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Comment by AndyMcConachie | Hacker News Reader

You must realize this is an apples/oranges comparison. The cost of labour alone is vastly different between NYC and Delhi.

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If you scroll up, you'll see a less detailed comparison to Singapore, Hong Kong and Hungary. The former two are about as wealthy as the US, so if we pay more for labor that's only because the MTA wastefully funnels money to it's workers.

I discussed Delhi mainly because I know it well.

That said, if we can hire Indian workers and have them build our subways at lower cost, we should absolutely do this. I'm sure this helped keep Dubai's cost down. Then again, it doesn't seem necessary; Barcelona built a subway at $39M/km.

Its not news that labor is much cheaper in many countries than the US, but I think people are going to get pretty mad if you call paying transit workers a decent professional wage[1] "wastefully funneling money." There are good reasons we don't outsource all our work to less-well-off regions with lower costs- and standards-of-living.

[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/New-York-City-Transit-Autho...

I'm sure the transit worker making $50k/year to sit in a booth and say "go use the metrocard machine" will get mad if I suggest firing her. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be the right thing to do for the taxpayer and the MTA customer.

I'm also pretty sure you are deliberately misreading me since you ignored the fact that I cited several countries where wage levels are comparable to the US (e.g., Singapore). Singapore's just uses "modern" technology and replaces two $75k/year conductors and a $150k/year driver with a robot train.

("Modern" = technology that Paris has used in production for 18 years.)

They could do all kinds of things to cut costs and expedite projects, if business people and engineers were running the show.

But alas red tape, political croneyism, union labor and entrenched supply contracts are in the driver's seat in the USA, and doubly so for the Northeastern US.

Not to mention the system is made of a complicated fragile mess of legacy infrastructure, tracing the entire historical evolution of mass transit from it's inception, acquired from several different transportation companies over the course of the 20th century.

The extensive rail transit infrastructure that we do have today, was largely built in an era 100+ years ago when there was much public optimism around rail projects coupled with rampant private investment in transportation. Plus the entrenched political speed bumps we see now were still in their infancy.

In the last century NYC took all the punches of learning the ropes of operating a subway system, and had a big hand in contributing that knowledge to the rest of the world. Rapid transit in the USA also suffered from public backlash and overall negative public sentiment after decades of missteps and outright sabotage by the automotive industry. This opened up the doors to decades of mismanagement and low ridership.

For new projects in other countries, they really have their wind at their backs in many many ways in comparison to NYC. Far more at play in their favor than simply labor cost

The productivity of labor is also vastly different.

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