The topic line of this Thread is the headline of an article in the New York Post
dated 08/25/2018 by Conor Harris. Many people tend to make the extrapolation that ‘everything’ costs more in NYC (?). It sure seemed that way when I was traveling there some yars back, and apparently has not gotten any better.
This article has to do with the ‘whys’ of the costs for tunnel construction inNYC, and to whom it lays some of the blame.
FTA:"…Later in 2011, at a conference on infrastructure, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer cited Levy’s comparison of the London Underground’s Jubilee Line extension, which cost a high-by-world-standards $720 million per mile, with the 7-train extension and Second Avenue subway in New York, which were three to four times costlier. Stringer identified New York’s excessive costs as a severe threat to the city’s prosperity.
Indeed, more difficult water crossings in Japan and Europe have cost far less than Gateway. For example, the Seikan Tunnel, built between 1971 and 1988 to carry trains between the Japanese islands Honshu and Hokkaido, runs 33.5 miles, 14.5 of them underwater, and cost 538.4 billion yen, or about $6.7 billion with Japanese inflation and present exchange rates. The Øresund Bridge connects Copenhagen, Denmark, to Malmö, Sweden, by means of a 4.9-mile bridge and a 2.5-mile tunnel joined on an artificial island. The link, carrying a two-track railway and a four-lane motorway, required the cooperation of two national governments with different currencies and languages, and cost 19.8 billion Danish kroner at 2000 price levels, or $4.3 billion with Danish inflation and present exchange rates.
The 2.3-mile Gateway tunnel is far simpler than the Seikan Tunnel and Øresund Bridge, but its $11 billion projected cost ($4.7 billion per mile) could pay for both of them together.
Not being a CE, I have no idea how the location of New York City affects the geological costs of tunneling. My understanding is the NYC is built upon some of the hardest, densest bedrock that has been found around the world. That bedrock forms the stable foundation for all the Skyscraper buildings that call New York home, in contrast to the Millenieum Tower in San Francisco that is well on its way to becoming a tower to rival that of Pisa.
Hasn’t New York been constructing a water tunnel for over 50 years to supplement the existing Water Tunnel’s #1 & #2. Hard rock doesn’t surrender easily.
While Manhattan Island has hard bedrock, IIRC the substrate under the Hudson River bottom has much mud. I don’t know what the water tunnel workers are drilling thru, but they are nicknamed “sand hogs”.
The Hudson is tidal in the area proposed for the Gateway crossing, so there is considerable sediment in its bed; even if it is built at lower depth to overcome the ‘breathing’ problem noted in the PRR tunnels, that part of the tunnel will be relatively easy to bore.
However, if you look at the proposed route (which is partially determined by an air-shaft location) a great deal of the route is through the rock of the Palisades formation, and this will involve hard-rock costs, including those associated with faulting and water drainage.
That’s in New Jersey, not in New York, but practical costs will be comparably high, and access to most of the tunnel ROW in that area is expected to be difficult as only one end is accessible and the only other shaft also involves rock through considerable depth.
The problem with using the Millenium Tower in San Francisco is using a poor example. The problem with that building is the owners/builders DID NOT even put the support columns deep enough in the ground to reach bedrock, which most other high rises in San Francisco do, that is the basis of the problem with that building…in other words, it would have ended up tilting whether the Transbay Terminal was built or not. However, that still has nothing to do with the cost of construction in NYC, it’s mostly labor that causes such bloated prices for projects in that area as has been pointed out in numerous other posts and articles around the web.
You don’t get to and through bedrock on the cheap. Millenium Tower was built on the cheap and the performance of the building shows it. The builders ‘thought’ they coudl pull a fast one, save money, die and dissolve the corporation before their sche
As we understand. Millenium tower the originally submitted design to authorities was as a steel frame building with friction piling not going to bedrock. Instead construction used the friction piling but used a building made of concrete making the building almost twice as heavy.
Will leave the speculation to others of how that whole change slipped by ? ? ?
Now we do not care how light the building was planned. To not take a skyscraper in earthquake country down to bedrock seems the height of foolishness ? ? What is amazing is that not one person who bought an apartment there did not do due dillengence ??
It’s not just near fault lines that you go to bedrock. In Chicago, tall buildings were routinely constructed on foundations that went 100+ feet below ground level to reach bedrock.
And there is the so called combined pile and raft foundation. In contrast to the first mentioned pile foundations, where the piles transfer all loads into the ground, in combined pile and raft foundations piles and a foundation slab share this task.
Each foundation has its own limitations.
IIRC correctly the Millenium Tower has a combined pile and raft foundation with the bedrock in about 300 ft depth.
Not everywhere lies the bedrock horizon so convenient that one can use end bearing piles.
So your cited remark is nonsense.
What went wrong in San Francisco I don’t know.
Here is an example for a combined pile and raft foundation: Messeturm Frankfurt
I believe some of the increased cost is that it is being dug in a builtup area. I’ve been to Copenhagen and the bridge/tunnel there was built on/under undeveloped land. You don’t have to worry about buidings, underground utility lines, etc.
The postings replying to the original post are interesting but none of them mention what to me is the most preventable costs. Namely, $111 an hour labor costs and quadrupple weekend overtime combined with many unneeded staffing positions. I know many will say that is picking on the workers but those findings are ridiculous. Those also provide an incentive to work as slow as possible.
Everything costs more in New York City. It’s just the way it is. We can’t change it.
About 40 years ago, I called on a client on Long Island and went to lunch together at Burger King (it wasn’t a sales call, but a technical issues meeting). I was stunned to discover that whoppers go for about 15% more on Long Island than in Milwaukee, where I lived at the time.
Several years later, I was on a contract at a nationally known insurance company writing a major medical insurance pricing program for the then-new IBM PCs (in BASIC, no less!). I was surprised to note that based on ZIP code(s) of the insured, premium prices would go up as much as 30% or more. Simply put, having an apendectomy in Fargo ND is far less costly than an apendectomy in New York City. Chicago wasn’t cheap, either.
I also discovered (and coded) that prices for women were maybe 4-5% higher than for men as men don’t need maternity care. But there were two states at the time that had ‘unisex’ pricing…men and women pay the same rate. To my surprise, it was about 70% of the ‘gap’ between male and female prices. I guess I should see a maternity doctor since I’m paying for it here in Massachusetts.
If you buy a building, new home, anything don’t you hire someone for an independent inspection and in the case of multi million codo hire an engineer to vet the plans ? Let the buyers beware ! We have a case here where 2 different persons backed out of a purchase after results of an inspection !
The Millennium Tower and San Francisco has a combined pile and raft foundation (CPRF). It is complicated to calculate as you need to get right the pile-soil interaction, pile-pile interaction, raft-soil interaction, raft-pile interaction.
I think that is out of reach for a civil engineer not being a specialist in geotechnology.
I have more than 30 years experience as civil engineer in structural design including pile foundations but not CPRF. I could check the input into the software and must then believe that the software calculates correctly.
Part of the input are soil properties. Here I need to believe that they are correctly evaluated. I can only check if they are out of the ordinary for the area.
And again, a correctly executed CPRF is as good as piles on bedrock.
Regards, Volker
If you buy a used building, you have no idea whom the various owners might have hired to work on it. Or the level of competence of those workers. Or the level of building knowledge the owners had who judged those workers. Or whether the work was done with permit.
So, yes, a professional should evaluate the state of the building for the buyer.
For a new building, plans are submitted for approval of the Building Department. A new building is inspected by the building inspector. Not just after it is done, which is what happens with a used building. There are multiple inspections. Since the building inspector and the department he works for are presumed competent, what do you gain with ANOTHER final inspection?
