US cities pay too much for buses

As people should know by now, in the last few decades China has built a massive amount of public transit infrastructure, both within cities and regional [1]. Some of the subway systems are pretty amazing (eg Chongqing [2]). I'm interested in how they did this and I think it comes down to a few major factors:

1. They standardize rolling stock. The same stuff is used across the country. I think this is really important. If you think about how the US does things, every city will have its own procurement process. This is wasteful but is just more opportunity for corruption;

2. China had a long term strategy to building its own trains (and, I assume, buses). They first imported high speed trains from Japan and Germany but ultimately wanted to build their own; and

3. Streamlined permitting. China has private property but the way private property works in the US is as a huge barrier to any change or planning whatsoever. China just doesn't allow this to happen.

I keep coming back to the extortionate cost of the Second Avenue Subway in NYC. It's like ~$2.5 billion per mile (Phase 2 is estimated at $4 billion per mile). You may be tempted to say that China isn't a good comparison here because of cheap labor or whatever. Fine. But let's compare it to the UK's Crossrail, which was still expensive but way cheaper than the SEcond Avenue Subway.

California's HSR is hitting huge roadblocks from permitting, planning and political interests across the Central Valley, forcing a line designed to cut the travel time from LA to SF to divert to tiny towns along the way.

There is a concerted effort in the US to kill public transit projects across the country (eg [3]). You don't just do this by blocking projects. You also make things take much longer and make the processes so much more expensive. In California, for example, we've seen the weaponization of the otherwise well-intentioned CEQA [4].

I feel like China's command economy is going to eat us alive over the next century.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xszhbm/chinese_hig...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7gvr_U4R4w

[3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-pub...

[4]: https://californialocal.com/localnews/statewide/ca/article/s...

> They standardize rolling stock.

re: buses, we have the same rickety ass new flyers essentially everywhere in the US, that doesn't make them any cheaper

I think the gist of the article is that we don't have the same busses across the US. Yes there are only two major manufacturers, but they're all being procured in different ways, in different custom configurations, all across the country.

We do. What is different is the options. The bus itself is the same, but you can put options on the bus that drive up the price.

That's exactly what the person above was getting at.

> They standardize rolling stock. The same stuff is used across the country. I think this is really important. If you think about how the US does things, every city will have its own procurement process.

Having everything ordered piecemeal in smaller custom orders is more expensive and gives cities a disadvantage in negotiation power

The "nail house" phenomenon in China is counter-evidence to your point 3.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china...

The “tiny towns” like merced where the HSR will stop are some of the fastest growing cities in California.

"standardizing" doesn't just mean ending up with the same stuff. it means making an up-front committment to a supplier that you will buy the same stuff, and getting a better deal in exchange for that committment.

if you end up buying a whole bunch of units of the same stuff without planning to, you're wasting all that potential efficiency.

3a. The government in China does not accept no as an answer.

We could move a lot faster here if we removed or severely limited the ability for individuals and small organizations to completely stall progress on major societal efforts. I think this is not at all unique to the US, either, it is a problem to varying degrees in most modern democracies.

As for the second avenue subway, you should take a look at the stations built. They are large, cathedral-like with full-length mezzanines full of grandeur. I'm not saying it's money well spent, but it's definitely a case where aesthetics is prioritized. In comparison most other subway stations are just overly utilitarian. Or take a look at the WTC Oculus station; that station alone cost $4 billion to build and is now so pleasing to look at that it's a tourist attraction on its own.

Not all New Flyer buses are the same in the same way not all Toyotas are the same.

Actually I think it makes my point: a common attack on China's infrastructure development is to say that the government will just seize your land and that's just not true (eg [1]).

China just doesn't let private property owners effectively delay and block everything.

[1]: https://www.the-independent.com/asia/china/china-grandfather...

There's a whole host of concessions and project redesigns that occurred for essentially political reasons.

Just look at the currently proposed route map [1]. It deviates to the east side of the valley because that's where these towns are vs the west side, which is more direct.

Deviating a supposedly high speed route for small towns doesn't make a ton of sense. Not only does it increase the cost and travel time directly, but extra stops slow the overall travel time. This could've just as easily beeen on the west side of the Central Valley and had feeder lines and stations into a smaller number of stations.

Look at any high speed rail route in Europe or China and you'll see fairly limited stops for this reason.

The biggest and easiest win for a high speed rail should've been LA to Las Vegas. It's a shorter distance and through mostly desert and other uninhabited land. Ideally LAX would've been one of these stops but I'm not sure how viable that is. Then you add a spur that goes north to SF so you avoid building through LA county twice, which is going to be one of your most expensive parts.

Instead we have a private company (Brightline) building a LA to Vegas route.

As an aside, Vegas desperately needed to build a subway plus light rail from the airport up the strip. The stupid Teslas in tunnels under the strip was another of those efforts of billionaires proposing and doing projects to derail public transit. Like the Hyperloop.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_of_California_High-Speed...

Standard means you buy stuff that is similar to everyone else in ways that matter. paint is easy to do custom - and since everyone wants it they put in paint booths for any scheme. you want them to invest in jigs which costs money but pays off in volume - so work with the engineers to figure out what matters.

The central valley is where growth is expected. See growth projections into the middle of the century. It is expected to double in population. Look at the rate of growth already. These "little towns" of 100k people basically double in size every 20 years. Greenfield is where the growth happens because CA urban politicians are against meaningful amounts of infill development. If they built it along the 5 in 50 years when the central valley has over 15 million people, you'd say it was foolish not serving these communities when they had a chance.

Brightline is building a victorville to vegas train. They have no plan to reach LA. Maybe as close as Rancho Cucamonga. In either case no work has been done yet on that project while construction on the HSR is ongoing.

> China had a long term strategy to building its own trains (and, I assume, buses). They first imported high speed trains from Japan and Germany but ultimately wanted to build their own

Interestingly, this process has now somewhat gone into reverse. Alexander Dennis, say, built their first-gen electric buses on BYD tech (China was the leader in this space), but their second-gen on their own design.