>"...but many of the problems can be traced to a larger philosophy: outsourcing government expertise to a retainer of consultants. “What I’ve heard from consultants, which is surprising because they make so much money off this stuff, is, ‘Agencies don’t know what they want, and we have to figure it out,’ ”.

Nearly a century of this BS. How many "studies" have been done on the BLX to MGH?

I do agree with the premise that transit agencies lack the knowhow because they don't pay enough for it. "Outsourcing" said knowledge to private entities makes the costs skyrocket for said studies too.

Also agree too much public input has plagued America for decades. There's a big ocean between the massive eminent domain of the 50s and today, where hardly anything gets built.

Very similar conclusions to a 2021 article in Vox:

2021 Vox article by Jerusalem Demsas:

> the researchers were able to identify a few reasons for what happened to the Green Line: Jockeying between two different understaffed agencies with little experience managing large projects and consultants, a laissez-faire approach to allowing stakeholders’ expensive ideas to be added to the project scope “even if impractical,” and public pressure for more as the project dragged on and the demand for transit options increased.

This Slate article by Henry Grabar:

> when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority got to work on the Green Line Extension, the agency only had a half-dozen full-time employees managing the largest capital project the MBTA had ever undertaken.

Demsas's conclusion in Vox:

> American transit agencies need to be staffed up in-house to reduce reliance on expensive contractors and build up institutional knowledge.

Grabar's conclusion in Slate now:

> the conclusion is not just the old left-wing bromide of investing in the public sector. Consultants are paid in public money, after all. It’s a philosophical shift toward an empowered, full-time civil servant class. Spending money now to save money later.

The similarity is because both articles cite Eric Goldwyn from NYU's Transit Costs Project, and because Goldwyn is right.

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This is a generalization, but having worked with many of the top firms (MBB and more) - over the last 15+ years as a client, it’s mostly bullshit.

Insane amount of billable hours that solve literally nothing. They’re great at creating work that nobody asked for and convincing upper management it was necessary.

Anytime the word government is followed by the word expertise...I stop listening. By and large these people aren't even qualified to pick a recess dodgeball team, let alone make decisions focused on the future of our nation. And they know that so they pay substantial money for someone to tell them it costs money to do things, but it doesn't matter they will just blame the last person and do nothing.

It's also not just a problem with design or project management firms.

The T, for many many years, has been understaffed in the trades for even small capital projects.

Carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc. they're all coming out of the same unions whether they're T employees or working for a contractor. Same group of people, same expertise. However, the ones who are T employees have much lower fully burdened costs per hour. The outside labor not only gets greater wages in their pocket (job security being part of the tradeoff for slightly lower base wages as a T employee), but those costs are then obviously marked up by whoever the contractor is.

Unfortunately, the optics of having low(er) publicly accessible direct payroll constantly wins out over the true cost of the labor.

Obviously the T doesn't need to have permanent staff to handle projects as large as the GLX, but smaller regular ongoing renovations, upgrades, etc. often end up costing the taxpayers 2-3x what they would cost if the T were properly staffed and managed for efficiency over optics.

For some jobs it is worth hiring contractors as needed. These in house carpenters, plumbers and electricians etc all need benefits, substantial public sector pensions etc. Sure the T is paying more to hire these people but they're not on the hook for the retirement costs as well.

Pension contributions and other benefits are part of the fully burdened calculation on either side.

It costs the T substantially more, fully burdened, to hire outside tradespeople for a large number of regular day-to-day non-megaprojects, than if they were to staff up to handle maintenance and lower-scope capex (which would also mean staffing up enough to handle maintenance in the first place).

Well it seems like we need more full time expertise on this issue, but how do we make that happen? Big public transport projects are still sporadic. Is this an issue that would be solved just by building public transport out more often?

Broadly generalizing about tens of thousands of people sure is fun.

A big part of the reason for the insane costs of our subways is every single station has to be uniquely designed. They cost hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. Imagine if we figure out a way to use just one design at every single station with just minor modifications, how much cheaper it would get?

Lol...were you elected or appointed?

Neither.

So if we don't build any more stations it won't be expensive anymore

yea but then a subway would be pretty useless if it didn't have any stations.

There already are stations

It's crazy how much progress it felt like we made in such a short time when the orange line was shut down. All of a sudden bus lanes felt like they just appeared overnight. Like once we actually had some pressure to just build things even if they're imperfect we started making things so much better and then we just stopped

Expertise costs money, money that state jobs just don't pay.

Can you imagine the headlines in the Herald if the state actually had experts on their payroll?

I don't think that consultants are the only reason why transit is so expensive. The United States tends to have a lot more regulations and community feedback to contend with.

The California high speed rail project is a good case study for this. They had to deal with a tremendous amount of lawsuits from people who didn't want rail in their backyard, and would often use any kind of legal mechanism to stop rail from being built in their community.

I mean, think about how the Red Line in the 80's already had budget allocated to extend to Arlington. If I recall, a significant portion of that tunnel was actually built (and still exists) before the good citizens of Arlington put the kibosh on a station in Arlington.

According to the original report (pages 14-15), by a factor of about 1.35 for NYC's 2nd Ave Subway.

TlDR: Neoliberalism is the problem.

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The headlines would be read "Look how much these government employees get paid" in the most negative way possible.

Mostly its just private consultants that end up getting trips to Japan and Korea funded on the MBTA's dime, so that their in house people can tell them how the systems work.

Yup. If each state, if not the country, could standardize stations design, the cost savings would be enormous. It would be tens of billions of dollars.