Comment by prasadjoglekar
4 days ago
This sort of work usually costs 3x what is should, because the firm doing the work has to pay state minimum wage and/or hire union labor.
4 days ago
This sort of work usually costs 3x what is should, because the firm doing the work has to pay state minimum wage and/or hire union labor.
Minimum wage in California seems to be $16 an hour. I doubt this intersection took 37 500 man-hours to finish, so I don't think the cost is explained by wages. Also, $200K would still seem like a gigantic amount of money for adding stop lights to a single intersection.
You probably need an engineer. A couple. They might have to run traffic studies beforehand to estimate the design requirements and light timing. They might have to consider other network nodes beyond this in their modeling. They might have to also run studies afterward to retime the lights to meet realized demand.
I’m surprised its not a $6m project honestly.
There's a proposal to redo a playground in San Mateo's central park—bids have come in around $16M.
https://www.cityofsanmateo.org/4142/Central-Park-Playground-...
It's a nice playground design for sure, but it's kind of amazing to consider what could be built privately for the same amount. You could literally build a palace on a giant estate with fancy landscaping, a swimming pool, tennis courts, movie theater, etc.
Of course there are reasons why public projects are more expensive, but it does seem pretty crazy on the surface.
Would it be better if they hired non-union labor at $5/hour (1/3 the minimum wage)? Would you apply for that job?
Obviously that would be better. If no one applied for the job you raise rates until someone does.
You don't artificially start unnecessarily high.
If you do you are basically stealing from taxpayers to give gifts to unions.
Fortunately for the workers, paying below minimum wage is illegal. (And for what it’s worth, it’s really hard to hire even at minimum wage these days. McDonald’s pays well above $15 in most metro areas - including in states which use the federal minimum.)
1 reply →
the issue is the prevailing wage requirement (3x+ minimum wage). it would be easy to complete this cheaply with just minimum wage labor