> Unlike infrastructure projects in Britain or America, which are heavily reliant on external consultants to handle all stages of the project, this group of well-paid in-house engineers led much of the Madrid Metro expansion. The team stayed largely the same throughout the different projects, meaning that they were able to learn from their experience and apply it to future projects.

Imagine that: building expertise in-house and within the governmental org results in better planning and management and thus outcomes.

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darreninthenet 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The UK used to have that with its railway projects - the old government owned British Rail had massive and extensive knowledge on large rail infrastructure projects and no need for expensive external "consultants". That all got lost when the Tories tore it apart into private companies... hopefully now they are being renationalised as their contracts expire, at some point in the future they can regain all that expertise in-house again.

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mentalgear 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It's the standard privatisation playbook, also used with the NHS: first, politicians (often Conservatives) underfund and fracture a world-class public system (e.g. healthcare). Then, once it's struggling, their private-equity and investor allies swoop in to 'save the day' by privatizing it for profit as the 'only option to restore quality'.

	▲	dspillett 26 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> often Conservatives Almost always conservatives, the key exception in recent history being Tony “Tory Lite” Blair's time in office (who pretty much ignored many years of promises to undo the direction Thatcher and Major had taken NHS and university/student funding should Labour be returned to power, greatly irritating many of us who voted for them that time around). Unfortunately this is a common pattern: parties like Labour get control and realise how hard it is going to be to fight what has been set in motion so do too little or actively push on in the existing direction (just applying a little lipstick to the pig for public appearances). The current lot are trying to do better in that regard, but are failing so impressively elsewhere that they likely won't have a second term and one term is not enough to build momentum, so their replacement will just put a stop to any good that has actually been achieved. The scary thing is that their replacement (assuming Refrom don't rip themselves apart from the inside between now and the next election, which is something there is still hope of happening) might make the old Tories look extremely moderate.

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Schiendelman 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are serious issues with that approach. If you don't have continuous funding from the projects, you end up with a big overhead of highly paid engineers without work for them to do. Then you have to lay them off, so you lose the institutional knowledge anyway.

We tried this early on with sound transit in Washington state, and because engineering work is boom and bust on a project by project basis, the model just doesn't work. The good people left for better jobs, and we were left with a team that basically couldn't produce, leading to massive delays on the next set of projects.

	▲	0zer0 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think it is for this reason that Switzerland has a fixed budget for their railway construction. And it seems to pay off, Swiss railway is exceptional.
	▲	inglor_cz 27 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		What about renting them out to other cities? There are dozens of cities in Europe alone that are planning extensions of their metro systems, or even building ones from scratch (Cluj-Napoca in Romania, recently. Krakow in Poland soon.) A morbid equivalent from the Middle Ages: bigger medieval cities had their own headsman, and they solved the risk of underemployment by sending him on external "jobs" to smaller towns where executions were rare.

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gib444 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In the UK infrastructure projects are about creating jobs and making their friends rich first, and providing some kind of useful infrastructure last (and also optional)

There is so much thievery of public funds it's just corruption disguised as incompetence and the public believe it every time

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fer 4 hours ago | parent [-]

In Spain it is the same, the Metro de Madrid being an anomaly rather than the norm (for now).

Some flagrant cases:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Real_International_Airp...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castell%C3%B3n%E2%80%93Costa_A...

https://maps.app.goo.gl/8BRnx8eQFfihvHmv5

https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/05/17/inenglish/15580...

The 2008 crisis had a special flavor in Spain, cajas de ahorros (privately owned, but politically controlled banks) worked with politicians -surprise- to grant mortgages (i.e. lending someone else's money) to buyers of the housing constructions they themselves had their fingers in, at a time regular banks were already wary of the direction of the housing market. It wasn't uncommon people being told which bank to go to to obtain a mortgage that'd be usually refused.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_bank_(Spain)

	▲	miguelxt 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		To say they were "privately owned" doesn't sound right. Cajas de ahorros had no shareholders so profits were not distributed to any "private owner". Leaders and executives of the Cajas were appointed by a mix of local councils, unions, autonomous regions, and other non-private organizations. Juridically, they were "private organizations", but factually, they were just a form of state-owned company, as it was the municipalities and regions that made the important governing decisions.
	▲	flr03 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		At least Spain has something, UK has something to show for it the numbers are crazy.

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thewhitetulip 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In India metro is either built by private companies in a Public Private Partnership

Or by govt orgs by contracting it out.

Both styles have resulted in massive delays so much so that it has become a meme that metro will be inaugurated 100yrs into the future

Maybe if Govt hired actual engineers like they do for railways then metros will be prioritised

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thelastgallon 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

India has the most interesting construction projects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcRDsIjG3g8

I guess this is what vibe coding in the real world looks like.

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boxed 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I would guess this is a consequence of people following orders. There's many people that should have refused the work along the way, but only the planner gets the blame, while I'd bet the planner was only following orders also.

	▲	csomar 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So it’s nobody’s mistake?

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sieve 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Depends on the state and the political environment. Some people will deliberately sabotage projects for political reasons. The biggest problem with metros in India is the inability to provide last mile connectivity. Some cities will run buses in competition to metro lines, or provide free bus travel to women. Both actions compete against a fast mode of travel.

So, it is an India problem, not a government problem.

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porridgeraisin 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Metro doesn't use PPP or directly public in any Indian city I can think of, they setup SPVs and actually have stable engineering and finance teams across contracts. And most of the engineers are taken from railways only in any case. And it's a really good promotion path, ministers are known to select successful metro spv administrators for lucrative roles in the state secretariat. They even have lateral movement between SPVs of different cities, e.g many top CMRL people are ex-DMRC. So the talent problem is not there.

The reason for delays are more boring: land acquisition, coordination among nhai, state pwd, railways, utilities, etc etc. But overwhelmingly land acquisition is the main bottleneck. If land acquisition fails or isn't exactly as you planned then you have to tweak the project itself which ripples delays all the way into the construction contracts, safety approvals, NOCs etc etc. After you resolve that, flyovers and roads are simultaneously being constructed in most cities since they are all expanding so you have to coordinate with that. And india from pre-independence has utilities placed under the middle of the road, as opposed to the sides of the road. Now this is not an iron clad rule (nothing is, in india) but it's generally true. This means that you also have to coordinate with utilities. And most of them were laid in the last century without any record left of where they were laid, so you can't even plan ahead you dig and you find out you've slashed a utility line. Each coordination point above is an NOC and all put together it takes time.