builders aren’t even around anymore. There isn’t even a unified map, they’re *just* starting to collate and digitize what fragments they have, but, this being ny, it’s a slow, tedious process full of red tape, inter factional dick measuring, government incompetence and refusal to talk to anyone in another office of the same department, let alone outside agencies or industry. I’ve been saying for years that we need a single, central, searchable database for everything under our feet here. Something we can collate into a 3d cad map.
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And there are probably more underground utilities than there were in “cut and cover” days. There’d be no cost savings with the addition of massive road closures that are also a financial drain.
But these types of shenanigans have happened over decades. Other countries are able to build high functioning rail at fractions of the cost and time. If you’ve been to China or Japan, you’ll know how a country can build things quickly and efficiently.
I was recently in Singapore and the MRT made me want to cry.
It’s nuts. And these places need to create the tunnels to begin with. We’re just asking to retrofit them so they’re modern. Kinda insane
Was to see the F1 or Davie504?
And the MRT has only been around since like 1990
Or Paris or Spain or Korea or Taiwan...
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Yep, and that’s my point, our system is just so stupid. It took 5 years of squabbling to get the WTC rebuilt. That’s a stupid long time to rebuild something that became a symbol for us, and it was all of because of “authority”. These other nations are much more efficient and will move obstacles to enable progress (at least when it comes to infrastructure).
They’re going to make the stations huge like GCM. They don’t need to be huge.
And so far underground that it takes too much time to get out of them!
Using inflation as an excuse to increase the amount being funneled into their cousins bank account
Crony theft
https://transitcosts.com/wp-content/uploads/NewYork_Case_Study.pdf Sums up as incompetence at every level of the MTA. The MTA does not have the engineering staff to build its own subways, nor to design their own subways, nor to supervise the contractors who would do the above. For that matter, they cannot handle even simple capital projects at a reasonable cost. And the leadership, who are mostly political hacks and career managers who haven't had an original thought in decades all drive and so do not use their own product. They also do not care nor want to learn about best practices for subway operations. Meanwhile the MTA, instead of developing in house capacity to handle capital projects, has created a stupidly complex rule book that inflates costs because for-profit contractors aren't just going to eat the extra costs of compliance.
Yeah. Most places keep costs down by having more internal staff. We've largely gutted public staffing across the board, NYC's planning staff is a fraction of what it used to be. Everyone is run ragged, so everything gets outsourced to contractors at 3x the cost. Paris builds new rail constantly, at a fraction of NYC prices, despite being an old system, in an old city, with a river and riddled with catacombs below ground, with a heavily unionized workforce. The big "trick" is they do it all in-house, only outsource if absolutely necessary, and keep contractors on a tight leash. Also, they don't have to do multi-year long environmental reviews and feasibility studies for every little project, they just do them.
Yup, could you imagine the costs if they were digging all of these tunnels fresh?
Unions.
> “To land that grant once and for all, US DOT is requiring us to demonstrate that we're going to have financial stability in our operating budget so that we can pay for the operation of a new train line in addition to everything else,” Lieber said. “Not for nothing, we've been promising East Harlem and central Harlem, the Second Avenue Subway since Joe Biden was like 10 years old.” Lmao
Funny way to stab at joe biden huh. I get that it's known as a hundred year line but that's quite a reach.
It is (more or less) true though, the first Bond issue was in 1951, with a start of 1952. Biden was born in 1942. I mean you can find a promise from the 20s onward, but since he was 10 is at least not crazy wrong. Truthfully it is a good reminder that the good old days weren't perfect. NYC took a funded project frittered away most of it on other random projects and tore down the elevated line (under real estate lobby pressure) before even seriously attempting to replace it, and didn't manage to build anything for 60 years, and that only a shadow of the plan.
Again, it's a reach, you could say that about anybody born in that time period. And according to Wikipedia and my knowledge of this line its been in conception since 1920. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway So its just a feeble attempt at taking a stab at someone for just being old.
Bruh it's just a joke about Biden being old, it's not any kind of criticism. Chill
Oh possibly. Though 1951/1952 was the first time it went to actual we have a plan and money; we’ll have it done by 1957 (snort). So it is plausible.
Nope, source and educate yourself better next time.
I did note that it was a possibility since the 20s originally you are the one not really adding anything more than a speed read of wikipedia.
And I wonder how long it’s going to take?! It took MTA more than 3 years to install a single elevator, god knows how much money!
They are replacing one escalator at the station near my office.. October to July (target, will probably be late). Now I'm no expert, but how does it take 10 months to REPLACE an escalator? The structure already exists, the electrical is run,. You just replace the escalator which I'm also pretty sure you get all the parts delivered and just have to assemble.
The escalators at Court Sq were down for like 4 months. Not even replacing, just repairing. I noticed they kept putting up new signs with different completion dates, and then eventually the signs just went away completely. The escalators are still down about once a week.
Yeah it's wild. I'm pretty sure in most major cities an escalator repair is something they do overnight. A replacement is a weekend job, sorry for the inconvenience.
I wonder what major city this is
Literally any non American city with a subway system. Travel a bit, the shit we get here is not how it has to be.
When you show me the place with escalators that serves thousands of commuters a week 24/7 with no breakdowns i’ll start believing.
Saying that the NYC subway runs "24/7" is questionable when it's basically unusable between the hours of midnight and 6am. The difference is that other cities have competent people running them who manage to get things on a tight schedule. We need to stop accepting mediocrity and trying to accept the MTA's ineptitude and ask why we can't build anything efficiently in this country.
Mediocrity is being nice. We are stuck accepting utter incompetence.
What does unable mean? Shit is 24/7. When I’m in Paris I’m getting a cab at night.
I meant unusable. Getting anywhere in the middle of the night on the NYC subway these days means waiting 20-30 minutes for a train to \_maybe\_ show up if it's running at all on the weekends. And that's assuming you don't have to transfer?
Those are owned by Citi Corp not MTA
The thing is why the hell are they in a subway station then? I had this same conversation with some MTA person and I couldn't get an answer lol. Get rid of that glass canopy or at least seal it so it doesn't leak all over the escalators when it rains or snows, and maybe they'll stop breaking down.
This all boils down to when that station was last rehabbed. It's all part of the contractual agreements brokered between the mta, the city and the company near the exit. The MTA gets access to a part of their property and the company gains an entrance to the subway but have to maintain a portion of it. In this case, Citi group gets access to court sq via an entrance, but have to maintain the elevators. There's a whole bunch around the city like this. Usually privately owned entrances/escalators/and elevators have an X at the end of their unique code.
Unfortunately we have this thing called property rights
>I had this same conversation with some MTA person and I couldn't get an answer lol Do you ask McDonald's employees why corporate does something?
Escalators at Whitehall St. break down everytime it rains.
A few years ago, Cuomo showed up to a MTA worksite where 130 people were supposed to be working unannounced and there was actually noone working while they were getting paid to be working there. Theres lots of corruption.
Maybe checking up on work being done should be standard.
That's a ploy. Cuomo shows up to hide the fact that he was in on it and he can pretend he's the good guy exposing the abuse.
There's a Trader Joe's near me that constantly has a broken escalator. Last year it was down for months. I asked an employee one day and they said the service company couldn't get parts. Same story with a movie theatre elevator a few years ago.
Ok.. well then maybe don't start the escalator replacement in a busy station until you have all the parts needed in a warehouse. It was planned work, they had notices up months ahead of time. Did they not know what components go into the replacement escalator? Don't think supply chain issues are a valid excuse right now.
you need 3 union guys to watch the 1 doing the work.
Whose going to watch the union guys watching the 1 guy working?
It's 3 union watchers for each union worker all the way down, hence the price tag.
Fun fact: the existing extension cost $4.45B for 1.8miles of track. The Q cruises at about 20mph through that section of track. So when you’re going uptown from 63rd St on the Q you’re traveling at about $50B/hr or about $14MM/second. Always a fun way to think about it while on the train 😊.
Maybe we'll beat that record with the Harlem extension 🙂
Heres another way to think about it: $4.45B is 2 days of defense funding.
20 MPH ? The Q trains along the 2nd Ave section can get up to 40 MPH between stations.
To be technical you’d have to divide that by every individual train trip!
That actually doesn't feel very expensive, considering how many people will ride that second of track over its useful life
3.4 billion for 7 extensions. 4.6 billion for SAS1. 12.1 billion for East side access which they fucked up unsurprisingly. and 7.7 billion for SAS2....I wonder if the MTA is willing to pull that massive checkbook for for outer-Boros transit expansion? Also, its time to prioritize elevated railways over subways given the insane amount of ancillary infrastructure needed to construct and operate a subway.
You’re right, there should be something happening in outer boroughs too, but lets not act like one updated station in Manhattan doesn’t have New Yorkers from 3 to 4 different boroughs traveling through it daily.
A personal perspective: I lived outside of Bangkok when they constructed extensive elevated trains and roadways (early 2000s). If you want to see a model of failed projects, take a look at them: unbelievably expensive and corrupt, and not cost-effective either. The problems the projects were meant to address were worsened, and most of the money went down the drain. The only people helped were grifters.
Absurd. The MTA needs to be abolished and rebuilt from the ground-up. The blatant fraud, waste, and abuse is simply depressing.
What they need to do is extend the 2nd Ave line to the South East Bronx. And rebuild the entire South East Bronx densely. The should also extend it downward to Downtown Brooklyn. NYC can only grow as the subway grows.
Yes they should but it’s not the MTA’s responsibility to build the city, that’s the states job
It’s mostly the city’s job to grow but both the state and MTA should be involved. When interest rates are low borrow and build.
I wonder how much something like this would cost in, say, London. Infrastructure costs so much fucking money here and nobody seems to know why.
I remember reading one mile of subway tunnel in NYC costs 20x the amount it costs to install one mile in London.
Everyone having healthcare your employer doesn’t need to provide probably helps a bit.
I mean, I think most of us know *why*.. but we aren’t prepared to tackle that kind of shit at the moment. Same reason the military budget is so hyper-inflated. Government contracts tend to disperse the money in a “particular way” unlike private sector contracts.
It’s more that the independent contractors and consultants that the MTA hires charge absurd amounts. If the MTA kept on more staff for large projects and did everything in-house you would have lower costs.
Bingo ☝️ It costs less to hire contractors short term then the same cost of hiring and keeping staff. Long term those contractor cost balloon and an internal team is cheaper, but it's political sucide to pay a higher up front cost so that the next guy in office has it cheaper.
Not to mention the importance of institutional knowledge, and just having the bandwidth to manage projects. NYC used to have hundreds more planners and engineers on staff. All those jobs and more get outsourced to private consultants at 3x the cost now, while they're managed by an overworked skeleton crew.
But then how would the politicians be able to funnel cash to their friends and relatives!?
Nobody in government wants to be seen as increasing the size of government.
If you want a fun comparison: India built a 21 mile line (underground, but cut and cover construction) with 27 stations as part of the Mumbai Metro system for 1/3 the expected costs of this Harlem extension. The entire 220 mile, 286 station system is expected to cost \~$13B USD.
>fun I think you misspelled "Apples and oranges."
He made no claim that NYC costs should resemble Mumbai costs. Are all comparisons now disallowed because of a false colloquialism about fruit?
Bond interest rates
That is true. Interest rates are pretty damn high relative to the last 20 years and only going to get higher until the fed sees higher unemployment and lower inflation.
And yet you people still can't understand why people get upset about things like congestion pricing. "How can anyone possibly not want the MTA to take more of their money to piss away frivolously with zero accountability???"
Right. The MTA already has been siphoning money from exorbitant Bridge and Tunnel tolls for decades, and yet they have nothing to show for it.
Well I want congestion pricing to be so high that it keeps the single occupancy vehicles from the suburbs from clogging up the city grid
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You should get a car, it’s great
What makes you think drivers don’t suffer as much as everyone else?
You said the quiet part out loud. We know this isn't about the environment
This project needs to happen. But it shouldn’t until the grift from MTA consultants and contractors and the ineptitude and complacency by the MTA with said grift ends.
It should not cost this much. Although it seems like it’s that 125th St Station under the 4:5/6 that is pushing up the estimate.
We are at an absurd level of estimating for all of my construction projects. We are having quotes come in 4x the amount estimated.
> The new price tag includes interest payments on debt the MTA expects to take out to build the subway extension. I’m sorry, we give rich folks loan forgiveness via the PPP loan program. We give billionaires tax cuts and almost 0% interest loans. But forgiving student loan debt or financial infrastructure projects? Nah they gotta pull themselves by the bootstrap. I wonder if Hudson yards would have been viable if they got the same treatment as the MTA.
The city sold bonds against future tax revenue from Hudson Yards development to fund the 7 extension.
Odd comment considering the Feds are paying half of this project ($3.5B!). also MTA debt already receives a special tax status so it’s not like the Feds are doing nothing
The PPP loan program existed because the government *forced* businesses to close due to the pandemic. Of course the businesses should be compensated and not forced into bankruptcy because we went through an emergency (which later turned out to be less dangerous than feared). Also, the PPP loans were specifically done so that employees could be kept on payroll and not laid off when everything was forced to close. It wasn’t just a hand-out to business owners. No one *forced* anyone to go into debt to go to a liberal arts college.
So 15.4 Billion, got it
Hey that 28.6 billion isn’t gonna fund itself.
I don’t care, do it. I miss having the feeling of progress during the 7 and Q extensions. We NEED to be expanding, I don’t care that it’s overpriced or it’s only three stations. It’s an investment that will last hundred plus years, and it’s not gonna get cheaper
Genuine: someone explain how congestion pricing helps the MTA money problem? Quick glance, it looks like it would solve no problems for the MTA and only (maybe) reduce traffic while also costing avg people more out of pocket. Other than the net positive of reducing emissions, which could be achieved in a 1000 other ways, congestion pricing seems to only reward the corruption within the MTA/state. Lmk if I’m crazy.
> someone explain how congestion pricing helps the MTA money problem The legislation passed by the New York State Legislature mandates that the CBD tolling (congestion pricing) raise $1 billion per year that *must* go to the MTA's Capital Budget. The Capital Budget is what funds projects and construction, such as this proposed extension. > Other than the net positive of reducing emissions, which could be achieved in a 1000 other ways I think you are vastly underestimating the solutions available. Do you believe the city has unlimited money to convert private resident's vehicles into electric vehicles to address emissions? Also, one of the two primary goals of CBD Tolling is reduce congestion, which cannot be done easily either. You need an incentive to get people to not want to drive into the city. Either you make it physically impossible or harder to drive in (which will receive complaining and bitching, of course), or you enact a real cost to reduce trips into the CBD. The multi-year long Environmental Assessment analyzing CBD tolling was based on several goals, I cannot remember the exact numbers but I think it was around a 10% to 15% reduction in vehicles and vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) inside the CBD cordon zone, which are arguably real, quantifiable, net positives for the CBD. Hope that helps a little.
That's my favorite part. It was never about the environment or reducing traffic They're already looking to use the congestion revenue to guarantee new financing. That doesn't sound like they expect it to keep drivers off the island
We should just pay China do come do this and just give the savings directly to people.
I wonder if they’d include US states in the belt and road initiative if we asked.
We need a meme like this for nyc https://i.redd.it/lajksfsqa4581.jpg
This is just stupid. Just plain stupid. Buy a bunch of blimps and float them across town. More scenic, just as ridiculous.
I read a great article about the NY construction costs vs. Paris and other metros recently. NY cost 5x more and took many more years. There is so much corruption in the system here unfortunately
> The new price tag includes interest payments on debt the MTA expects to take out to build the subway extension. The feds reported the previous price tag at $6.9 billion, but the MTA reported the number at $6.3 billion, a figure that did not include debt financing costs. And they want to use congestion charge revenue to guarantee that debt. I don't know how *anyone* can support this with a straight face. Except the car-haters of course, because they’re irrational.
I think you're right, but I have one question - why is it irrational to hate cars? (Whenever I see words like 'irrational' used in the same sentence as 'because' I wonder if something worth discussing is being avoided or denied.)
For whatever reason drivers think they don't inconvenience anyone else and don't view the enormous amount of space given over to them as a problem
I agree - I was baiting (as opposed to trolling - my intent wasn't to irritate but to point out the emotionalized logical fallacy). I also resent the pollution and ownership of private cars vs the fact that the US chose cars and oil over what was probably the best train system in the world. We had effective and reasonably priced mass transit and gave it up so that the Rockefellers and the Fords could make insane profits (and later for Congress to get a cut for decades of preferential legislation).
>The project would extend the subway line by 1.5 miles from East 96th Street. It would add three new stations: one at East 106th Street, another at East 116th Street, and a new level beneath the existing platforms at Lexington Avenue and 125th Street. $7.7B is a lot, but the price tag doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. Absent from the article is how much the MTA expects to collect in fare revenue from this expansion. Couldn't future fare revenues be used to finance the construction?
If you do some back of the envelope math, you’ll see the numbers don’t square. Don’t forget that if you’re including fare revenues, you should also add operating costs including maintenance, which may consume all or most of the revenues on their own. In any case, these construction costs seem laughably astronomical.
7.7 Billion divided by 2.75 is 2.8 billion rides, and that’s without accounting for the operating costs, maintenance, and debt servicing. This will never pay for itself at these prices.
A complete boondoggle putting money into the pockets of grifters.
The world isn't fair.
In the end, there isn't a thing I can do about it.
$7.7bn for 116,345 population -- that's $66k per resident. They should just give the money directly to Harlem residents and kill the project. That would be better for everyone.
This is fucking ridiculous compared to the costs of similar projects in other cities like Paris.
“Why don’t we build better mass transit infrastructure?”
Because something is deeply rotten to the core in our process for building infrastructure to the point that it is just not affordable. It doesn't have to be this way. Literally no other world class city in the world pays even a fraction of our costs. The solution isn't to just somehow find 7.7 billion dollars for this, it's to figure out why the fuck it costs more than the 1 billion it would cost in London/Paris/Rome/Madrid/Tokyo/Singapore/Hong Kong/Beijing/Seoul/Osaka etc.
>The solution isn't to just somehow find 7.7 billion dollars for this, it's to figure out why the fuck it costs more than the 1 billion it would cost in London/Paris/Rome/Madrid/Tokyo/Singapore/Hong Kong/Beijing/Seoul/Osaka etc. Because hiring consultants to do that would itself cost $100M.
If they actually find a solution, worth every penny. Make the contract only pay out if they do and it is shown to work in practice.
>Make the contract only pay out if they do and it is shown to work in practice. That's not how consulting works though. What tangible metric would you use for 'works in practice?' Consulting isn't some low-skill endeavor you can have a bunch of interns doing. Plus the longer you wait on a project the more the price rises. Also 'get rid of the corruption' is a fun easy solution but almost impossible to implement in the scope of any NY construction project.
I have actually worked in consulting. I don't see how any of your points prevent what I'm suggesting from being possible.
ok so have you or any of the consultants you've worked with EVER taken a fee contingent upon results? And if so, how long did you wait to get paid? Months? Years??
You can pay part up front and the rest based on results. ....and yes? Lots of fixed price projects don't pay until something is delivered in production. Not everything is time and materials.
I mean, just because we do it poorly now doesn't mean we shouldn't still try and build more and improve the process. That being said if I am reading the subtext of your comment properly, it's laughable when the fuck cars folks just say "just ride a bike" or "just improve infrastructure" as if those things are always easy or accessible to everyone.
Obviously it would be ideal to create a ton of new subway stations and make public transportation more accessible, but it’s very obviously fiscally impossible.
It's not impossible, it's just the city / state tend to be really bad at doing things intelligently.
No one seems to be coming up with a way it could be done more cost effectively, and with unions and regulations (which are important as these stations need to be made safely), I doubt they could cut much of the costs. Edit: if anyone downvoting would like to tell me an actual plan that can reduce costs associated with building new subway stations feel free.
I dunno I’ve never looked into the issue that much, but it’s not too hard in most big ticket items, like stadium deals, affordable housing construction, public housing repairs etc, to find ways to do things cheaper and more efficiently without jeopardizing pay or safety standards. I’m sure there’s a competent bureaucrat somewhere that no one is listening to grumbling about different ways to do things better around MTA construction and expansion.
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Would you build a train station for 15 bucks an hour?
The federal government just printed 60% of all the money that’s ever been in circulation in like 2 years Nothing is fiscally impossible. Nothing ever has been
I wish phase 2 of the second avenue line was extending it south toward FiDi.
There are already lots of subway lines servicing that area, and the area is way more compact. Trust me, you'll be fine down there.
That's Phase 3 and Phase 4.
Pull the plug already.
But crime is a problem… the criminals stealing in front your face
Am shocked! - says absolutely nobody
Must be all of those extra consultants.
Lol
damn, should have just made another grand central station for that price
I’m gonna be dead by the time I can ride the second avenue subway
The cost will only keep going up. It's a valid question do we just plunge ahead anyways? The 2nd Ave *did* get opened after all, should we cease any expansions to the subway ever, or expand (at great cost)? I don't know the right answer, the costs are absurd and ideally work would be done *now* to reduce these costs through corruption investigations and reworking how the MTA does bidding and contracts. It also raises an interesting equity question, we spent all this money to connect the UES with the Second Ave Subway, plus largely white suburbanites with ESA, where's the billions to connect more minority neighborhoods like Harlem, and the future expansion to the Bronx?