Congestion Pricing Is A Reality In New York, & It's Going To Cost NJ Drivers

[CaptainNJ]

Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801

Yes, it was the monopoly idea that I was getting at.

But in reality, at least as far as public transportation goes, politicians DO have a motivation to keep costs down. It makes them look good if they do. They can't be bribed to have a contract awarded because the way it's set up they have no influence on who gets awarded a contract. (Although, congestion pricing benefits the MTA, and while I know they are also charged with following public procurement rules, I am not sure of all the details of how their internal system works. I know I want to demand that they revise their crappy RFP template.) Therefore they can play the "look at how we saved money" schtick. We had to go back and hammer every single proposer on their costs, on projects big and small. In times of economical downturn, the politicians made a big deal of the fact that they were doing that, and in fact it worked because there was such a competition that big construction companies were not making much profit because they low-balled the bids just to keep their people working.

Now, of course, things have turned. There's a shortage of engineers and related positions like construction inspectors in the NYC area because there are so many big projects going on and coming up, and the design firms are getting picky about which work they go after. There will be just so much the pols can do to keep costs lower.

its hard for me to address this specifically because i dont have direct experience and things vary greatly from industry to industry. politicians have a lot of motivations but keeping costs down is kind of a phony obligation. they dont really care about it but they do want to seem like they do sometimes. yeah, they beat up people on costs but how many of their mandates are driving up the costs? we do work that is paid for by the government and they do try to pay low prices; but the prices could be lower if it werent for them also driving up the costs. so they can pretend to beat us up on price but thats kind of phony because they are responsible for a good % of that cost.

the monopoly idea isnt really any better when government has it vs private sector. however, its bad in both cases. i dont have a solution but im sure its been addressed in various scenarios. the one thing that comes to mind quickest is cable/internet providers where you only have a choice when you are in a geographic area. honestly, its not a good situation but certainly better if the monopoly was the government. a lot of the reason why its bad is because of the corruption between the private industry and government.

[Mightyqueen801]

Originally Posted by CaptainNJ

its hard for me to address this specifically because i dont have direct experience and things vary greatly from industry to industry. politicians have a lot of motivations but keeping costs down is kind of a phony obligation. they dont really care about it but they do want to seem like they do sometimes. yeah, they beat up people on costs but how many of their mandates are driving up the costs? we do work that is paid for by the government and they do try to pay low prices; but the prices could be lower if it werent for them also driving up the costs. so they can pretend to beat us up on price but thats kind of phony because they are responsible for a good % of that cost.

the monopoly idea isnt really any better when government has it vs private sector. however, its bad in both cases. i dont have a solution but im sure its been addressed in various scenarios. the one thing that comes to mind quickest is cable/internet providers where you only have a choice when you are in a geographic area. honestly, its not a good situation but certainly better if the monopoly was the government. a lot of the reason why its bad is because of the corruption between the private industry and government.

Well, yeah, politicians' motivations are first and foremost always to get themselves re-elected. That's a given. But they've got to appear to be keeping costs down and getting things done.

I agree that the mandates can drive up the costs. We saw what happened when they decided they were going to make themselves look good by demanding that the WTC Memorial open by the 10th anniversary. They got their attaboys for getting it done, but it cost a lot of money.