Why does it take decades to build a subway system in the U.S.?

from Salon.com:



Should it take decades to build a subway?
It's too easy to slow down urban mass transit improvements. Here's how to fix the system

By Will Doig





It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that, in Beijing, you can go to bed transit-free one night and wake up the next morning to a new subway rumbling underneath your bedroom.

On Dec. 31, the Chinese capital opened a new subway line and greatly expanded two others. This year it plans to open four more. A total of eight new lines are under construction. The city started expanding the system in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, and has kept pushing forward ever since. In 2001 it had 33 miles of track. Today it has 231.

Meanwhile, when you hear the completion dates for big U.S. transit projects you often have to calculate your age to figure out if you’ll still be alive. Los Angeles’s Westside subway extension is set to be finished in 2036. Just five years ago, New York’s Second Avenue Subway was supposed to be done by 2020, a goal that seems laughable now.

And while it’s not fair to compare American projects to China’s — where protections for workers and the environment are flimsy, and tight construction schedules can sacrifice workmanship — there are nonetheless several factors that conspire to keep American mass-transit projects in a state of perpetual limbo. Here are seven culprits, listed roughly in order of guilt. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.salon.com/2012/02/04/should_it_take_decades_to_build_a_subway/singleton/