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Maxpowr9 t1_j9poqbj wrote

>"...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.

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lelduderino t1_j9q6ftx wrote

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.

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michael_scarn_21 t1_j9qd04i wrote

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.

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lelduderino t1_j9qfi48 wrote

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).

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dalmationblack t1_j9rt923 wrote

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

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joeyrog88 t1_j9q3niw wrote

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.

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