Alex Marshall: large construction projects take longer now than 100 years ago
Alex Marshall has up a great essay at Spotlight on the Region. He suggests large construction projects are now taking longer than they used to:
It took four years to complete in 1904 the city’s first subway system, much of it hacked away using pick axes and mules.
It took less than a decade to complete in 1915 the central water line from the Catskill Mountains to New York City, a mammoth 92-mile aqueduct and tunnel system worthy of the Roman Empire.
It took just over a year to complete in 1930 the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world by far at the time, an intricately detailed structure of tiles and brick.
Today things generally take a lot longer, whether it’s the public or the private sector at work.
The first portion of the 2nd Avenue subway, which will be built using state-of-the–art tunnel-boring machines, will take six years to complete – if all goes well and enough money is found. Running from 96th Street on the Upper East Side to 63rd Street, it will have just three new stations, spaced every ten to 14 blocks.
Compare that to the city’s first subway line, the IRT, which ran from City Hall up to Grand Central, over to Times Square, and then up to 145th street. The IRT had 28 stations as well as local and express lines. And it was all built in just four years.
So just to make this contrast clear, the first phase of the 2nd Avenue subway in terms of track is a tenth the size of the original IRT and has three stations as opposed to 28. Yet it will take six years to complete as opposed to four for the much larger IRT. Why is this? …
Almost every engineer or administrator I ask about this seems to agree that things do take longer today, but explanations vary. The usual suspect is environmental and regulatory review, but I’m not including that in my perspective. I’m just talking about actual construction time.