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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7ka6x3 wrote

Reply to comment by k1lk1 in MTA spent twice as much on Second Ave subway consultants as it did on its construction by NYY657545

I'm waiting for the stupid comments that end up popping up when you compare NY transit construction to Europe AKA NY subway is so old, NY subway is 24/7, and the one that never gets old, NY subway is really hard because of the bedrock in Manhattan and the skyscrapers.

I forgot there were no tall buildings in Paris, no deep river, no catacombs making the ground under it like swiss cheese and the subway wasn't over 100 years old... /S Yet somehow Paris can complete full subway line 10x faster for a fraction of the price, and it's nicer...

The only one I'll foncede it's that NY subway system is 24/7. Nobody prevents them to close it from 1am to 5am like the Parisian one during construction though you know...

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Jeff3412 t1_j7l12r7 wrote

>The only one I'll foncede it's that NY subway system is 24/7. Nobody prevents them to close it from 1am to 5am like the Parisian one during construction though you know...

Subway being 24/7 shouldn't matter for building new tracks. Would only matter if they were trying to add tracks directly next to in use ones but that's not what we're talking about with the 2nd Ave subway.

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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7l1swc wrote

Yes, I preemptively rebuke the stupid arguments people make to try to say it's not the same as other systems...

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Edwunclerthe3rd t1_j7kkusq wrote

Well if we're going there Paris doesn't have buildings taller than the Eiffel tower, so they cap at like 750ft

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lickedTators t1_j7knja7 wrote

How much affordable housing does the Eiffel tower provide? If a minimum age worker can't afford a 1-bedroom in the tower then I don't think it should be built. Let's turn the space into a depot for horses.

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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7kp8ss wrote

Try to tell that to the La défense neighborhood...

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wutcnbrowndo4u t1_j7l2qpz wrote

Pedantic, but La Defense isn't a neighborhood of Paris. It's outside the city of Paris.

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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7l8y0o wrote

"Paris" includes the suburbs for most people though. It's like saying Brooklyn is not NY city 😂 And La défense has one of the major subway, RER, Transilien hub underground.

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CactusBoyScout t1_j7kqkb6 wrote

That’s just in the old parts of Paris. They put all the skyscrapers in a designated business district called La Defense.

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Edwunclerthe3rd t1_j7kwqj1 wrote

Of which the tallest building is tour first at 738 feet

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down_up__left_right t1_j7l5m27 wrote

What does this matter when we generally build subways under streets not skyscrapers?

If we were building a new line under WTC 1 then the height of it could be relevant.

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Creative_username969 t1_j7n3spn wrote

My guess would be lateral/shear forces. Tall buildings are subject to a great deal of wind-related shear forces. If those forces lead to outward force being applied to sides of the foundation, then the ability of the ground surrounding the sides of the foundation to resist those forces matters.

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volkommm t1_j7kh2rx wrote

Cost per rider for MTA projects is significantly lower than most of the European projects people compare to. It's like being surprised that a bus costs 10 times as much as your car. "But my smart car cost 30 grand!"

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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7kiici wrote

(actual facts and prices at the bottom) You're so wrong, and I'm tired of people spreading misinformation, please scroll down to compare actual prices. But I assume you're saying that from the US having not experienced the Parisian subway system for example. You're comparing single ride tickets. This is for tourists, and they're still lower, but do you know that weekly and monthly passes are SIGNIFICANTLY lower to advantage residents? Like, you get an actual discount for getting a weekly or monthly pass where in NY it's basically the regular price of 2 rides a day (at the price of the NY unlimited MetroCard you get about 46 rides at regular price, basically 2 commutes a day for 23 days AKA the number of business days in a month...)

But let's actually compare the facts:

  • NY single ride: $2.75
  • NY monthly pass: $127
  • Paris single ride: 2.10€
  • Paris navigo monthly pass: 84,10€ (all zones including suburbs) and it can go as low as 72.90€ if you only go two zones. Oh, and you can choose to buy it annually which make sit only 77€ a month.
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volkommm t1_j7kipy1 wrote

Cost of project per rider who uses that project. Not cost per ticket.

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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7kow1y wrote

Again, wrong. I mean, that's barely true if you only count the subway system inside Paris, which would compare to the weekly ridership of the NY subway in Manhattan only. The RER system that goes in the suburbs is as wide as the subway lines in BK, Queens and Bronx.

Ok, facts now:

  • Daily ridership of Paris subway system: 4.1 million a day
  • Daily ridership of NY subway system: 2.4 million a day

You have to stop repeating these "facts" you heard without checking sources...

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volkommm t1_j7kx5pw wrote

Don't compare the whole system. Compare just the ridership of an improvement per people who use it.

Your ridership stats are also incorrect. Nice facts, idiot.

Stop trying to own people on Reddit when it comes to topics you just Google for five seconds to verify.

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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7kykws wrote

Stop trying to tell a Parisian who's been living in NY for decades how the Parisian system works 😂 The "facts" you Google are only about the subway inside Paris. That's like Manhattan. Queens, Brooklyn and The Bronx are like the Parisian suburbs, where we have the RER network and the Transilien network going there. Anyone living in the suburbs commutes using these all the time and they're included in the monthly pass. Look it up.

If you want the mileage data:

  • Parisian Subway: 365 miles of track
  • Parisian RER: 141 miles of track
  • Parisian Transilien: 807 miles of track
  • NY subway: 665 miles of track
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volkommm t1_j7l3jqe wrote

Ok so let's compare French light rail to the subway? It's a glorified bus service lol. Compare heavy rail to heavy rail, which is what is being compared. Of course suburban light rail will be cheaper than SAS 2 lol.

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doughie t1_j7klhx9 wrote

It’s pretty clear they are saying that overall ridership is much higher in NYC, nothing about the price that the rider pays. Like building a bridge for 10,000 cars a day would cost more than for 100 cars a day even if the river is a similar size.. I’m no construction expert but it makes plenty of sense to me

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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7kpblw wrote

But it's not true though... Daily ridership in Paris is 4.1 million and NY is 2.4 million...

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doughie t1_j7kz6wr wrote

I was just pointing out you were making very different arguments than him. What's your source?

I'm seeing 1.3bn NYC and 1bn in Paris on wikipedia. And double the overall length, plus it runs 24/7. But again, I'm no expert. IMO the main reason Paris gets it done cheaper is because they do the entire thing top to bottom within the government, not layer after layer of "free market bidding" which just results in profit motives, corruption, and a bunch of lawyers passing around the blame for why things are slow. If it were labor laws or 'lazy workers' surely France would be more expensive and slower.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems

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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7l09ye wrote

Your link doesn't work. You see that because you only look at the subway inside Paris. Paris has 3 track systems (Metro, RER, Transilien) covering Paris and its suburbs just like NY covers Manhattan and the other borough, except they only have one system which is less efficient. My argument is that we need to stop trying to make excuses about why the maintenance and construction of the NY system is so corrupt, slow, and wasting money because it's SOOOOOOO DIFFERENT when in reality it's not. Your free market argument though is completely accurate, and that's the problem, nothing to do with the age of the system, the mileage, the price of the ticket or the ridership. It's like as soon as you mention how other system manage perfectly fine, people here immediately jump to cover the people who fuck the system because they want to make it sound so exceptional.

Here is a link, and it's from 2011: https://www.planetoscope.com/Mobilite/443-.html

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doughie t1_j7l2o2b wrote

Hm.. the link works for me. Wikipedia's data is from 2021-22 and i didn't include LIRR or PATH or anything connecting. I think people do like to make weird excuses about why this city should be fundamentally more expensive. The answer seems pretty obvious to me, the same reason we spend 10X on military and the DOD can't even pass an audit.. waste, fraud, abuse and 3rd party contracting/grift dressed up as 'the free market'. It makes no sense to me that with so much to maintain that we shouldn't have dedicated people, sort of like the Army Corps of Engineers, who handle things and can't pass the buck or dissolve the company and reform under a different name.

Another example is Barclay's Center. We let some contractor promise a bunch of bullshit, deliver nothing that wasn't personally profitable to themselves, then sell it off to Chinese developers with the project overbudget and behind schedule. Privatized profits and socialized costs, and we still don't have half what we paid for. In France they'd riot (as we should).

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[deleted] t1_j7kmg33 wrote

[deleted]

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lickedTators t1_j7knb67 wrote

> JUST COMPARE PROJECT COST TO TOTAL INCOME LIKE A NORMAL PERSON.

Total income of the service? This is a public good. Income shouldn't matter.

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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7kpgun wrote

Ok, but what if I told you there are 4.1 million daily rider in the Parisian system and only 2.4 in the NY one? How does that compare now?

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volkommm t1_j7l8miu wrote

Spending 1 billion on a station that serves 10 million riders is different than spending 35 million on a station that serves 15k riders. These projects scale up to their service needs. All stations and projects are not equal.

Stop comparing nominal cost.

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[deleted] t1_j7l97uk wrote

[deleted]

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volkommm t1_j7l9nwa wrote

????? You can't be serious right?

Whats the better value: Station 1 that costs 100 dollars and serves 1 person Station 2 that costs 200 dollars and serves 200 people.

Are you going to build station 1 because it's cheaper?

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[deleted] t1_j7lb28z wrote

[deleted]

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volkommm t1_j7lcc55 wrote

I gave you a more realistic example previously but clearly the brainpower required to understand that one went over your head, hence why I had to reduce it to an impaired 2nd grade level. Looks like it didn't work.

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Capadvantagetutoring t1_j7kkb34 wrote

I think you can’t really compare them. The sheer size and coverage of the NYC subway system dwarfs the Parisian one. Different types of cities ( I would assume ) have different needs (Zone systems so if you have a short commute it may be cheaper Vs the one price for all no matter the difference. Either way it’s not horrible that you can get to anywhere (I assume Paris one covers the whole city also ) in the city for a few bucks

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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7kp4f2 wrote

You guys have to stop comparisons the whole NY subway system to the one INSIDE Paris. The Parisian system is as wide, if not wider, than the NY one. Or compare it to Manhattan only...

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Capadvantagetutoring t1_j7kpvlm wrote

Why? The NYC system covers the entire NYC not just one Borough. Paris is around 140 miles vs 7-800 miles for NYC. For the sheer size of the NYC system it’s pretty damn efficient.

 If the systems we’re self contained by borough I’m sure the Manahattan one would be pristine and the other ones would get so little funding that they would be horrible 

 I agree they shouldn’t be compared but then you say you think the Paris one is as wide or wider than the NYC one ?  That part is confusing. You can’t be saying the Paris one is bigger ?
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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7kwlff wrote

The Parisian system covers Paris AND all the suburbs.

  • NYC square mileage: 302.6
  • Grand Paris square mileage: 314.3
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Capadvantagetutoring t1_j7kyfj4 wrote

Should we count all of the MTA system? Counting Long Island and Westchester county ? Sounds like that’s what you are doing. Subway is just one part of the whole system. Since you want to compare.
Let’s do miles of track just in the city 140 vs 250 (800 miles if you count double used tracks )just in NYC not including the rest of the system I’ll use your metric the greater nyc area is 6720 square miles. Let’s take off 60% because some of that is NJ. That’s still 2600 sq miles. Paris system is dwarfed by NYC MTA. If you compare apples to apples and even when you compare JUST NYC vs Paris city only system (not outside ) still a big difference. Nobody is shitting on the Paris one it’s just comparing the NYC one to Paris is not really relevant

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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7kz05b wrote

Miles of track:

  • NY Subway 665
  • Parisian Subway 141
  • Parisian RER 365
  • Parisian Transilien 807

Regardless, are you telling us that there's no waste in the construction of the NY system and that its efficiently run?

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Capadvantagetutoring t1_j7l1519 wrote

Never said there wasn’t waste (tons of it ) are you saying there is none in Paris

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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7l1w4c wrote

Well, we circle back to: compare the price and time it takes to build a line in Paris vs NY...

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NetQuarterLatte t1_j7kz1gq wrote

Compared to NYC, Paris is almost a circle.

So perhaps the solution to public transit efficiency is to change the shape of NYC so that the outer edges of the city are roughly equidistant from the center.

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youcantfindoutwhoiam t1_j7kzjkt wrote

I'm tired of those arguments trying to tell me that there's no corruption in the way the MTA budgets and spends and that they are only spending that much because of the rock, the mileage, the shape now apparently.... Believe what you want and refuse to compare to how other countries can maintain and expand a similar system for cheaper and faster...

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NetQuarterLatte t1_j7l2bm1 wrote

I have no doubt there's corruption.

There's a lot of inefficiencies too.

I think you might like this article: How to build back under budget (maybe) | The Economist

>But unfortunately the agency drawing up the contract does not have enough qualified staff to conduct a full review of construction proposals. The lowest bidder wins the job, as is typically the case in America. After winning, however, the contractor quickly tacks on additional costs, and the government is again in over its head. Unable to manage such a big project, it ends up relying on contractors and consultants who botch key segments of the Wilson line, requiring expensive do-overs. Inter-agency turf battles and co-ordination problems worsen the situation.

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