Two Indicators: After Affirmative Action & why America overpays for subways
July 5, 20237:35 PM ET
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Sometimes when there is a big change taking place, a common response is, we don’t know what’s going to happen. Sometimes, though, we can say, hey, we have seen this before. And something pretty similar has happened somewhere else, and we should pay attention. Well, last week we got one of those big, sudden societal changes. The Supreme Court ruled against Harvard College and the University of North Carolina saying race cannot be used as a factor in college admissions and effectively ending the practice known as affirmative action. And so what effect will this decision have on students and schools and even the economy?
Well, for some clues, we can actually see where this has happened before. We can look at California, which ended affirmative action in public colleges 25 years ago. What happened there gives us a sense of what’s in store for us nationwide after the Supreme Court’s recent decision.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHAD CROUCH’S “SEVEN UP”)
MA: Hello, and welcome to PLANET MONEY. I’m Adrian Ma. Today on the show, we’re featuring two episodes from our short daily podcast, The Indicator From Planet Money. In Part 1, we’ll talk about the potential economic effects of the Supreme Court striking down affirmative action. And in Part 2, we’ll talk about infrastructure – specifically, why new subways don’t get built very much anymore, why it costs so much for America to build new stuff. We’ll go underground to find that answer. And all of that is coming up after the break.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHAD CROUCH’S “SEVEN UP”)
MA: First up, affirmative action and the Supreme Court. So the justices in two cases ruled against Harvard and the University of North Carolina saying that affirmative action in college admissions violates the Constitution. Zach Bleemer is an economist at Yale who studies college admissions. And just to set the table, I asked him to start off by defining what we mean when we talk about affirmative action.
ZACH BLEEMER: So affirmative action is a very general admissions practice in which university admissions offices provide preferences on the basis of applicants’ ethnicity and can thereby increase enrollment primarily among Black, Hispanic and Native American students.
MA: What policy wonks often call underrepresented minority students. And for schools, the goal of doing this is to create a more racially diverse student body. And it’s worth mentioning that this is really just an issue for the so-called selective schools, not just your Ivy Leagues or whatever, but any school that gets a lot more applicants than they can actually admit.
BLEEMER: It’s used in something like 25 states – public university systems – and in hundreds of private universities across the country.
MA: At the same time, nine states, including California, have banned affirmative action in their public university systems. Now, Zach says for schools that do use it, an applicant’s race or ethnicity can really make a difference in their chances of admitting different applicants.
BLEEMER: So imagine kids who have roughly a 1300 SAT score out of 1600 and a high school GPA, like – of, like, a 3.8 on a four-point scale – a quite good high school GPA. You’ll have many universities where students with those scores and grades, if they are white, are very unlikely to be admitted to the university, whereas if they’re Black or Hispanic are very likely to be admitted to the university. And that’s going to vary for each school, but these admissions advantages can be considerable.
MA: Now, affirmative action really began to take hold at schools in the 1960s. Some were inspired by the civil rights movement. Others were pushed to do it by student protests. And it was during this time that California schools began to take up the policy as a way to increase racial diversity on campus. And Zach says for years, it worked.
BLEEMER: So consider the freshman class that came into Berkeley and UCLA, the two most selective public universities in California, in 1997. Around the state, something like 27- or 28% of high school graduates were either Black or Hispanic, and about 26% of students coming into Berkeley or UCLA were Black or Hispanic. Their student body, at least in terms of race, roughly reflected the high school graduating class.
MA: But 1997 was the last year that would be true because, just the year before, California voters voted to ban affirmative action at public universities. So by 1998, public universities in California could no longer consider race as a factor in admissions. And not long ago, Zach decided he just had to study this.
BLEEMER: So this seemed like a gold mine to me, just to study the relative ramifications of going to more selective universities for more and less disadvantaged students, those targeted or not targeted by race-based affirmative action programs.
MA: A natural experiment.
BLEEMER: Exactly. The end of affirmative action was a large-scale, statewide natural experiment. Take those two cohorts of kids – the ’97 and the ’98 cohorts – follow them for 15 or 20 years, and see what happens to them.
MA: And to see what happened to them, Zach got his hands on a whole bunch of anonymized data about these two groups of students – those who applied to college before the ban and those who applied after. And in this data, there was all kinds of information about applicants’ race, where they got accepted or rejected, and even years later, how much they were making in income. So Zach did a deep dive into this data set, and when he surfaced, he came away with three main findings.
So first, he found the immediate effect of ending affirmative action in California was a huge drop in the number of underrepresented minority students attending the most selective public universities. So for example, in 1998, Berkeley and UCLA enrolled 40% fewer Black and Hispanic and Native American freshmen than they did just a year earlier. And Zach says this triggered a further cascading effect.
BLEEMER: Affirmative action ends, and Black, Hispanic and Native American students, on average, go to slightly less selective schools. White and Asian students, meanwhile, on average, get to go to slightly more selective schools, taking the slots of these Black and Hispanic students who had lost access to those places.
MA: So that was the immediate effect of the ban. Students from underrepresented backgrounds who might have gotten into that top-tier school just a year before wound up at less selective schools like UC San Diego or UC Irvine. But Zach’s analysis did not stop there. His second finding looked at the long-run implications of all this shifting around.
BLEEMER: If you follow these students forward into the labor market, the typical student who, because of the end of affirmative action, had a little bit less access to more selective universities ended up earning about 5% less than they would have earned if they’d had access to more selective universities through race-based affirmative action.
MA: And that 5% decline in earnings, by the way, Zach figures that was an average decline of about 2,500, maybe $3,000 a year. And interestingly, this did not happen to the white and Asian students that he was following who got rejected from that top, superselective tier of colleges. In most cases, he says, the white and Asian students experienced no decline or maybe just a very slight decline in their future earnings. And Zach thinks this may be because those white and Asian students generally came from backgrounds where they could get into and afford a private university education. And it may also be that the Black and Hispanic students, on average, came from less privileged backgrounds, and they just had more to gain from the education and the networks that were available to them at these schools.
BLEEMER: And so for at least this set of reasons and potentially others, it looks like access to more selective universities was just fundamentally more valuable to the Black and Hispanic students targeted by race-based affirmative action than it would have been for the white and Asian students who ultimately took their place after affirmative action was banned.
I think one thing that’s worth emphasizing here is this clearly isn’t true for every single student. There are many Black and Hispanic students who come from high-income backgrounds that are very networked. There are many low-income white and Asian students who don’t have that network. What I’m saying is just on average, Black and Hispanic students who gained access through affirmative action were driving substantially above-average gains compared to the students who replaced them.
MA: They got more bang for their buck.
BLEEMER: Exactly. I think the best that I can say is, you know, social justice issues aside – so forgetting questions of equity – if your goal is just to maximize economic efficiency – just to identify an admissions policy that will spur economic growth, identify students who will be able to best take advantage of university resources, earn the highest wages, pay back the most in tax dollars and otherwise succeed using a university’s resources, that’s what affirmative action did. And affirmative action increased the total size of the economic pie of California universities. And so you can increase the total size of the pie by allocating seats to kids who are best able to take advantage of them.
MA: At least, it did that before affirmative action was banned. And Zach predicts we’re going to see a nationwide version of what happened in California – an immediate drop in enrollment for Black, Hispanic and Native American students at highly selective schools, and in the longer run, over the next decade or so, an increase in what is already a pretty sizable income gap between white and Asian graduates of college and Black, Hispanic and Native American grads. Now, these may not be the outcomes that any particular school or politician or judge wants to see happen. But if history is any guide, it is what we are likely to see.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHAD CROUCH’S “SEVEN UP”)
MA: Next up, we descend into the subway system of New York City to find out why transit costs in the U.S. are so high – why we can’t have nice transit things without paying 10 times what European countries pay for the same stuff. Darian Woods picks it up after the break. Stay with us.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHAD CROUCH’S “SEVEN UP”)
DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: In cities around the U.S., there are big plans for new public transit. California’s dreaming of high-speed rail. Austin’s planning for a light rail system. And Seattle is extending its bus and train lines. And there is one thing that American public transit projects like these have in common – super high construction costs. And not just a little bit more expensive – as an example, one recent subway project in Manhattan was 10 times more expensive than in countries like Sweden or Italy. So the other day, I went to that really pricey subway project – 96th Street Station on Second Avenue – to figure out what was behind these soaring price tags. I waited for New York University professor Eric Goldwyn at the subway station. Eric and his co-authors recently released a big report comparing different countries’ approaches to building transit.
Eric, how’s it going?
ERIC GOLDWYN: Good, good, good.
WOODS: Eric arrived, of course, by subway.
We’re going to have a great time touring, I guess, what – this must be like the Sistine Chapel for urbanists.
GOLDWYN: Yeah, something like that.
WOODS: How much does this station roughly cost?
GOLDWYN: Eight hundred thirty-seven million dollars.
WOODS: All right. Well, let’s figure out why it’s so expensive. Let’s go for a tour.
GOLDWYN: All right, let’s do it.
WOODS: When you think about the cost of transit, the station design is critical. Eric Goldwyn talks about the case of the Second Avenue subway extension in New York. It’s this series of three extra subway stations along the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and it opened in 2017. There, nearly 80% of the construction costs were from building the stations – not from the train tracks or the tunnels built for the subway lines themselves. In fact, station design is one big explanation Eric found for high costs. So Eric and I went up to the station’s underground mezzanine.
GOLDWYN: What you see that they’ve done here is that there are no columns providing support. It’s one big cavern, right? So that means the volume of this station is much larger.
WOODS: And how long is it?
GOLDWYN: Sixteen hundred feet.
WOODS: OK. So a quick bit of math – 1,600 feet, 800 million.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
GOLDWYN: Yes.
WOODS: That means, every two feet, that’s a million dollars right there.
GOLDWYN: There you go. It’s an expensive piece of infrastructure.
WOODS: But the full size of this subway station wasn’t apparent just from walking around the public area.
GOLDWYN: And then you can see all these doors, right? Over here, let’s…
WOODS: Yeah.
GOLDWYN: What does that door say over there? So that’s the scrubber room. And then another service space over there, right?
WOODS: Honestly, it just looks like part of the wall.
GOLDWYN: Yeah.
WOODS: But you’re saying there are secrets behind that wall.
GOLDWYN: That’s what I’m saying. Nothing is sort of as it seems at the surface, right? There’s a lot more going on than what you see when you swipe into these subway stations.
WOODS: All this background room for lockers and offices and storage added size to the subway station. It also added cost. And another clue to the high cost of this subway station came when we took the escalators up to the street and we saw this plaque built into the entrance. It was commemorating the station’s opening, and, like the credits before a movie, it had a list of its designers and architects, consultants and construction companies.
GOLDWYN: So we have the contractors, E.E. Cruz and Tully Construction.
WOODS: And the labor costs in all of these companies pumps up the construction price tag, and that’s the second big reason driving up costs.
GOLDWYN: And then Skanska, Schiavone, Shea – it was a joint…
WOODS: Eric says that the U.S. has a tendency to outsource a lot more of the basic design work. These consultants boost white-collar labor costs, and this practice is in contrast to many European countries.
GOLDWYN: But doing sort of preliminary engineering, early planning work – that is work that we think a transit agency should be capable of doing on its own.
WOODS: Now, Eric is quick to point out that having a list of companies doing the construction is normal around the world – contracting with private construction crews, contracting expert engineering firms for those super specialized skills underground – totally normal. But Eric argues that, when public agencies have more engineers and designers employed on staff, not only are hourly wages cheaper, but the public agencies can keep a check on designs and plans. And they’ve got more knowledge of, say, the soil type, and that reduces expensive surprises later in the process.
And on the blue-collar side of things, Eric says that he found that the Second Avenue subway extension tended to use more construction workers. Now, of course, wages are just generally higher in New York than in most other places in the world, but that doesn’t explain the vast gulf between New York and even other relatively wealthy places, like Stockholm.
And now that we’re at street level, we cross the road to a nearby empty lot. We go to an area that, to Eric, represents the third major driver of costs – a lack of coordination between government agencies.
GOLDWYN: So this is the playground.
WOODS: The agency in charge of building the subway – the MTA – had to negotiate and pay the New York City Parks Department $11 million for this playground area. Now, they did need to destroy it to make room for storing all their construction equipment.
Diggers and everything here.
GOLDWYN: Tractors – they put their diggers, right? You probably had what’s known as a hog house or a place for workers to go. And so it had all of this space that is still pretty derelict.
WOODS: To an outside observer, what happened might seem odd. Like, you might be thinking – this is one part of the city government negotiating and extracting a deal with another. What’s the point? And Eric says, when he spoke to people abroad about this, it completely broke their brains.
GOLDWYN: They could not comprehend what we were talking about. They were like, what do you mean that the MTA has to pay the city of New York? Like, why would they do that? It’s all the same. And I would say, no, it’s not all the same in the eyes of these different sort of jurisdictions and these different municipal agencies. They all have their own budgets and sets of issues that they’re trying to satisfy.
WOODS: And in this case, the MTA is actually an entity created by the state, not the city. Eric says the situation of fragmented jurisdictions is especially strong in the U.S., and it contributes to various interest groups holding up work. And it’s not just government departments. There is always a point for some organization or a utilities company or a neighborhood group to hold up construction, and that causes costly delays.
And finally, that brings us to an approach to building that’s common in America. Transit builders plan projects in a way that try to annoy as few people as possible. Like, subway stations along this line were built by drilling really deep into the ground as opposed to shutting down the street for months and digging from the top. And drilling is expensive.
GOLDWYN: I think the public is completely unaware of it. And I think our elected officials – they know what’s going on, but no one is holding them to account over these types of issues.
WOODS: So we decided to call one up. Carolyn Maloney – she’s a former congresswoman who represented this area.
CAROLYN MALONEY: It absolutely was an issue.
WOODS: Carolyn Maloney was a huge champion of this subway extension.
MALONEY: And one of the reasons it was built is that I worked on it every single day to put the pieces together.
WOODS: She says that part of her role was unifying all kinds of disparate interest groups to support the project.
MALONEY: You’ve got to get the community behind it. The community boards had to pass resolutions supporting it. You had to get labor behind it. The chairman of the transportation committees – you had to get all of the interest groups behind it.
WOODS: And our expert, Eric, agrees that the kind of championing that Carolyn did – you know, bashing heads together, building and sustaining alliance – this kind of work is critical in the kind of environment that we have in the U.S., where there are so many veto points.
MALONEY: All I can say is we finally got it built. That’s the bottom line. I don’t care how much it cost. It was vital for the economic interest of New York City.
WOODS: The trouble with not scrutinizing these price tags, though, Eric says, is that you end up with less transit getting built. And that’s not the future that Eric or Carolyn want.
Well, thanks so much for the tour of the 96th Street/Second Avenue Station.
GOLDWYN: Sure. Thank you.
WOODS: What better person to kind of guide me through this very, very expensive subway station.
GOLDWYN: Happy to be the Virgil to your Dante.
WOODS: Well, I’m going to take the subway back home.
GOLDWYN: Yeah, I am, too. I am, too.
(SOUNDBITE OF ALEXANDER PUNZALAN, HANIELY PABLEO AND RUDY BOQUILA’S “OIL BARREL DUB”)
MA: That was Darian Woods, who co-hosts the PLANET MONEY Indicator podcast with me and Wailin Wong. If you want to get at us, feel free to email indicator@npr.org with story ideas or questions. And finally, two great ways to support PLANET MONEY and The Indicator are to, one, send an episode to a friend and, two, subscribe to PLANET MONEY Plus. Why, not? You can do that by going to plus.npr.org.
This episode was produced by Corey Bridges and engineered by Robert Rodriguez and Katherine Silva. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Viet Le is The Indicator’s senior producer. Kate Concannon edits The Indicator. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer, and I’m Adrian Ma. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.
翻译
有时，当发生重大变化时，常见的反应是，我们不知道会发生什么。但有时，我们可以说，嘿，我们以前见过这种情况。其他地方也发生了类似的事情，我们应该引起注意。好吧，上周我们发生了重大的、突然的社会变化之一。最高法院裁定哈佛大学和北卡罗来纳大学败诉，称种族不能作为大学录取的一个因素，并有效结束了平权行动的做法。那么这个决定会对学生、学校甚至经济产生什么影响呢？
好吧，对于一些线索，我们实际上可以看到以前发生过这种情况。我们可以看看加利福尼亚州，它在 25 年前就结束了公立大学的平权行动。那里发生的事情让我们了解最高法院最近做出裁决后全国范围内将发生什么。
（查德·克劳奇的《Seven Up》原声片段）
MA：您好，欢迎来到 PLANET MONEY。我是阿德里安·马。今天的节目中，我们将重点介绍每日简短播客《金钱星球的指标》中的两集。在第 1 部分中，我们将讨论最高法院废除平权行动的潜在经济影响。在第二部分中，我们将讨论基础设施 – 具体来说，为什么不再建造太多新地铁，为什么美国建造新地铁的成本如此之高。我们将深入地下寻找答案。所有这些都将在休息后出现。
（查德·克劳奇的《Seven Up》原声片段）
MA：首先是平权行动和最高法院。因此，两起案件的法官对哈佛大学和北卡罗来纳大学做出了败诉，称大学招生中的平权行动违反了宪法。扎克·布莱默 (Zach Bleemer) 是耶鲁大学的经济学家，研究大学招生问题。为了做好准备，我请他首先定义我们谈论平权行动时的含义。
扎克·布莱默：平权行动是一种非常普遍的招生做法，大学招生办公室根据申请人的种族提供偏好，从而主要增加黑人、西班牙裔和美国原住民学生的入学率。
MA：政策专家通常称之为代表性不足的少数族裔学生。对于学校来说，这样做的目标是创建一个种族更加多元化的学生群体。值得一提的是，这实际上只是所谓的精英学校的问题，不仅仅是常春藤盟校或其他学校，而是任何申请者比他们实际承认的多得多的学校。
BLEEMER：它在大约 25 个州（公立大学系统）以及全国数百所私立大学中使用。
马：与此同时，包括加利福尼亚州在内的九个州已禁止在其公立大学系统中采取平权行动。扎克说，现在，对于使用它的学校来说，申请人的种族或民族确实可以影响他们录取不同申请人的机会。
BLEEMER：想象一下，如果孩子的 SAT 成绩约为 1300 分（满分 1600 分），高中 GPA 大约为 3.8（四分制），那么高中 GPA 相当不错。在许多大学中，具有这些分数和成绩的学生如果是白人，则不太可能被大学录取，而如果他们是黑人或西班牙裔，则很可能被大学录取。每所学校的情况都会有所不同，但这些招生优势可能是相当大的。
MA：现在，平权行动真正开始在 20 世纪 60 年代在学校中扎根。有些人受到民权运动的启发。其他人则因学生抗议而被迫这样做。正是在这段时间，加州的学校开始采取这项政策，作为增加校园种族多样性的一种方式。扎克说多年来，它确实有效。
布莱默：所以想想 1997 年加州大学伯克利分校和加州大学洛杉矶分校这两所最挑剔的公立大学的新生班级。在全州范围内，大约 27% 或 28% 的高中毕业生是黑人或西班牙裔，大约 26% 的高中毕业生是黑人或西班牙裔。进入伯克利分校或加州大学洛杉矶分校的学生中有 % 是黑人或西班牙裔。他们的学生群体，至少在种族方面，大致反映了高中毕业生的情况。
MA：但是 1997 年是最后一年，因为就在前一年，加州选民投票禁止公立大学采取平权行动。因此到 1998 年，加州公立大学不能再将种族作为招生的一个因素。不久前，扎克决定他必须研究这个。
布莱默：所以这对我来说就像一座金矿，只是为了研究对于更多和更少处于不利地位的学生来说，进入更有选择性的大学的相对影响，这些学生是基于种族的平权行动计划的目标或非目标。
MA：一个自然的实验。
布莱默：没错。平权行动的终结是一场大规模的全州自然实验。让这两群孩子——97 年和 98 年的孩子——跟踪他们 15 或 20 年，看看他们会发生什么。
MA：为了看看他们发生了什么，扎克掌握了关于这两类学生的一大堆匿名数据——那些在禁令之前申请大学的学生和那些在禁令之后申请大学的学生。在这些数据中，有关于申请人种族的各种信息，他们在哪里被接受或被拒绝，甚至几年后，他们的收入是多少。因此，扎克深入研究了这个数据集，当他浮出水面时，他得出了三个主要发现。
首先，他发现结束加州平权行动的直接影响是，就读最挑剔的公立大学的少数族裔学生人数大幅下降。例如，1998 年，伯克利分校和加州大学洛杉矶分校招收的黑人、西班牙裔和美洲原住民新生比一年前减少了 40%。扎克说这引发了进一步的连锁效应。
布莱默：平权行动结束，黑人、西班牙裔和美国原住民学生平均会去选择性稍差的学校。与此同时，白人和亚裔学生平均可以进入选择性稍强的学校，抢占那些无法进入这些学校的黑人和西班牙裔学生的名额。
MA：这就是禁令的直接影响。来自弱势背景的学生可能在一年前进入顶级学校，但最终却进入了加州大学圣地亚哥分校或加州大学欧文分校等选择性较低的学校。但扎克的分析并没有就此结束。他的第二个发现着眼于所有这些转变的长期影响。
布莱默：如果你跟踪这些学生进入劳动力市场，就会发现，由于平权行动的结束，那些典型的学生进入更具选择性的大学的机会有所减少，最终他们的收入比他们在就业市场上的收入减少了约 5%。通过基于种族的平权行动，他们有机会进入更具选择性的大学。
MA：顺便说一句，收入下降 5%，扎克估计平均每年下降约 2,500 美元，也许是 3,000 美元。有趣的是，这种情况并没有发生在他所关注的被顶尖大学拒绝的白人和亚裔学生身上。他说，在大多数情况下，白人和亚裔学生的未来收入没有下降，或者可能只是略有下降。扎克认为这可能是因为这些白人和亚裔学生通常来自可以进入并负担得起私立大学教育的背景。平均而言，黑人和西班牙裔学生的背景也可能较差，他们可以从这些学校提供的教育和网络中获得更多收益。
布莱默：因此，至少出于这一系列原因以及其他可能的原因，对于基于种族的平权行动针对的黑人和西班牙裔学生来说，进入更具选择性的大学从根本上来说比白人和西班牙裔学生更有价值。在平权行动被禁止后，最终取代他们位置的亚洲学生。
我认为这里值得强调的一件事是，这显然不适用于每个学生。有许多来自高收入背景的黑人和西班牙裔学生，他们的人际网络非常广泛。许多低收入白人和亚洲学生没有这个网络。我想说的是，平均而言，通过平权行动获得入学机会的黑人和西班牙裔学生与取代他们的学生相比，取得的成绩远远高于平均水平。
MA：他们的投入得到了更多的回报。
布莱默：没错。我认为我能说的最好的就是，你知道，抛开社会正义问题 – 所以忘记公平问题 – 如果你的目标只是最大化经济效率 – 只是确定一项能够刺激经济增长的招生政策，确定能够刺激经济增长的学生能够最好地利用大学资源，赚取最高的工资，偿还最多的税款，并在其他方面成功地利用大学的资源，这就是平权行动所做的。平权行动增加了加州大学经济蛋糕的总规模。因此，您可以通过将座位分配给最有能力利用这些座位的孩子来增加蛋糕的总大小。
MA：至少，在平权行动被禁止之前它是这样做的。扎克预测，我们将看到加州所发生的情况在全国范围内发生——在高度选择性的学校中，黑人、西班牙裔和美国原住民学生的入学率立即下降，从长远来看，在未来十年左右的时间里，白人和亚裔大学毕业生与黑人、西班牙裔和美国原住民毕业生之间本已相当大的收入差距进一步扩大。现在，这些可能不是任何特定学校、政客或法官希望看到的结果。但如果以史为鉴的话，那就是我们很可能会看到的情况。
（查德·克劳奇的《Seven Up》原声片段）
MA：接下来，我们深入纽约市的地铁系统，看看为什么美国的交通成本如此之高——为什么我们不能在不支付欧洲国家十倍于同样东西的费用的情况下享受到美好的交通服务。达里安·伍兹 (Darian Woods) 中场休息后接球。和我们在一起。
（查德·克劳奇的《Seven Up》原声片段）
达里安·伍兹连线：美国各地的城市都制定了新公共交通的宏伟计划。加州的高铁梦想。奥斯汀正在规划轻轨系统。西雅图正在扩展其巴士和火车线路。而美国此类公共交通项目有一个共同点——建设成本极高。而且不仅仅是贵一点点——例如，曼哈顿最近的一个地铁项目比瑞典或意大利等国家贵 10 倍。所以有一天，我去了那个非常昂贵的地铁项目——第二大道上的第 96 街站——想弄清楚这些飞涨的价格标签背后的原因。我在地铁站等纽约大学教授埃里克·戈德温。
埃里克，怎么样？
埃里克·戈德温： 好，好，好。
伍兹：埃里克当然是坐地铁来的。
我们将会度过一段愉快的游览时光，我想，这一定就像城市规划者的西斯廷教堂。
戈德温：是的，类似的事情。
伍兹：这个站大概要多少钱？
戈德温：八亿三千七百万美元。
伍兹：好吧。好吧，让我们弄清楚为什么它这么贵。我们去游览一下吧。
戈德温：好吧，我们开始吧。
伍兹：当您考虑交通成本时，车站设计至关重要。埃里克·戈德温 (Eric Goldwyn) 谈论纽约第二大道地铁延伸项目的案例。这是曼哈顿上东区沿线的一系列额外的三个地铁站，于 2017 年启用。在那里，近 80% 的建筑成本来自建设车站，而不是来自为地铁线路建造的铁轨或隧道他们自己。事实上，车站设计是埃里克发现的高成本的一大原因。于是埃里克和我来到了车站的地下夹层。
GOLDWYN：您看到他们在这里所做的是没有提供支持的专栏。这是一个很大的洞穴，对吗？所以这意味着这个站的体积要大得多。
伍兹：那有多长呢？
戈德温：一千六百英尺。
伍兹：好的。简单算一下——1,600 英尺，8 亿。
（脚步声片段）
戈德温：是的。
伍兹：这意味着，每两英尺就有一百万美元。
戈德温：给你。这是一项昂贵的基础设施。
伍兹：但是仅仅通过在公共区域走动并不能看出这个地铁站的整体规模。
戈德温：然后你就可以看到所有这些门了，对吧？在这里，我们…
伍兹：是的。
戈德温：那边那扇门说什么？这就是洗涤室。然后那边还有另一个服务空间，对吗？
伍兹：老实说，它看起来只是墙的一部分。
戈德温：是的。
伍兹：但你是说那堵墙后面有秘密。
戈德温：我就是这么说的。一切都不像表面看起来那样，对吧？当您刷卡进入这些地铁站时，发生的事情远比您看到的要多得多。
伍兹：所有这些用于储物柜、办公室和储藏室的背景空间增加了地铁站的面积。这也增加了成本。当我们乘自动扶梯到街上时，我们看到入口处建有一块牌匾，这表明这个地铁站的成本很高。它是为了纪念车站的开业，就像电影前的片尾字幕一样，它有一份设计师、建筑师、顾问和建筑公司的名单。
GOLDWYN：我们有承包商 EE Cruz 和 Tully Construction。
伍兹：所有这些公司的劳动力成本都推高了建筑价格，这是推高成本的第二大原因。
GOLDWYN：然后是 Skanska、Schiavone、Shea——这是一个联合……
伍兹：埃里克说，美国倾向于外包更多的基础设计工作。这些顾问推高了白领劳动力成本，这种做法与许多欧洲国家形成鲜明对比。
戈德温：但是做一些初步工程、早期规划工作——我们认为交通机构应该有能力自己完成这些工作。
伍兹：现在，埃里克很快指出，在世界各地拥有一份进行施工的公司名单是很正常的——与私人施工人员签订合同，与专业工程公司签订地下超级专业技能的合同——完全正常。但埃里克认为，当公共机构雇佣更多的工程师和设计师时，不仅每小时工资会便宜，而且公共机构可以对设计和计划进行检查。他们对土壤类型等方面有了更多的了解，这减少了后期过程中昂贵的意外情况。
在蓝领方面，埃里克说，他发现第二大道地铁延伸线往往会使用更多的建筑工人。当然，现在纽约的工资普遍高于世界上大多数其他地方，但这并不能解释纽约与斯德哥尔摩等其他相对富裕的地方之间的巨大差距。
现在我们已经到了街道高度，我们穿过马路来到附近的一个空地。在埃里克看来，我们的研究代表了成本的第三个主要驱动因素——政府机构之间缺乏协调。
GOLDWYN：这就是游乐场。
伍兹：负责修建地铁的机构——MTA——必须与纽约市公园管理局协商并为这个游乐场地支付 1100 万美元。现在，他们确实需要摧毁它，以便腾出空间来存放所有的建筑设备。
挖掘机和这里的一切。
GOLDWYN：拖拉机 – 他们放了挖掘机，对吗？你可能有所谓的猪舍或工人去的地方。所以它拥有的所有空间仍然相当废弃。
伍兹：对于外部观察者来说，发生的事情可能看起来很奇怪。就像，您可能会想 – 这是市政府与另一政府谈判并达成协议的一部分。重点是什么？埃里克说，当他和国外的人谈论这件事时，他们彻底崩溃了。
戈德温：他们无法理解我们在说什么。他们说，MTA 必须向纽约市付款是什么意思？比如，他们为什么要这么做？全部都是一样。我想说，不，在这些不同类型的司法管辖区和不同的市政机构眼中，情况并不完全相同。他们都有自己的预算和想要解决的一系列问题。
WOODS：在这种情况下，MTA 实际上是由州而不是城市创建的实体。埃里克表示，美国司法管辖区分散的情况尤其严重，这导致各个利益集团拖延工作。不仅仅是政府部门。某些组织、公用事业公司或社区团体总会有理由推迟施工，这会导致代价高昂的延误。
最后，这给我们带来了一种在美国常见的建设方法。交通建设者在规划项目时尽量避免惹恼人们。例如，这条线路沿线的地铁站是通过深入地下钻孔建造的，而不是关闭街道数月并从顶部挖掘。而且钻孔费用昂贵。
GOLDWYN：我认为公众完全没有意识到这一点。我认为我们当选的官员 – 他们知道发生了什么，但没有人要求他们对此类问题负责。
伍兹：所以我们决定打电话给一位。卡罗琳·马洛尼 – 她是代表该地区的前国会女议员。
卡罗琳·马洛尼：这绝对是一个问题。
伍兹：卡罗琳·马洛尼是这次地铁扩建的大力支持者。
马洛尼：建造它的原因之一是我每天都在努力将各个部分拼凑在一起。
伍兹：她说她的部分职责是团结各种不同的利益团体来支持该项目。
马洛尼：你必须得到社区的支持。社区委员会必须通过支持它的决议。你必须在背后投入劳动力。交通委员会主席——你必须得到所有利益集团的支持。
伍兹：我们的专家埃里克也同意卡罗琳所做的那种支持——你知道，共同努力、建立和维持联盟——这种工作在我们美国的环境中至关重要，那里有有这么多否决点。
马洛尼：我只能说我们终于把它建成了。这是底线。我不在乎它花了多少钱。这对于纽约市的经济利益至关重要。
伍兹：埃里克说，不仔细检查这些价格标签的问题是，最终建设的交通运输会减少。这不是埃里克或卡罗琳想要的未来。
非常感谢您参观 96 街/第二大道站。
戈德温：当然。谢谢。
伍兹：还有什么更好的人可以引导我穿过这个非常非常昂贵的地铁站呢？
戈德温：很高兴成为但丁心目中的维吉尔。
伍兹：嗯，我要坐地铁回家。
戈德温：是的，我也是。我也是。
（Alexander Punzalan、HANIELY PABLEO 和 RUDY BOQUILA 的“OIL BARREL DUB”原声片段）
MA：那是达里安·伍兹（Darian Woods），他与我和 Wailin Wong 共同主持了 PLANET MONEY Indicator 播客。如果您想联系我们，请随时发送电子邮件至indicator@npr.org，提出故事想法或问题。最后，支持 PLANET MONEY 和 The Indicator 的两种好方法是，一是向朋友发送一集，二是订阅 PLANET MONEY Plus。为什么不？您可以访问 plus.npr.org 来完成此操作。
本集由科里·布里奇斯 (Corey Bridges) 制作，罗伯特·罗德里格斯 (Robert Rodriguez) 和凯瑟琳·席尔瓦 (Katherine Silva) 策划。它经过了 Sierra Juarez 的事实核查。Viet Le 是 The Indicator 的高级制作人。凯特·康坎农 (Kate Concannon) 编辑《指标》。Alex Goldmark 是我们的执行制片人，我是 Adrian Ma。这是美国国家公共广播电台。感谢收听。
