We got told it was split company + navy parking, with(of course) no numbers on how that split is going to work out. Wouldn't surprise me at all if the company parking is zone A only - parking for tradesmen has been actively made worse over the last several years.
We should completely de-man a ship heading to any avail over 9 months, turn it over to a shipyard and a 10 man Navy team to handle QA, inspections, and other admin type stuff. Start standing up a crew 30 days from delivery.
My CO said just yesterday that the ship's force has done everything we needed to do for some time, and the contractors are the reason for the almost year long delay
That depresses me, we have an inability to hold shipyards and contractors to their contracts.
I remember showing up to my first DH ride and meeting the ship in month 27 of a 9 month avail.
It's almost always because things are found that are materially different than what the Navy described. So the yards open up some piece of machinery, turns out it way worse than expected. Then they have to deal with that as well.
It also doesn't help that there is a different pot of money for items like that found after the avail starts. So they put as much in the original work package as they have budget for, then use the contingency money to pay for the other things. But the yards don't know about the contingency items so they weren't scheduled.
There is a ton of blame to go around on why the yards are such a clusterfuck.
We have a good sized community of engineering and maintenance duty officers… why don’t we send a team of 4-6 of them to a ship, say 8 weeks before an avail, have them do a week of inspection and documentation, then their report becomes the full work package.
Nobody has any incentive to do that. The Navy doesn’t want to do that because then they’d have to confront reality about the state of their ships. The yards have no interest because the current state of affairs isn’t really hurting them. Congress could force the issue, but it seems rare these days when Congress does something productive and meaningful.
Exactly. Requiring activities hand known requirements (sometimes inadequate requirements) to a contracting office. That office is under-resourced and must deal with 1102s career hopping for promotions. Contract mods then take too long, and 9 months turns into 27.
Boondoggling is an all hands event.
I used to be the 3MC for the reserve side of LCSRON out in San Diego. The bubbas out there would get paid by the check for each fire bottle and hose station they would do, and our guys would go do DCPO checks on the drill weekends (because that made sense 🙄) and they’d still find stuff jacked up but we couldn’t do anything about it because of the contract.
I was on a ship in the shipyards for 5 years, by the time it decommissions it’ll have been in the yards for 10 years total. I couldn’t agree more.
When I got there we were told 6 months to first underway, but the ship was far more fucked up than anyone knew. At the time we had a crew of 40 and that was plenty to constantly man the ship, write tags, rove for leaks and floods, etc.
Then Millington, despite being told we were nowhere near getting underway and being begged not to send more people, started filling out our 300-man crew compliment.
Everything went to shit. Someone had the bright idea to stand up duty sections and armed watches, which added immensely to the delays. Suddenly we had to do drills, which shut down swaths of the ship to the contractors.
I mean, about 85% of it was contractors being barely qualified to hold a hammer, but it was easy for them to point to us as being the thing holding them up.
So I fully agree. If the ship is going to the yards, there’s no reason to have a full crew onboard.
I agree but I think it should be 2nd tour only and still sea duty. Because the alternative would be considering that a shore duty and that would be fucked up. Plus it’s a win for people with families.
Well, or making the work completely the yards job and just having the navy inspect when they are “done” i.e give them a list of shit to fix and not accept the product until it’s functional. Then we could finally say “no this is officially on you guys to unfuck let us know when the work is actually finished”, instead of making us run around trying to solve the chaos that is their unchecked cable installation. It’s like those home development shows where something goes wrong and you just know its only going to get a lot worse once you open up the wall
I don't agree on the sea tour, make it a shore duty billet for E-7 and above. They would be the stakeholders for each division insuring the shipyard workers complete the work to their satisfaction. They wouldn't be on the ship chipping paint but working with their shipyard counterparts on completing the work. This tour would be seen as vital for Chief wanting to rank up to E-8 or E-9.
Just so I’m clear, like skeleton crew for E7 and above? No E6 and below? Each E7 is a mostly lone inspector signing off WAFs and checking job completion?
I think the problem there is that that MIGHT work for basic cabling fuck ups, but at the end of the day, a single Chief is not going to be a true expert on all the equipment that his division would run and I think he would probably miss things. That’s just ALOT to put on one person and expect it to end well. WAFs already get half hazardly signed off as it is due to time constraints and pressure from both big navy and the shipyards alike. To me it would still be better if the yard said “hey we’re done. We tested everything. This is a good ship” and then we brought a majority crew aboard who did something similar to nsurv and sea trials.
Plus think how much money that would save, both from not paying all those sailors for an entire yard period, but also by nailing the shipyards to actually complete at least more of their work than they do currently.
How many bodies do you need in a certain division? At the end of the day the Navy is contracting this out & the vendor is going to have to provide reports & meet milestones. If the vendor doesn't hit these milestones then the KO shouldn't pay them.
Im a recruiter who primarily works with Navy vets and transitioning service members. Its a bit shocking how many junior sailors I speak to who are getting out after 4 years in the yards with maybe 3-4 weeks seatime. Some went from one-yard period to a boat in another. Their whole contract was sweepers and watch in a construction zone and maybe running work controls. Can't imagine how crushing it is to go to boot camp, A school, maybe a C school and then just spend years in a shipyard before leaving.
Going to a shipyard as a junior sailor was insane. I had a furnished apt as an E-1 and didn’t qualify or become useful for like 8 months when I got sent TAD to an active boat for a year. Came back and sat around for another year.
The yards are either the worst time of your life or the easiest.
For me it was amazing for the first 3-5 months. We worked basically 4 days and were forced to do a PT day on Friday. The big issue came along when the CO changed over. This guy was so ready to be the greatest captain on earth he had us working 3-4 extra hours per day with Fridays being full work days again.
I became a damn contractor watcher as “we couldn’t trust the fire watch guys to take care of their job.” Like I promise you, that contractor is doing a whole lot more than I care to do right now after that 22-2 and morning colors bs.
Bad news: whether at Newport News, Bath, San Diego - baked in transit, housing, dependa infrastructure is a challenge.
Good news: gets the federal government invested in local infrastructure
I remember walking a literal mile and a half to and from the boat when I was there. We had a duty van, but it was rarely running when we left the ship. It was an incredibly depressing walk.
I’ve always biked to work and my ship and had a better parking spot than the CO. I know it doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s a much better quality of like than driving to work.
I don’t understand why biking on base and to the shipyard isn’t more of a thing. The distances are perfect for biking, traffic is slow, and the bike parking is close too the ship.
This is ~~NNSY~~General Dynamics Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, so likely the crew lives across the water in Norfolk and has to commute through the tunnels to get to the ship at all. If they were bivouacked in Newport News or Hampton, it would make sense. Build a joint barracks at Langley AFB or something. Then run busses instead of having to build parking. Shit, why not run busses in the first place?
> Build a joint barracks at Langley AFB
You want people to bike 14 miles down the highway?! You think that's an actual solution?
Since you're clearly not familiar with the area at all: There is housing at Huntington Hall, a barracks near the shipyard, and at several PPV apartments on the peninsula. There are also barracks in Portsmouth. There is also a bus system. Some of them are contracted, a lot of them are WEPS department.
I would run busses from barracks, preferably right to the piers. Portsmouth is on the wrong side of the water: the Norfolk Naval Shipyard is in Portsmouth, but we're talking about Newport News here. Maybe a ferry? Edit: ship's in drydock, so its barges aren't busy.
Not NNSY, it's Newport News Shipbuilding. Also, NNSY just recently banned bicycles within the CIA, so not as attractive of a solution as it used to be.
It's Newport News Shipbuilding, a Division of Huntington Ingalls. Generally referred to as either NNS or HII. Realistically, most of these individuals are either living in Virginia Beach or Chesapeake. There is surprisingly little decent and/or affordable housing in Norfolk. They'd have to go through the HRBT to get over to HII, however, the rest of the time that the ship is at NOB, they wouldn't have to worry about a tunnel.
BAE and NASSCO are non-nuke only. They'll get the amphibs, Burke's, etc., with MARMC overseeing the avails. HII-NNS is only going to be doing nuke construction, CVN midlife, and possibly a sub midlife, but NNSY handles most of the sub work. SUPSHIP oversees most of the HII stuff, so more closely aligned to DC bureaucracy than the other activity going on in Hampton Roads, thus the ability to drop $120 million for some parking.
Wait, isn't this whole thread about NNS building parking? Yeah, that's what 've been writing against. You've grasped the fundamental problem: sailors are quartered on the wrong side of the water from their big-ass ship, and all the ways to get there suck.
That's not the problem. The problem is having them going to the shipyards in the first place. There is no need for 90% of the sailors to be at NNS until the final month or so of the avail/construction. Plenty to do at NOB and would avoid the HRBT. Bureaucracy is the only reason why anyone would have a full boat of sailors while in the private shipyards.
My thinking as well, maybe that landed on a different thread but it's here somewhere. But I'm getting the impression that we're only talking about around 300 crew reporting to the carrier, which given its normal complement maybe isn't that awful in principle, but what are those folks even doing?
People are lazy, American infrastructure is very car centered, people are unfamiliar/uncomfortable with how to ride a bicycle as a commuter, communities are run by people who don’t use bikes, shipyards are hazardous, etc etc
But mostly people are lazy and have resigned themselves to the mentality the only method of transportation is a POV.
Leadership - Hey guys, I know you’re suffering from mental health crisis at an alarming rate due to - checks notes - subpar leadership and a failure to take care of sailors. So here’s a parking garage.
Parking was one of the most common concern items the crew of the GW brought up in the quality of life and service investigations. This is leadership hearing them and doing something about it.
Anyone that's ever spent any amount of time in the yards in Newport News will tell you parking arrangements are atrocious, particularly so if you're in drydock.
Does any east coast yard have what anyone would describe as "good" parking? The entire eastern seaboard - specifically the mid Atlantic and northeast - are not particularly conducive to building more parking infrastructure of any kind without some form of land repurposing. There is practically no open space to work the problem cheaply.
My opinion only applies to the east coast because I've never set foot in a West Coast shipyard, please add context if it's relevant.
Still the same shitty deal; too many people and cars. But also the base has to implement a car removal program from the garage. Anyone still in the same spot on a monthly basis needs to be towed. So many spots filled by abandoned cars and large ass suvs or monster trucks.
Sounds like it hasn’t changed much since I was on the California DLGN-36 pre-com there!
Parking aside in both Newport News and Portsmouth, and add in Charleston, I always enjoyed shipyard availabilities. I enjoyed rebuilding things, overseeing/QA-ing new installations, etc. I was in yards on the California, America, Semmes, and a pier-side overhaul on the Sierra, plus a yard period on a YTB. Living conditions could sometimes leave something to be desired, but 4 or 5 of us would get together and rent a place. Not sure how viable that is today.
Most of the zone A up north yard is going to get yanked as they continue expanding, and this garage is shutting down one of the larger lots down south.
It is, I don't get why it was such a complaint to be honest. I was there and did the busses and walks, it's not nearly as bad as what it was made out to be. Especially if you've been at BAE or NASSCO, or even the base when all the piers are full. Hell the busses were better than parking at 50th Street since you were dropped at the gate. But after it was such a common complaint on 73, the follow on surveys on the other units at the yard said similar.
Using 73/74 as a Sample, there's less than 300 sailors combined that live/d on the other side of a tunnel that didn't make the choice to do so. More barracks should absolutely be made available to get that number to 0. However those sailors are also moved to the peninsula side of the tunnels as soon as space is available. So to tell someone to live elsewhere or find a different route to fix your own problem with commutes in this case, or in the case they had to use any of the other bridges/tunnels in the area would be an almost guaranteed accurate statement. And why complaints like this should be immediately dismissed.
Oh and they're putting it 10blocks from the 50th street turnstiles. This solves nothing. At least the 30th st garage is right next to pier 2 on the off chance you're docked there.
You'll still need to be bussed in from the garage to the gate then walk a mile to the ship. This is why commutes are an hour+ if you live on the other side of hrbt.
Someone is 100% profiting off this deal. Perhaps it's the war profiteers or the senior leadership who make massive money when they get out to go work for NNSY.
It's more likely that the site for the parking lot was the only place they could find to put it. It's not like Newport News is just full of open, undeveloped land that can support a giant concrete structure on top of it.
I get that. 100%. I just don't know how a parking structure that is a half mile away from the turnstiles is supposed to keep sailors from killing themselves. Turns a 20 minute walk to the ship into a 35-40 minute walk.
Yeah if I was still in the yards, I wouldn't use the garage anyway. I just pulled up google maps to run the distances. The garage is more than double the distance from 50th street turnstiles than the 50th street parking lot.
No one working at NNSY is making massive money, that's for sure. 12,000 employees/shore based military and a single SES for the entire installation. NNSY and NNS are not the same thing. Far from it.
Why not build a barracks on top of the parking garage? It's very common in almost all cities for new condo or office buildings to require several hundred parking spots below the building.
Right now the walk is 1 and 1/4 mile walk, dodging traffic and short cutting through zones filled with rusting parts.
It's not a terrible walk spring and fall but during the summer it's a trudge through the devils asshole since so much concrete make temps over a 100, during the winter choose between fk it's cold or walking through a downpour for 20 minutes.
If you worked a whole day it's just demoralizing. Especially since leadership gets to park right next to the ship and usually leave earlier than you do.
I can get why it's a mental health issue.
You want to see improvement pressure, dictate leadership has to do the same walk ship forces do and even if it didn't improve much at least the E3 would feel things are fair.
That's honestly the big, overarching problem nowadays imho. Sure Rank hath it's privilege, but we drill leadership means lead from the front to E6 and below and then they watch the E8 leave at 13 from their private parking spot while they gotta tell their spouse ill be home at 17 if I don't get stuck in traffic.
Even something dumb like letting military ride bicycles on shipyard, like shipyard does would be an improvement, but watch us have to wear 5 layers of protective gear to do so.
This made me chuckle, because as fucked as it is. I think you're right haha. We're all retarded in the end and I was even in a fairly smart role in the navy, but I got out and moved to a better climate and all I can think as I sip my drinks and smoke my joints in the sun and in the pool is how retarded everything about PSNS was! Atleast you guys got barracks to bring the bunnies back to! We just had to find the slutty civs and hope we can hump and dump for a night sometimes if we had to live on the ship! Talk about the 👏
There might be other measures taken. I don't know. But I do know that the 50th street lot isn't that big. Especially if there are multiple ships in the yard ---at one point a couple years ago 73, 74, and 78 were all at NNS. I don't know if it is still done, but for a while Sailors had to park at satellite lots throughout Newport News and get bussed in. This should address some of that.
They really need to work on the phrasing.
Depending on the way you interpret the headline, one could read it in a darkly sarcastic way of, "Well, with fatalities up, there's more available parking than ever!"
Not where I would want to go with it myself, but find it hard to believe leadership cares.
I love reactionary change 😁
/s
I hope those who had the power to address the issue and let it continue to fester instead of making a proactive decision (decades ago) live with this over their heads for the rest of their lives.
I mean, it’s quality of life issues. Everything is bailing water and ewarp, sometimes, feel me?
Also pretty click baity. Bitching = room for improvement = hope = the Navy I love.
Keep bitching, more parking isn’t nothing.
I doubt anyones taking themselves out over it. Like cool, step in the tight direction for QOL, but there are much more pressing matters that aren't being resolved.
Why not just take all base infrastructure away from the DoD and give it to the GSA? GSA is responsible for all the facility stuff for the rest of the government. Why not just get the pentagon out of the landlord business?
Pretty sure that only a freezing cold deployment to an Afghanistan mountain with an Army mountain division is worse than a one to two year ship yard period at Portsmouth BAE/NNSY/or Newport Shipyard.
“Will be run and maintained by Newport News Shipbuilding” - inb4 they charge to park in it and start issuing tickets.
Don't forget restricting it to E-7 and above, only.
E6 and below can park in the top section exposed to the elements. There will be no elevator.
Bremerton flashbacks
Thank God I could walk to the ship from there
That’s BS, there would be an elevator, but only chiefs and officers can use it. Straight to mass if they catch you.
amen
So you’re telling me it’s a floor-traversing capable urinal? Good to know.
rather go to mast tbh
The realest comment here :(
We got told it was split company + navy parking, with(of course) no numbers on how that split is going to work out. Wouldn't surprise me at all if the company parking is zone A only - parking for tradesmen has been actively made worse over the last several years.
Officially - 2000 Navy, 800 HII
Why we send Junior sailors to the shipyard on a “sea tour” continues to baffle me
They still get passed around the waterfront like a 2 dollar whore so it’s not a total loss.
We should completely de-man a ship heading to any avail over 9 months, turn it over to a shipyard and a 10 man Navy team to handle QA, inspections, and other admin type stuff. Start standing up a crew 30 days from delivery.
My CO said just yesterday that the ship's force has done everything we needed to do for some time, and the contractors are the reason for the almost year long delay
That depresses me, we have an inability to hold shipyards and contractors to their contracts. I remember showing up to my first DH ride and meeting the ship in month 27 of a 9 month avail.
It's almost always because things are found that are materially different than what the Navy described. So the yards open up some piece of machinery, turns out it way worse than expected. Then they have to deal with that as well. It also doesn't help that there is a different pot of money for items like that found after the avail starts. So they put as much in the original work package as they have budget for, then use the contingency money to pay for the other things. But the yards don't know about the contingency items so they weren't scheduled. There is a ton of blame to go around on why the yards are such a clusterfuck.
We have a good sized community of engineering and maintenance duty officers… why don’t we send a team of 4-6 of them to a ship, say 8 weeks before an avail, have them do a week of inspection and documentation, then their report becomes the full work package.
That’s already done, at least on the subs. It happens like over a year before the boat actually goes to the yards
Nobody has any incentive to do that. The Navy doesn’t want to do that because then they’d have to confront reality about the state of their ships. The yards have no interest because the current state of affairs isn’t really hurting them. Congress could force the issue, but it seems rare these days when Congress does something productive and meaningful.
The Carriers do it to and then whole group of sailors TAD a year before to build the ship force package
Exactly. Requiring activities hand known requirements (sometimes inadequate requirements) to a contracting office. That office is under-resourced and must deal with 1102s career hopping for promotions. Contract mods then take too long, and 9 months turns into 27. Boondoggling is an all hands event.
I used to be the 3MC for the reserve side of LCSRON out in San Diego. The bubbas out there would get paid by the check for each fire bottle and hose station they would do, and our guys would go do DCPO checks on the drill weekends (because that made sense 🙄) and they’d still find stuff jacked up but we couldn’t do anything about it because of the contract.
Its just as rough trying to make it work inside the shipyard fwiw.
I can take a guess what Navy Amphib you’re on.
I was on a ship in the shipyards for 5 years, by the time it decommissions it’ll have been in the yards for 10 years total. I couldn’t agree more. When I got there we were told 6 months to first underway, but the ship was far more fucked up than anyone knew. At the time we had a crew of 40 and that was plenty to constantly man the ship, write tags, rove for leaks and floods, etc. Then Millington, despite being told we were nowhere near getting underway and being begged not to send more people, started filling out our 300-man crew compliment. Everything went to shit. Someone had the bright idea to stand up duty sections and armed watches, which added immensely to the delays. Suddenly we had to do drills, which shut down swaths of the ship to the contractors. I mean, about 85% of it was contractors being barely qualified to hold a hammer, but it was easy for them to point to us as being the thing holding them up. So I fully agree. If the ship is going to the yards, there’s no reason to have a full crew onboard.
Sounds like the Cowpens
Yeah, how do we have the manpower to stash sailors at shipyards in the first place? Seems like budget fuckery.
I have been saying this for the last 4 years.
I agree but I think it should be 2nd tour only and still sea duty. Because the alternative would be considering that a shore duty and that would be fucked up. Plus it’s a win for people with families. Well, or making the work completely the yards job and just having the navy inspect when they are “done” i.e give them a list of shit to fix and not accept the product until it’s functional. Then we could finally say “no this is officially on you guys to unfuck let us know when the work is actually finished”, instead of making us run around trying to solve the chaos that is their unchecked cable installation. It’s like those home development shows where something goes wrong and you just know its only going to get a lot worse once you open up the wall
I don't agree on the sea tour, make it a shore duty billet for E-7 and above. They would be the stakeholders for each division insuring the shipyard workers complete the work to their satisfaction. They wouldn't be on the ship chipping paint but working with their shipyard counterparts on completing the work. This tour would be seen as vital for Chief wanting to rank up to E-8 or E-9.
Just so I’m clear, like skeleton crew for E7 and above? No E6 and below? Each E7 is a mostly lone inspector signing off WAFs and checking job completion? I think the problem there is that that MIGHT work for basic cabling fuck ups, but at the end of the day, a single Chief is not going to be a true expert on all the equipment that his division would run and I think he would probably miss things. That’s just ALOT to put on one person and expect it to end well. WAFs already get half hazardly signed off as it is due to time constraints and pressure from both big navy and the shipyards alike. To me it would still be better if the yard said “hey we’re done. We tested everything. This is a good ship” and then we brought a majority crew aboard who did something similar to nsurv and sea trials. Plus think how much money that would save, both from not paying all those sailors for an entire yard period, but also by nailing the shipyards to actually complete at least more of their work than they do currently.
How many bodies do you need in a certain division? At the end of the day the Navy is contracting this out & the vendor is going to have to provide reports & meet milestones. If the vendor doesn't hit these milestones then the KO shouldn't pay them.
I’m an ET so it’s less about how many people you need. And more about how many SMEs you need to truly verify proper equipment function.
They would be fulfilling the role of a COR in their division.
Im a recruiter who primarily works with Navy vets and transitioning service members. Its a bit shocking how many junior sailors I speak to who are getting out after 4 years in the yards with maybe 3-4 weeks seatime. Some went from one-yard period to a boat in another. Their whole contract was sweepers and watch in a construction zone and maybe running work controls. Can't imagine how crushing it is to go to boot camp, A school, maybe a C school and then just spend years in a shipyard before leaving.
Going to a shipyard as a junior sailor was insane. I had a furnished apt as an E-1 and didn’t qualify or become useful for like 8 months when I got sent TAD to an active boat for a year. Came back and sat around for another year.
The yards are either the worst time of your life or the easiest. For me it was amazing for the first 3-5 months. We worked basically 4 days and were forced to do a PT day on Friday. The big issue came along when the CO changed over. This guy was so ready to be the greatest captain on earth he had us working 3-4 extra hours per day with Fridays being full work days again. I became a damn contractor watcher as “we couldn’t trust the fire watch guys to take care of their job.” Like I promise you, that contractor is doing a whole lot more than I care to do right now after that 22-2 and morning colors bs.
Better question: why do we send first term first sea tour sailors to pre-coms just to be TAD to other ships anyway?
Who’s going to be a drill monitor or do inspections?
Bad news: whether at Newport News, Bath, San Diego - baked in transit, housing, dependa infrastructure is a challenge. Good news: gets the federal government invested in local infrastructure
I remember walking a literal mile and a half to and from the boat when I was there. We had a duty van, but it was rarely running when we left the ship. It was an incredibly depressing walk.
from the FAF to huntington hall was diabolical. Or having to take the duty van from 50th street turnstiles all the way to portsmouth everyday🫠
I’ve always biked to work and my ship and had a better parking spot than the CO. I know it doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s a much better quality of like than driving to work.
I don’t understand why biking on base and to the shipyard isn’t more of a thing. The distances are perfect for biking, traffic is slow, and the bike parking is close too the ship.
This is ~~NNSY~~General Dynamics Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, so likely the crew lives across the water in Norfolk and has to commute through the tunnels to get to the ship at all. If they were bivouacked in Newport News or Hampton, it would make sense. Build a joint barracks at Langley AFB or something. Then run busses instead of having to build parking. Shit, why not run busses in the first place?
We had busses in 2005. It still sucked.
> Build a joint barracks at Langley AFB You want people to bike 14 miles down the highway?! You think that's an actual solution? Since you're clearly not familiar with the area at all: There is housing at Huntington Hall, a barracks near the shipyard, and at several PPV apartments on the peninsula. There are also barracks in Portsmouth. There is also a bus system. Some of them are contracted, a lot of them are WEPS department.
I would run busses from barracks, preferably right to the piers. Portsmouth is on the wrong side of the water: the Norfolk Naval Shipyard is in Portsmouth, but we're talking about Newport News here. Maybe a ferry? Edit: ship's in drydock, so its barges aren't busy.
Work the contract and let me know how that goes for you.
Not NNSY, it's Newport News Shipbuilding. Also, NNSY just recently banned bicycles within the CIA, so not as attractive of a solution as it used to be.
I used the wrong site code, but then a private shipyard doesn't have one, does it?
It's Newport News Shipbuilding, a Division of Huntington Ingalls. Generally referred to as either NNS or HII. Realistically, most of these individuals are either living in Virginia Beach or Chesapeake. There is surprisingly little decent and/or affordable housing in Norfolk. They'd have to go through the HRBT to get over to HII, however, the rest of the time that the ship is at NOB, they wouldn't have to worry about a tunnel. BAE and NASSCO are non-nuke only. They'll get the amphibs, Burke's, etc., with MARMC overseeing the avails. HII-NNS is only going to be doing nuke construction, CVN midlife, and possibly a sub midlife, but NNSY handles most of the sub work. SUPSHIP oversees most of the HII stuff, so more closely aligned to DC bureaucracy than the other activity going on in Hampton Roads, thus the ability to drop $120 million for some parking.
Wait, isn't this whole thread about NNS building parking? Yeah, that's what 've been writing against. You've grasped the fundamental problem: sailors are quartered on the wrong side of the water from their big-ass ship, and all the ways to get there suck.
That's not the problem. The problem is having them going to the shipyards in the first place. There is no need for 90% of the sailors to be at NNS until the final month or so of the avail/construction. Plenty to do at NOB and would avoid the HRBT. Bureaucracy is the only reason why anyone would have a full boat of sailors while in the private shipyards.
My thinking as well, maybe that landed on a different thread but it's here somewhere. But I'm getting the impression that we're only talking about around 300 crew reporting to the carrier, which given its normal complement maybe isn't that awful in principle, but what are those folks even doing?
Newport News is not an area to ride your bike early in the morning.
People are lazy, American infrastructure is very car centered, people are unfamiliar/uncomfortable with how to ride a bicycle as a commuter, communities are run by people who don’t use bikes, shipyards are hazardous, etc etc But mostly people are lazy and have resigned themselves to the mentality the only method of transportation is a POV.
Riding a bike in Newport News is suicide
Leadership - Hey guys, I know you’re suffering from mental health crisis at an alarming rate due to - checks notes - subpar leadership and a failure to take care of sailors. So here’s a parking garage.
Parking was one of the most common concern items the crew of the GW brought up in the quality of life and service investigations. This is leadership hearing them and doing something about it.
Anyone that's ever spent any amount of time in the yards in Newport News will tell you parking arrangements are atrocious, particularly so if you're in drydock.
Does any east coast yard have what anyone would describe as "good" parking? The entire eastern seaboard - specifically the mid Atlantic and northeast - are not particularly conducive to building more parking infrastructure of any kind without some form of land repurposing. There is practically no open space to work the problem cheaply. My opinion only applies to the east coast because I've never set foot in a West Coast shipyard, please add context if it's relevant.
Still the same shitty deal; too many people and cars. But also the base has to implement a car removal program from the garage. Anyone still in the same spot on a monthly basis needs to be towed. So many spots filled by abandoned cars and large ass suvs or monster trucks.
Sounds like it hasn’t changed much since I was on the California DLGN-36 pre-com there! Parking aside in both Newport News and Portsmouth, and add in Charleston, I always enjoyed shipyard availabilities. I enjoyed rebuilding things, overseeing/QA-ing new installations, etc. I was in yards on the California, America, Semmes, and a pier-side overhaul on the Sierra, plus a yard period on a YTB. Living conditions could sometimes leave something to be desired, but 4 or 5 of us would get together and rent a place. Not sure how viable that is today.
Not if you magically acquire a zone A parking pass 👀
Not everyone can be the new thicc E-3 getting Master Chief's attention.
Most of the zone A up north yard is going to get yanked as they continue expanding, and this garage is shutting down one of the larger lots down south.
It is, I don't get why it was such a complaint to be honest. I was there and did the busses and walks, it's not nearly as bad as what it was made out to be. Especially if you've been at BAE or NASSCO, or even the base when all the piers are full. Hell the busses were better than parking at 50th Street since you were dropped at the gate. But after it was such a common complaint on 73, the follow on surveys on the other units at the yard said similar.
Preach it!
cvn-73 plankowner here. parking at nns has always been a pure rotten bitch.
This has me wondering if theyre going to completely move the navy out of the lot by the train tracks and give that to us as an extension to hidens.
> doing something about it. How about not ordering the crew to commute through tunnels to a ship in drydock in the first place? WTAF
Using 73/74 as a Sample, there's less than 300 sailors combined that live/d on the other side of a tunnel that didn't make the choice to do so. More barracks should absolutely be made available to get that number to 0. However those sailors are also moved to the peninsula side of the tunnels as soon as space is available. So to tell someone to live elsewhere or find a different route to fix your own problem with commutes in this case, or in the case they had to use any of the other bridges/tunnels in the area would be an almost guaranteed accurate statement. And why complaints like this should be immediately dismissed.
I know what you’re saying but it’s a meme. There are good leaders. This is them listening to what people wanted.
Came here to say this.
r/nottheonion
Oh and they're putting it 10blocks from the 50th street turnstiles. This solves nothing. At least the 30th st garage is right next to pier 2 on the off chance you're docked there. You'll still need to be bussed in from the garage to the gate then walk a mile to the ship. This is why commutes are an hour+ if you live on the other side of hrbt. Someone is 100% profiting off this deal. Perhaps it's the war profiteers or the senior leadership who make massive money when they get out to go work for NNSY.
It's more likely that the site for the parking lot was the only place they could find to put it. It's not like Newport News is just full of open, undeveloped land that can support a giant concrete structure on top of it.
I get that. 100%. I just don't know how a parking structure that is a half mile away from the turnstiles is supposed to keep sailors from killing themselves. Turns a 20 minute walk to the ship into a 35-40 minute walk.
Parking was one of the most common complaints brought up in a QOL survey. This is literally people doing something about this one specific complaint.
Why not ask them? https://www.navsea.navy.mil/Home/SUPSHIP/Newport-News/Contacts/
Yeah if I was still in the yards, I wouldn't use the garage anyway. I just pulled up google maps to run the distances. The garage is more than double the distance from 50th street turnstiles than the 50th street parking lot.
No one working at NNSY is making massive money, that's for sure. 12,000 employees/shore based military and a single SES for the entire installation. NNSY and NNS are not the same thing. Far from it.
Cool now do PSNS.
Why not build a barracks on top of the parking garage? It's very common in almost all cities for new condo or office buildings to require several hundred parking spots below the building.
Right now the walk is 1 and 1/4 mile walk, dodging traffic and short cutting through zones filled with rusting parts. It's not a terrible walk spring and fall but during the summer it's a trudge through the devils asshole since so much concrete make temps over a 100, during the winter choose between fk it's cold or walking through a downpour for 20 minutes. If you worked a whole day it's just demoralizing. Especially since leadership gets to park right next to the ship and usually leave earlier than you do. I can get why it's a mental health issue. You want to see improvement pressure, dictate leadership has to do the same walk ship forces do and even if it didn't improve much at least the E3 would feel things are fair. That's honestly the big, overarching problem nowadays imho. Sure Rank hath it's privilege, but we drill leadership means lead from the front to E6 and below and then they watch the E8 leave at 13 from their private parking spot while they gotta tell their spouse ill be home at 17 if I don't get stuck in traffic. Even something dumb like letting military ride bicycles on shipyard, like shipyard does would be an improvement, but watch us have to wear 5 layers of protective gear to do so.
Stuff like this makes me happy that I was a retard in the Marines and not a retard in the Navy.
This made me chuckle, because as fucked as it is. I think you're right haha. We're all retarded in the end and I was even in a fairly smart role in the navy, but I got out and moved to a better climate and all I can think as I sip my drinks and smoke my joints in the sun and in the pool is how retarded everything about PSNS was! Atleast you guys got barracks to bring the bunnies back to! We just had to find the slutty civs and hope we can hump and dump for a night sometimes if we had to live on the ship! Talk about the 👏
39th street is more than twice as far from 50th street turnstiles than the current 50th street parking lot. How will this help sailors exactly?
There might be other measures taken. I don't know. But I do know that the 50th street lot isn't that big. Especially if there are multiple ships in the yard ---at one point a couple years ago 73, 74, and 78 were all at NNS. I don't know if it is still done, but for a while Sailors had to park at satellite lots throughout Newport News and get bussed in. This should address some of that.
They really need to work on the phrasing. Depending on the way you interpret the headline, one could read it in a darkly sarcastic way of, "Well, with fatalities up, there's more available parking than ever!" Not where I would want to go with it myself, but find it hard to believe leadership cares.
what i understood was that they only pay attention and do something through voting by suicides.... witch is wrong.
A parking problem is a public transportation problem. The fact that the 7 cities cant come to a solution to rapidly move people around is embarrassing
They do and it's add more toll fees 😒
I love reactionary change 😁 /s I hope those who had the power to address the issue and let it continue to fester instead of making a proactive decision (decades ago) live with this over their heads for the rest of their lives.
Wait a goddamn minute!! Did this article relate Navy Suicide in the Shipyard due to Parking Issues?
I mean, it’s quality of life issues. Everything is bailing water and ewarp, sometimes, feel me? Also pretty click baity. Bitching = room for improvement = hope = the Navy I love. Keep bitching, more parking isn’t nothing.
More like quality of life for Sailors in the shipyard. Shitty parking can be a shitty QoL factor.
Navy : “sailors are killing themselves. What do we do?” Also Navy : “quick, build a parking garage! “
Parking has been a significant QoL issue for years. So --yes.
I doubt anyones taking themselves out over it. Like cool, step in the tight direction for QOL, but there are much more pressing matters that aren't being resolved.
There are a lot of factors that contribute to suicide. Addressing one of them does not mean not addressing others.
Where did I say they weren't being addressed? I just said there should be focus on the bigger concerns.
Your comment implied it. Do you think the people planning a parking garage are also sitting on the brain trust committee for access to care?
Why not just take all base infrastructure away from the DoD and give it to the GSA? GSA is responsible for all the facility stuff for the rest of the government. Why not just get the pentagon out of the landlord business?
Because so much of the land in Newport News is owned by Huntington Ingalls Industries, which is a private company, and leased to the Navy.
Sweet (for HII). Is there anything our MI complex can't overcharge and under-deliver on?
Pretty sure that only a freezing cold deployment to an Afghanistan mountain with an Army mountain division is worse than a one to two year ship yard period at Portsmouth BAE/NNSY/or Newport Shipyard.
Everyone shits on Lemoore, but seeing how bad ships daily commutes can be makes me thankful I always have parking right next to work.
Mental health in the Navy and parking? 😑😵💫
So I’m a welder for NN I didn’t know yall hated us this much lol
#problemsolved
Ah yes let’s build it a half a mile from the ship so you can walk that far every morning
The Navy's answer to toxic leadership: same toxic leaders, new parking stress.