Transit Cost Project Featured in Vox

Transit agencies and local governments also sometimes try to preempt public outcry, creating more work for themselves in the process. The Boston Green Line, for instance, proposed limiting construction to between 10 pm and 7 am and required that traffic keep flowing. But as the transit costs researchers noted, “laborers are less productive when they have to spend the first hour of their shift setting things up and the last hour breaking things down to mask the fact that there is a major construction project underway....[I]n Istanbul, transit construction projects run 24 hours a day.” In the span of seven years (the expected duration of the Green Line’s 4.3-mile project), Istanbul built over 12 miles of subway.

“Here in the United States, we as a country are not very accepting of disruption,” Goldwyn told Vox. In Los Angeles, workers constructing the Purple Line could only work weekends—then Covid-19 hit, and stay-at-home orders made it possible for them to work 24/7. The result?"

“They completed the project seven months ahead of schedule."