If you spend time following politics, you're likely familiar with "abundance," a concept thrown around in center-left policy circles for many years that has shot to prominence with the publication of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

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The book – currently on the New York Times bestseller list –  highlights the ways that government in the U.S. is no longer able to get big things done. It argues that in many cases it is policies and regulations enacted by liberal leaders that prevent the state authorities from achieving liberal goals, from affordable housing to renewable energy projects.    

But of particular interest to us at CoMotion is the spotlight Abundance puts on America’s sheer incompetence on public transit. The book devotes an entire chapter to the agonizing saga of California high-speed rail, a project that was supposed to run 500 miles between Los Angeles to San Francisco for $33 billion by 2020 but due to a variety of legal, regulatory and political roadblocks has ballooned to over $100 billion and remains years from completion. That stands in sharp contrast, the authors note, to the thousands of miles a year of high-speed rail being built in China.

The problem isn’t just that America is being out-run by its peers when it comes to long-distance mega-projects. It’s that we’re struggling mightily to build the kinds of basic local public transit that we were building 100 years ago. Even cities planned around robust public transit like New York, Boston and Chicago have seemingly forgotten how to build the transportation systems that made them great.

Despite incredible advances in manufacturing and construction technology over the past century, building rapid transit systems has somehow become harder and more expensive –– at least in America. Our peers in Europe, Asia and Latin America still know how to efficiently build high-capacity transit.

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The big, dumb American way

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To get into the specifics of why America spends so much to get so little, I spoke with Eric Goldwyn, professor of transportation and land use at New York University and head of the Transit Costs Project, a group of researchers that study rail projects all over the world to figure out why some cost so much more than others.

According to a TCP analysis, recent American rail projects have cost an average of $626 million per kilometer, compared to a little over $100 million in South Korea and Spain, around $200 million for Austria and Italy, and around $300 million in France.

The group has published a series of detailed reports highlighting the many different reasons why transit projects here are so much more expensive.

“It’s not just about supporting transit, it’s about clearing the obstacles,” Goldwyn told me in a recent interview.

Obstacles include other government agencies that demand a say in how the project is built, politicians who interfere to appease various constituencies, a funding model that depends on lengthy environmental reviews by the federal government and a staffing model that leans heavily on outside consultants with every incentive to maximize billable hours.

When I ask Goldwyn if he sees his work as aligning with the narrative of Abundance, he says, “Of course.”

Because Abundance sometimes points the finger at regulations and red tape, it has been unfairly maligned by some as warmed-over libertarianism. But the concept actually has a lot to do with making government stronger –– and in some instances bigger. Goldwyn’s diagnosis of America’s transit woes is similar.

“We’re very much advocates for stronger agencies and a stronger [Federal Transit Administration] and we believe that government can do if it is empowered to do,” said Goldwyn. “And right now it’s not and we’re paying the costs.”

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Consider the issue of labor costs on rail projects. In New York City, labor typically accounts for between 40-60% of the total cost of projects like the Second Avenue Subway. But in countries like Italy, Sweden and Turkey, labor inputs only account for 20-30% of the total cost. As you might suspect, it’s not as if these countries are relying on cheap labor. “Little of the difference” in spending on labor comes from differences in pay, writes the TCP. The miners employed to dig tunnels in Sweden make about $90,000 a year. Furthermore, they are often not local residents, but seasoned specialists who move from project to project around the country (or continent), often living in temporary housing. The mobile workers bring significant additional costs, but it’s worth it because their deep experience makes them far more productive. They know exactly what to do from the get-go, which is rarely the case in the U.S.

Sure, unions deserve some of the blame. Labor agreements impose rigid (and often antiquated) work rules that result in lots of redundant workers. According to experts the TCP consulted, the 46 workers operating the tunnel boring machine for New York’s Second Avenue Subway were far too many –– the MTA could have made do with 30. And the strict seniority system prompted many of the most experienced workers to claim dibs on weekend hours –– when the pay was double. But the problem isn’t the existence of unions, which are arguably stronger in many European countries. The problem is the culture of labor negotiations in the U.S., which tend to leave agencies with little flexibility in managing a dynamic project.

But according to the TCP, the greatest labor challenge facing transit is not inefficient union workers. It’s the management and white collar workforce, much of which has been outsourced to consultants. When construction began on Boston’s Green Line Extension, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority “only had four to six full-time employees managing the largest capital project in the agency’s history.” This lack of internal capacity means that there are few employees with enough expertise to effectively manage the army of consultants. That helps explain why in New York, design and project management accounted for 21% of the Second Avenue Station’s enormous construction costs, while in Europe they often account for less than 10%.

When I mentioned that the director of the Austin Transit Partnership, the agency created to build Austin’s first light rail system, had no experience in transit, Goldwyn said that that is the norm for major U.S. rail projects.

“Our cases show that consultant teams need a client who knows what it wants and is technically competent enough to direct the consultants rather than allowing them to design overly elaborate stations or propose additional studies that don’t advance the project,” writes the TCP.

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Indeed, American rail projects are often tragically overbuilt, with transit agencies treating each station as a novel artisanal experience. The first three stations built for the Second Avenue Subway, for example, all differed substantially in terms of design and the number of exits, crossovers and elevators. And all of them were far bigger than they needed to be because of large amounts of space set aside for employee changing rooms, break rooms and other facilities that could easily be offered more affordably above-ground. As a result, nearly half of what was spent on construction went to “station finishes,” (HVAC, electrical, elevators etc) rather than the core expenses of building tunnels and platforms.

“There’s not a lot of experience” in America, says Goldwyn. “We don’t do a lot of standardization.”

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How Europe gets it right

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In Europe, finishes typically only account for a quarter of the construction budget, and the process of station-building is highly standardized. In Italy or Finland, there is a formula for building rail stations. Relentlessly following the formula makes the construction process simple, replicable – and cheap.

Political interference is another big problem driving up the cost of building transit. In America every decision point in a transit project is vulnerable to meddling from political leaders who have a tendency to ask for changes, delays or another round of “community input” to appease whiny constituents or disgruntled interest groups.

In many other countries, politicians give their approval to project funding and then leave the details to experts, whose only goal is to quickly build a system that will transport as many people as possible.  

“You need the elected officials to hold the line and say the project is this,” said Goldwyn. “In Seattle they’re still fighting about where to put the damn stations. This project is now in year nine of planning.”

And yet, writes the TCP, the politicians who are so eager to micromanage transit in damaging ways don’t seem to get involved when they could be most useful, such as by dealing with “obstinate utility companies” that don’t want to relocate their power lines –– a major pain point for U.S. transit projects.

Much has been made –– in Abundance and elsewhere –– about the role the National Environmental Protection Act plays in tying up transit projects. The final environmental impact statement required by NEPA for major transit projects receiving federal funding  typically takes between 4-7 years.

Goldwyn says the problem is not so much NEPA as the way that transit agencies approach it. Because virtually every transit project depends on federal funding, drafting a bullet-proof NEPA application is the overwhelming focus in the project’s early stages. Unfortunately, the NEPA review has little to do with building an effective transit project, and it’s often after they’ve been awarded federal funding that transit agencies start to run into problems with what are often half-baked or infeasible construction plans. The problem is, once you get this funding, it’s very hard to make needed changes to the project.

In an ideal world, the FTA would be a valuable partner in helping communities build transit as efficiently as possible.

“The FTA should be more involved in quality control,” says Goldwyn. “Their focus now is safety and making sure the money is spent legally. But they could say,  ‘Why is this station so big?’”  

The problem of “early commitment” also extends to the voters and elected officials who have been promised a certain project. Many of the billions of dollars of projects that Seattle voters approved in a 2016 ballot referendum were only at 1-2% design. They were, a former official said, no more than “a drawing on a napkin.”

It doesn't have to be this way, obviously. We know the solution to these problems because they are on full display in other countries and in our own past.

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The way forward: building a culture of competence

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The TCP lays out a number of recommendations on how to improve the situation, including requiring greater price transparency in procurement and spending more upfront on developing a strong institutional workforce to figure out how to build projects before chasing federal dollars. To gain insights into how to do things right, TCP also urges agencies to “import experts from abroad” and to adopt standards that have worked in other countries.

But above all else, TCP says agencies need to “find champions” who will make it their mission to barrel through the myriad obstacles that stand in the way of project delivery. It would be great, for instance, to see state governors do more for transit than show up for ribbon-cuttings.

“Governors tend not to get too involved,” says Goldwyn. “What you’d like for them to do is to say, this is important. We need to get all of the city agencies to sign off. We need to make sure there’s a clear process for getting permits approved. We need to get it right.”

Right now, however, there are likely very few political leaders who feel a strong incentive to shake things up. For there to be change, it can’t just be wonks like Goldwyn highlighting the problems with the status quo. Citizens need to be more engaged – and  need to step up to  demand more from the leaders they help elect. “Efficient delivery of public transit” may not sound like a sexy issue, but until recently neither was “zoning reform,” which many of those preaching the Abundance gospel correctly argued is key to addressing the housing crisis in many American cities. In recent years the YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) movement has built a strong coalition of environmentalists, social justice advocates and business interests that has convinced city and state lawmakers from both parties to make the government an ally of new housing, rather than an impediment. The same thing needs to happen with transit.

We know what it takes to build public transportation on the cheap. We did it before and others are doing it now. The solutions are there. The only thing missing is the political will.

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Unlocking the New Mobility Playbook

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Join us at CoMotion LA ‘25 on Nov. 12-13 and connect with the companies building tomorrow’s transportation, the investors backing them, and the city leaders making it happen.

Attend two days of stellar programming, engaging panels, workshops, demos, networking, energizing talks and after-hours gatherings, with a special OMF Summit Track that highlights the latest in open, transparent civic data.

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CoMotion's mobility goodness brought to you by:

Jack Craver,
Editor, CoMotion NEWS
jcraver@comotionglobal.com

Write to us if you would like to suggest content for more deep dives!

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