Elon Musk Hates 405 Freeway Traffic, Pays Money To Speed Construction 431
S810 writes "Elon Musk, one of the main people behind PayPal, Space Exploration Technologies and Tesla Motors, has paid $50,000 to help Los Angeles speed up construction of the 405 Freeway, making it better and says that he will pay more if needed. From the article: 'Musk said he is open to pay the cost of adding workers to the widening project "as a contribution to the city and my own happiness. If it can actually make a difference, I would gladly contribute funds and ideas. I've super had it." — Musk quips that it's easier getting rockets into orbit than navigating his commute between home in Bel-Air and his Space Exploration Technologies factory in Hawthorne.' For those who aren't familiar with this issue, the 405 Freeway runs from the northern end of the San Fernando Valley all the way down to El Toro and runs by LAX. Residents are getting frustrated that this widening project is over budget and well over the anticipated time frame that it was supposed to completed by."
pays money to "study" speeding construction (Score:5, Informative)
He didn't pay money to speed construction. He spent $50,000 on a consulting organization that would look into how to speed up construction. They did not find a way to do so. But hey, he's learning how these things work: spending $50k to "study" something with no results is exactly how many real projects happen too. ;-)
A better question might be why L.A. is spending $1.1 billion on widening a freeway, instead of improving its damn transit. Adding another lane is going to be a stop-gap solution at best, and it'll be congested to the hilt within another few years. Is the goal to have 30-lane freeways by 2030 or something?
Re:$50k enough? (Score:4, Informative)
Does $50k remotely make any dent there? Aren't these projects tens of millions of dollars?
Probably pays the salary of 1 worker, without benefits, no overtime. A junior one at that.
Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it. (Score:5, Informative)
I like living in the country, I'm not going to move into the inner city where my job is just because the commute sucks. However, if I can contribute a fairly small portion of my money to make my commute a bit easier, I will. A good place for a job can be a really shitty place for a home.
Re:Idiot doesn't understand (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to throw money at the problem of highway construction, you offer a large payout contingent on how quickly it gets done while still within project specifications.
The workers get paid by the hour and so do the contractor managers most of the time. So to give them money with the promise of "more if needed" will result in pleas of "hey! we need more!!!"
These people seriously don't understand how it works when highways are constructed with public money -- the recipients never want the money to run out.
You know nothing about these construction contracts, which are handled by private firms. There are incentives to get the work done fast. But there are somethings you just can't rush, like having that sandy soil properly settled so new roadbed doesn't continue to settle and end up with cracks and holes. Then there's the matter of having the equipment necessary at various stages there on time, much of it coming from other worksites. There's hundreds of miles of freeways alone in the LA area. I see the same thing where I live. It looks simple enough, until you are in charge of the logistics and find how much more expensive it can be to try rushing things. Maybe if Musk threw several million dollars at the contractors, so they had more equipment they could get some things done faster. Sometimes private industry isn't faster than a good ol' bloated public department with lots of taxpayer dollar funded extra equipment available.
Re:SD Freeway isn't the problem (Score:3, Informative)
Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it. (Score:5, Informative)
I still find the money would be better invested in expanding the rail/subway network. How many lanes can you add to a freeway before it becomes ridiculously dangerous? There are already 17 lanes on some sections of the I-5 over here...
Re:SD Freeway isn't the problem (Score:5, Informative)
There's a reason nobody uses mass transit in LA. All mass transit in LA is based on a faulty assumption -- that everyone wants to go downtown.
There's no real north/south transit: To get from the Valley to the Westside, you have to go downtown and then back to the Westside.
Re:May I contribute $5 ? (Score:5, Informative)
This really isn't a bad idea. You could surely speed up construction on the most heavily trafficked roads.
If you think that construction companies, union workers and prevailing wage workers are not already soaking this government project, then you have no idea how government contracts work in California. if it a State, County or Federal project ultimately makes no difference. By offering more money from another source, it just cues those involved that they can charge extra to do what have been contracted to do already. Be it $5.00 per person or $50,000.00 per person adding the thought of having private money contributed to do a job that the government supposedly gave to the lowest bidder, which has already missed its time target and is overbudget is insane.
Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it. (Score:4, Informative)
In America, suburban schools are usually better than inner city schools. Being that said, I am willing to take a slight pay cut for telecommunting privlege and indefinite tenure. Some dumb blonde CEO may disagree with your finding however.
Re:$50k enough? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't think he's an exception, half the country thinks their experts on road design/construction, even when confronted by indisputable facts that run contrary to their initial thesis they will simply reformat their premise to reach the same conclusion.
I always get a kick out of people that like the OP claim there is no basis for the cost but it's designed by registered professional engineers to standards dictated by the American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO is a committee of experts in the field from state and federal government and private business). Those plans are then built by low bid contractors (often with 3+ bidders and prices that are frequently with 1-2%) operating under strict quality control guidelines with engineers supervising the installation, inspection, testing and quality assurance. And in the end the entire project is audited by both State and Federal auditors to ensure that no tax payer money was diverted or used contrary to law.
Yet, according to the OP the whole thing is horseshit and you could build roads for half the cost. That is of course if you didn't care if they lasted more than a week, nor cared at all about safety such as whether the bridges will fall down in a strong wind. That's because the OP is an absolute expert in examining his rectum visually up close and personal.
Yes roads cost a lot, and it's because they are designed to last anywhere from 20-40 years depending on pavement type. Considering the interstates were originally built in the 60's they've more than proved that the standards are adequate. But with truck weights more than 10 times larger than when the interstates were originally built it means complete reconstruction with much thicker pavements than the interstates used in the 60's. A typical interstate pavement section is over 3' thick with a foot of granular borrow, a foot of road base and a foot of concrete you aren't going to get any of that cheap.
Re:pays money to "study" speeding construction (Score:4, Informative)
The 405 expansion is only moderately cheaper than the Red Line, even if you measure purely in terms of construction cost per capacity. For $1.1b, it's estimated to add capacity for another 50k passengers/day or so, making it cost about $22k per new passenger. The Red Line, for $4.5b, carries about 150k passengers/day, so it cost about $30k per passenger.
Re:technically (Score:5, Informative)
The Interstate numbering standards are not random, nor are they some secret. Here's how they work:
1- or 2-digit freeway = primary route
even last digit = east / west route
odd last digit = north / south route
3-digit freeway = loop or spur route from 1- or 2-digit primary route
3-digit freeway, even first digit = loop route
3-digit freeway, odd first digit = spur route
1- or 2-digit freeway numbers are numbered ascending, starting west to east for odd numbered routes, and south to north for even numbered routes. Thus, I-5 on the west coast and I-95 on the east coast; and I-10 across the southern US and I-90 across the northern US.
3-digit freeway numbers are unique per state. Thus, California, Oregon, and Washington all having a 405 loop route that connects twice with I-5. Interstate 105 in Oregon is a spur route that goes from I-5 to a downtown terminus in Eugene.
There are a few oddities in the system due to an early convention that allowed a "directional prefix" in a name if a freeway split, this has been abandoned causing abnormalities in numbering. Example: I-84 used to be I-80N before being re-signed, and now I-84 is actually south of I-82 in Eastern Oregon / Washington. There are other oddities too, but they are few in comparison to the rest of the system.
Hope that clears it up.