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US cities pay too much for buses

(www.bloomberg.com)
355 points pavel_lishin | 3 comments | 26 Sep 25 13:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.02s | source
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RobKohr ◴[26 Sep 25 19:11 UTC] No.45389953[source]▶
"Federal funding typically covers 80% of bus purchases, with agencies responsible for the remainder."

Well, there is your answer. The one making the purchase isn't the one primarily paying for the purchase. This makes them less sensitive to pricing.

Kinda like how expensive healthcare is since it is paid for by insurance.

Or how you don't care how much you put on your plate or what you choose to eat at an all you can eat buffet.

The second you detach the consumer from the price of something, even through an intermediary such as health insurance, that is when they stop caring about how much something costs, and so the price jumps.

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1. cowsandmilk ◴[27 Sep 25 10:05 UTC] No.45394500[source]▶
You’re assuming the federal government rubber stamps their 80%
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2. ◴[27 Sep 25 13:02 UTC] No.45395366[source]▶
3. gottorf ◴[27 Sep 25 15:00 UTC] No.45396276[source]▶
Fairly accurate assumption to make in this case. Incentives around government spending are structured against close scrutiny of how much gets spent on what and why.

Politicians love splashing their names on papers on how they got a bill passed to spend $X on $GOOD_SOUNDING_PROJECT, and the bigger the X, the better. Government employees are strongly incentivized against the reduction of their own employment should that spending go away. Lobbyists and service providers obviously have a direct interest in ensuring those contracts continue.

Nobody but the taxpayer has any interest at all in ensuring that money gets spent on things worth spending on and, moreover, that the spent money actually achieves the outcomes desired and intended behind those projects. And how much influence does the average taxpayer have on any of that? It rounds to zero.