Hacker News Reader

Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

Singapore just put in a new MRT line (well, in phases, some haven't opened yet) - 43km, 32 stations, all underground for $25B or ~$0.8B per station.

San Francisco put the Chinatown line in - 3km, 4 stations, 3 underground for $2B or $0.7B per station (ignoring the above ground one).

Clearly Singapore can do it quicker because there is one level of government. And they import cheap labor to actually build the lines.

So other than the delays, the cost for SF doesn't seem ridiculous.

View on HN

Singapore is not a great comparison, because construction is largely done by armies of migrant workers paid starvation wages, who are sent back home at the slightest hint of complaint (example: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/nine-men-public-as...).

But Japan and Europe don't, and they still manage to deliver public transport for much less.

The Singapore line is designed to handle 1 million daily riders. It is in not comparable to the rinky-dink Muni project.

It's also automated driverless trains, something that probably be raised when comparing costs.

MUNI handles 157,000 daily riders. The TEL line is expected to hit 500,00 in some years, maxing out at 1M in the distant future.

It's not that big of a difference.

This is one line in a subway network of many, handling 3x more people than the entire MUNI network from opening day (of the full line). The Singapore MRT as a whole already has a daily ridership of 3,400,000.

Sure capacity is higher but the comparison is like 2-3x not an order of magnitude.

Pre-COVID projection for SF Central Subway is 43,700 daily trips by 2030, and maxing out at 65,000. So yes, order of magnitude difference in capacity.

https://www.wsp.com/en-US/projects/san-francisco-central-sub...

One major difference is Singapore and Japan’s stops are profit centers and not cost centers - they rent massive amounts of property on them, meaning they’re not as dependent on debt or fare collection.

This is essentially "land value capture" policy, right?

https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/articles/2022-09-la...

Either that or they put in their own retail. It's no coincidence that Tokyu, Keio and Hankyu all operate their own supermarkets and stores throughout Japan's rail network.

Having rail operators also act as real estate companies is pure genius IMO -- it creates a profit motive for dense, transit oriented development, without any need for onerous top-down planning.

US cities are committed to prioritizing transit improvements for the same poor and marginalized communities where they are also committed to slowing gentrification by preventing development.

If it’s a place where development would be welcome then it’s an inequitable use of transit dollars. Meanwhile a transit project does not get off the ground without assurances that it will not change the places being connected.

This is actually what drove the streetcar development process in LA, but instead of renting it out, the developers/car operators just sold it and peaced out. This left the trams to atrophy, separated from the land value they drove until the car companies bought them to put a nail in the coffin.

This is literally how the US moved west and how most cities in the US were developed.

> One major difference is Singapore and Japan’s stops are profit centers and not cost centers…meaning they’re not as dependent on debt or fare collection

Singapore is a bit different. SMRT is operated by a group of private transit operators that don’t really do real estate on the same scale that e.g. JR does in Tokyo, so fares are still their primary revenue source.

Hong Kong is a better corollary to Japan. The HK MTR is responsible for a bunch of large real estate projects in the city, including the ICC (the tallest skyscraper in town and one of the two iconic buildings that flank the entrance to the harbor).

> Clearly Singapore can do it quicker because there is one level of government.

Singapore can do it quicker because there's far less corruption there.

Also no unions (which is kind of the same thing as the other point above).

And labor you can pay $800USD/month and have them live in dormitories and then send them home when the project is done.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com