First measures
The Spanish state railway operator ordered trains that were too big for the existing train tunnels. Hilarity ensued. That’s how I initially read the random news headlines from last week, forwarded by reader Josh.
The first link I had was to a Forbes.com article, and that itself was something of a trainwreck—the site’s purveyors and their advertising policies didn’t play well together with my browser’s ad blocker. So I did a news search that pulled up some less annoying sources that were nonetheless likely to be reliable. In this case I landed on the Irish state broadcaster’s site, and the story without the early clickbait hype turns out to dissipate into near nothingness.
The original story probably escaped Spanish domestic media orbit after being advanced by some domestic Spanish interest group, I suspected but didn’t try to verify. I’ve seen it from how German media cover America, too. Exceptions and extremes in faraway places are presented as commonplace and standard. It was a phenomenon before the internet and clickbait, too, when newspaper editors tried to find back-page filler stories that would hold subscribers’ attention.
At any rate, the revised version of the story has it that the Spanish rail operator ordered new trains back in 2019. The company contracting for the job caught an error during the design phase, about a year after the order, discovering that the new trains were too wide for a lot of the old 19th century tunnels found in the northern part of the country. The order had to be redone before any trains were built or delivered, but with some losses to the supplier for time wasted in the design process. As a result, the 31 trains on order will be delivered two years later than originally planned, in 2026 rather than 2024. The price tag came in at about a quarter billion dollars. The state railway manager in charge resigned to take responsibility for the error—and probably for the PR embarrassment to the company.
As weird an error as it was, the final version of the story was far less dramatic than initial reports. And to my knowledge, the American public infrastructure construction projects are still the most expensive in the world by a factor of about four. That was going to be my angle on this story initially, but it has taken on a slightly different shape. Other countries don’t seem eager to challenge our world leadership role in high public-project prices.
A lot has been theorized, written, and discussed about American public construction projects and their eye-popping costs. Yet there is scant agreement about what to do about any of it—at least not in any way that will defeat the vested interests for the sake of getting things done economically.
The error in measurement takes the glow off ‘getting a window seat’
Comments on Nick article are really dicey today!
This is Anne's work. We're working on a way to make it appear directly without having to hit the link. I believe this astounding work deserves recognition as an Honorary Member of JSLC.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/NWCNP64xK9eR3bzE6