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And regarding the other poster, SD in no way shape or form comes remotely close to the urbanity of NYC, London or Tokyo but if it satisfies their requirements that is all that matters.
I said it because you are trying to compare cities at parity that operate on completely different scales.
Comparing SD to LA at objective parity on the amount of urban amenities is just as silly as me trying to compare Miami to Tokyo or NYC.
I will suggest Los Angeles for this one. The traffic is unconscionable. The downtown I thought was a little sketchy. That place should look almost like Disney World the way New York (Manhattan) does. The sheer amount of concrete/ ugly buildings along major roads is terrible.
The mountains and coastline are gorgeous. There are many mansions and lush lawns. This is much diversity. They need to get Singapore-style subways with easy-access from everywhere so that at the street level, LA can be more like London where they seem to have limited the number of cars through some kind of tax or fee, focusing instead on pedestrians and bikes (and yet it's easy to get around because you're always within a block or two of a subway stop). California has all that Silicon Valley money so there's no excuse not to have Singapore-level subways in place.
San Francisco's CSA is massive. San Diego's is not. That's why. I prefer CSA for comparison purposes. I mean the Pittsburgh MSA is bigger than the Cleveland MSA, but Cleveland feels larger, and that's true because the Cleveland CSA is larger than the Pittsburgh CSA.
I will suggest Los Angeles for this one. The traffic is unconscionable. The downtown I thought was a little sketchy. That place should look almost like Disney World the way New York (Manhattan) does. The sheer amount of concrete/ ugly buildings along major roads is terrible.
The mountains and coastline are gorgeous. There are many mansions and lush lawns. This is much diversity. They need to get Singapore-style subways with easy-access from everywhere so that at the street level, LA can be more like London where they seem to have limited the number of cars through some kind of tax or fee, focusing instead on pedestrians and bikes (and yet it's easy to get around because you're always within a block or two of a subway stop). California has all that Silicon Valley money so there's no excuse not to have Singapore-level subways in place.
Current prices for an underground rapid-transit systems (i.e a subway) are estimated a ~1 billion, per mile.
When you figure a way to finance that, let us know.
Current prices for an underground rapid-transit systems (i.e a subway) are estimated a ~1 billion, per mile.
When you figure a way to finance that, let us know.
Just blank check it like we do for the DoD. In all seriousness though, the cost for infrastructure like this has to be reigned in somehow. Construction cost rise exponentially year by year, so it would take a huge government program to get this off the ground, let alone on a national scale. IMO, it's totally worth it. I know what my nation is capable of, and those cost per mile numbers don't scare me at all.
$300,000,000/day for TWENTY YEARS STRAIGHT. They better get to work and start building this transit ASAP.
For a variety of reasons, cost per mile for infrastructure is 50%+ more in the US than in peer countries. We need to find a way to rein in costs before we can think about spending money. We somehow do the latter before the former, which turns people off of the whole idea which makes it worse for future action. Vicious cycle.
Sure, don't pay livable wages, decrease safety, don't worry about construction noise or closures, worry less about fairness in contracting...
There's some easier stuff you can do, just not on a 50% scale. The environmental review process could be 1/4 the length for projects that are basically positive environmentally. We could buy existing train models from existing manufacturers rather than view supply as a jobs program. In my region we could skip the 10% sales tax on construction. And so on.
Sure, don't pay livable wages, decrease safety, don't worry about construction noise or closures, worry less about fairness in contracting...
There's some easier stuff you can do, just not on a 50% scale. The environmental review process could be 1/4 the length for projects that are basically positive environmentally. We could buy existing train models from existing manufacturers rather than view supply as a jobs program. In my region we could skip the 10% sales tax on construction. And so on.
Europe isn’t building unsafe trains with cheap labor. No need for strawmen.
Europe isn’t building unsafe trains with cheap labor. No need for strawmen.
European skilled labor and admin white collar incomes are substantially lower than the US. A specialist physician in Germany makes $60k, and accountants and many engineers make even less. I don’t think those salaries are fair and commensurate with the education and skill but they also don’t pay for tuition or health care costs. It’s a trade off but the US has exceedingly high administrative labor costs. HR managers at say Amazon make over $200k total compensation. A large portion of college tuition and health insurance go to feeding the administrative bloat and not to the actual skilled labor. And now with the pandemic, few of these virtual paper pushers want to go back to the office either.
Europe isn’t building unsafe trains with cheap labor. No need for strawmen.
Where did I say that ALL of those things apply to all cheaper places?
European projects typically skip some of the public process, use more standardized rolling stock, and allow more disruption.
I don't know the wage scales or specific safety practices (my construction experience is limited to the Seattle area), but I wouldn't be surprised if they're a factor in many projects in Europe (even while retaining general safety and good wages). If you have building experience in those places please fill us in.
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