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

Once I had finished I could earn 3 to 4 times more on several places.

They were also extremely creative taking foreign systems, studying the patent and modifying it to pay zero to the creators of the patents. This was done with things like the aluminium beams for electricity delivery that I think was developed by Italians, or the tunnelling machines that had all the pieces replicated inhouse.

1) BART 'works' for a subset of the population.

2) ACE train is one route only, from Stockton to San Jose.

3) Caltrain is one straight line. Caltrain has a bullet train that takes an hour for ~20-30 miles.

4) There is a ferry service for some parts of north bay.

There are probably dozens of other bus systems and ferries and what not, all incompatible and disconnected.

When people from bay area (and the big tech companies) tell you they are the greatest minds on the planet solving (or going to solve) world problems, look at their public transit and think. Then weep/laugh.

Source: I lived in the North bay, East bay and South bay.

So, after having lived in Barcelona and Madrid... Both metros are excellent, but besides covering a smaller area, I still prefer Barcelona metro than Madrid one. IMHO, Barcelona metro looks more like the one in the german cities and Madrid metro looks like London one.

Said that, this year Madrid metro users have been quite angry at some line closures at the same time than tunnels were fixed at the same time in the city. It is mostly a managing problem as well, as some of the trains (quite old in some cases) are still being rented instead of bought.

Line 7B grew up as well but in San Fernando de Henares some buildings got structural cracks and some houses (over 50) had to be bulldozed.

Metro works from 06:00 to 01:00, but there is nothing before of after that time. In Barcelona, for instance, Monday to Thursday works 5:00 to 00:00, on Friday 5:00 to 02:00, and from 05:00 on Saturday to 00:00 on Sunday non-stop. That has been for some years now and means lots of drunk people not taking the car.

In Barcelona, metro schedules are tighter as well. In Barcelona, in rush hours you may have a train every 2,5 minutes, in some cases less than 2 minutes. In Madrid it's more like 4 minutes. Trains are newer in Barcelona, too (and wider because most lines use iberic gauge), but that was because until the 90s Barcelona trains had some asbestos on them.

Anyways, a metro is not only about the trains, it's also about the stations. Most of Madrid ones have conditioned air and have better lighting than not only the Barcelona ones, but the European ones as well. But, again IMHO, signage in Madrid metro is HORRIBLE. Most of the signs are on the walls, when you are walking on a crowded corridor is easy to take the wrong direction. I need a magnifier to read the metro plan on the wagons. Also, it takes some time to understand that it "drives on its left" in a country where everything else "drives on its right". Not a big thing, but if you come from somewhere in Europe it may take you some time until you get used to all of it.

If you look at the physical map, you will see that it visits multiple towns that are not in a straight line from Madrid. This causes the line to "zig-zag" and what should take 20 minutes in a straight line becomes a 1h 15min ride.

People use it because Madrid has started being hostile to cars and the only two alternatives are trains (which is pretty good, takes 30 min) or buses

It's also not 24/7, closes at midnight (and if you are going out in Spain, you will stay way later than that)

I am also heavily distrusting of the "75 percent of passengers described themselves as ‘very satisfied’". The infrastructure might be ok now, but the frequencies are getting worse (except when the pope visits, in that case they apparently have the money) and in rush hour everything is packed.

The article is in French, but geology is the key factor. Do you need to bore rock or sandy soil with tar? Is the area seismically active like in Los Angeles? This affects the cost and timeline of metro construction more than just wages.

Which is basically "Soul of a new machine" for municipalities with all the political mess this implies. How do you get stuff done - and at what price.

> The PP candidate for Assembly President, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, promised to deliver 30 new miles (48 kilometers) of metro by the next election, compared to the 14 miles (23 kilometers) the PSOE had delivered during their previous 15 years in government. With this pledge, the PP won a majority and Ruiz-Gallardón was duly elected president.

It's hard to see that working in the US, even if we eliminated the jurisdictional patchworks, because what will happen is one candidate will promise 1000 miles and the other will propose destroying existing infrastructure, but they'll also make competing promises on homelessness, affordability, and various culture war issues, while jockeying for supremacy in media prominence, and then whichever one gets elected will build 0 miles and say it was somehow the other one's fault. It's just hard to imagine any sizable electorate in the US actually voting based on an issue like how quickly and cheaply public transportation is built. If we had the kind of people who care about stuff like that, we wouldn't have the problems we have.

* https://ifp.org/transit-abundance-playbook/

that gives specific recommendations to makes things quicker (in the US?).

Utilities were generally public prior to this. Now we have private equity buying up utilities because the profits are guaranteed [2]. While electricity prices are regulated, capex on infrastructure isn't so they can simply boost profits by "investing" in the network ie creating extra capacity for data centers to be sold electricity at sub-market rates.

Lots of expierments were done and empirical data analyzed on the tragedy of the commons and it never matched the theory. Ultimately, this resulted in Elinor Ostrom winning the 2009 Nobel Price for Economics for disproving it with empirical data. Yet people still quote it.

Look at the list of metro systems sorted by length [4]. They're almost all Chinese. The 4th largest is in Chengdu, which only opened in 2010. In 16 years it's now the 4th largest in the world.

Pretty much any argument you can use about how China is different will have a contradiction by counterexample. Difficult terran? Chongqing. Old cities? Beijing, Shanghai. City too large? Good one.

It's not any single factor that allows for this. It's managed at every single level. For example, China has standardized rolling stock to a handful of variants so you avoid an entire procurement process (and grift). The UK spends billions of pounds to build an otherwise completely unnecessary tunnel under the Chilterns to protect the views of something of the most expensive property in the country [5]. Not in China. Audits of the Second Avenue Subway showed a host of corruption such as so-called "ghost jobs" [6]. Beverly Hills and Santa Monica fought the LA Metro extending into their areas because it might bring in the poors.

[1]: https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/tragedy_of...

[2]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pe-buys-utilities-power-ai-18...

[3]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/artcarden/2019/08/07/elinor-ost...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems

[5]: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/19/hs2-tunnels...

[6]: https://secondavenuesagas.com/2018/01/01/inside-times-deep-d...