[HN Gopher] So You Want to Do an Infrastructure Package [pdf]
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So You Want to Do an Infrastructure Package [pdf]
Author : ruddct
Score : 110 points
Date : 2021-03-16 20:49 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.niskanencenter.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.niskanencenter.org)
| chiefofgxbxl wrote:
| This paper addresses bureaucracy and its effects on expense, but
| it sort of makes the assumption that lowering the price is the
| goal. It seems to me that high cost is convenient to artificially
| "create jobs" and bureaucracy, hence it's a feature, not a bug.
|
| An example from my local city: our small city (33k pop) won a
| $10mil grant for downtown revitalization. The money is supposed
| to help stimulate small business growth in the downtown. The
| administration spends $1.1 mil tearing down a parking garage,
| another $600k building a parking lot on _the same piece of land_
| of the garage, and they 've got their fingers crossed they can
| get a developer to build an apartment complex there, which means
| they'll have to tear up the parking lot. The cherry on top is
| knowing we also commissioned a report to study downtown parking
| trends, and know that even on the busiest day up to 80% of
| parking spaces are unused. But the administration celebrated the
| 10-12 construction jobs they created.
|
| Anyone who has taken a basic economics course would recognize
| this as the Broken Window Fallacy, but our officials either don't
| know or don't care (my guess is the latter). Spend lots of money
| - create useless jobs - that's how a productive economy is
| supposed to work, right?
| tolbish wrote:
| And what happened to the other $8.3 million? Isn't the root of
| the problem then corruption?
| newsclues wrote:
| Sounds like the dealership controls the local politics.
| notacoward wrote:
| > high cost is convenient to artificially "create jobs"
|
| Is that where the money actually goes, though? Serious
| question.
| stretchwithme wrote:
| Compared to what other countries?
|
| I think a lot of waste and corruption is due to winner-take-all
| elections. A representative that represents one party has to
| answer to that party. If he does not represent its interests,
| they will elect someone else next time.
|
| In winner-take-all elections, you vote for your least worst
| option and representing one perspective doesn't as matter as
| much. It's easier to sell your vote to lobbyists.
|
| But people are convinced that our elections were implemented in
| the best possible way, so there is a reluctance to even weigh the
| options.
| megiddo wrote:
| Monopsony
| dnprock wrote:
| I follow cryptocurrency and they usually say: Bitcoin Fixes This.
| It sounds pretty silly. Bitcoin hasn't really fixed anything.
| It's just a generalization. But the motto draws attention to the
| cause of many problems in America: the US Dollar monetary system.
| The Dollar's reserve currency status causes other countries to
| flood the US with goods in exchange for the currency. It causes
| trade balances.
|
| The US over time loses its manufacturing and tooling
| capabilities. Most infrastructure work is custom. You can't build
| a bridge overseas, ship, and install it in the US. You can build
| the parts overseas. But it'll take a lot more time and resources
| to design and assemble them into a bridge in the US. So the final
| cost ends up being more.
|
| I live in a neighborhood built in the 1980s. Up the hill, there
| are neighborhoods built in the 1990s and 2000s. After 2000s,
| houses look pretty much the same. The houses are more expensive.
| But the amount of custom design decreases over time. It's got
| more and more expensive to build custom things in the US.
|
| I don't think it's possible to fix these infrastructure costs
| until we can fix the monetary policy. I think a new crypto system
| can provide a solution to this problem. Until then, we're stuck
| with cheap and unnecessary goods while our infrastructure is
| slowly deteriorating.
| munk-a wrote:
| Quality Assurance is also a pretty big cost along with labor and
| materials. The cost of living in America isn't cheap and the
| materials you're working with (due to their size and weight) were
| likely manufactured domestically or, if not, were handled
| domestically during import.
|
| America is also super litigious but I don't believe that
| contributes significantly to _public_ works due to the limits on
| state and federal liability.
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| The paper is VERY interesting, but oh boy, how bad is that first
| visualization... https://imgur.com/8P7Sqop
|
| It doesn't include units in the axes and the labels are just
| centered there. And what do those dots even represent?
| ur-whale wrote:
| >Why is American infrastructure so expensive?
|
| Unions
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Unions may be part of the costs, but please don't underestimate
| infrastructure failures that arise from in the project planning
| and execution phases.
|
| For instance, the construction union may mean that you pay a
| man to just stand around and do nothing, but when the MTA
| doesn't have any idea what people on site are supposed to do to
| begin with, and when they scrupulously dispose of all the
| people with project expertise the moment Phase I of the project
| is over (with no concern at all for Phase II), it's hard to
| assign that as the root cause for the billions in cost overruns
| on the Second Avenue Subway.
| afavour wrote:
| Didn't feel like reading the article then, I take it? Just the
| text extract in the link provided would be a start.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Maybe they did? Quoting from the PDF:
|
| > " _It is unclear to what extent union labor is a problem
| outside New York, but within New York it has contributed to
| rampant overstaffing and wages in the building trades that
| are well above market rates._ "
|
| Don't shoot the messenger, that's a direct excerpt.
|
| [EDIT] For the curious, the full list of reasons is
| overdesign, poor procurement practices, poor project
| management, labor, NIMBYism, politicization of projects.
| afavour wrote:
| That hardly makes it an accurate summation of the article,
| though! If the reading process is "open report, Ctrl-F,
| union", then I'd say the result has already been decided.
| diob wrote:
| It's the only mention of union, and it has zero references
| or numbers included.
| beastman82 wrote:
| It does have adjectives and nouns, and they are worth
| considering.
| topspin wrote:
| Why bother? You tell me who funds Niskanen Center and I'll
| tell you what the article's conclusions are.
| runako wrote:
| This is linked in their top-level menu:
|
| https://www.niskanencenter.org/financials/
|
| Donation history (> $5k):
|
| https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/01/Ni...
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| [citation needed]
| musicale wrote:
| Page 15 of the report:
|
| "It is unclear to what extent union labor is a problem
| outside New York, but within New York it has contributed to
| rampant overstaffing and wages in the building trades that
| are well above market rates. Prevailing wage laws should be
| used to ensure local workers earn a fair and competitive
| wage, not to reward special interest groups and other
| political insiders."
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Top level comment was that unions were solely to blame for
| the rising infrastructure costs in America. There's 14
| other pages of causes and those two sentences don't even
| address outside of a single state.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Until what? 20 years ago if we're generous, New York
| construction was specifically controlled by the mafia,
| which controlled the unions and drove up costs by
| restricting in a rather extra-legal manner who was even
| allowed to bid on a job.
|
| Painting capture by organized crime as some necessary
| feature of all labor unions is probably not fair. They
| captured a lot of the politicians, too, and often also
| owned the construction companies.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I think it's interesting how over time, prices for goods have
| gone through the floor for many things (food, electronics,
| clothing, even automobiles, etc...) but prices for services have
| gone parabolic.
|
| Construction, education, and healthcare costs have risen _well_
| above CPI for several decades, not just in the US, but in most
| developed countries.
| bsamuels wrote:
| A lot of the problem in the US has to do with the petrodollar
| system. OPEC has only been allowed to accept US dollars for
| their oil since the 70s.
|
| That generates massive demand for dollars outside the US.
| Foreign countries obtain the dollars they need to buy oil by
| converting their currency to USD or by exporting goods/services
| to the US.
|
| As a result, the value of the US dollar gets inflated and large
| parts of the US economy get "offshored" thanks to the favorable
| conversion ratio.
|
| On the bright side, this system means you can import foreign
| goods very cheaply - but on the downside, it means exports are
| often not viable.
|
| There are several industries in the US that don't reap large
| benefits from cheap imports. Education, healthcare,
| construction, and child care just to name a few.
|
| I hope this adds some color to the phenomenon you've observed
| dantheman wrote:
| I'd say it's just inflation in industries that haven't had
| any made any progress in efficiency - it takes the same or
| more effort to do the same/corresponding activity.
| Productivity in manufacturing has increased a massive amount,
| so the inflation has less of an impact.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| No, it's definitely dutch diesease with our dollar exports
| too. See https://phenomenalworld.org/reviews/trade-wars
| willcipriano wrote:
| This effect was noticed by Baumol and Bowen back in the 60s.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease
| notacoward wrote:
| It would be really hard to cite Baumol's cost disease too
| often. It's a key part of many things we see going on in the
| economy, and therefore in society more broadly, today.
| kodablah wrote:
| Makes sense that cost is proportional to skilled/local humans
| required.
| legitster wrote:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...
|
| >I don't know why more people don't just come out and say
| "LOOK, REALLY OUR MAIN PROBLEM IS THAT ALL THE MOST IMPORTANT
| THINGS COST TEN TIMES AS MUCH AS THEY USED TO FOR NO REASON,
| PLUS THEY SEEM TO BE GOING DOWN IN QUALITY, AND NOBODY KNOWS
| WHY, AND WE'RE MOSTLY JUST DESPERATELY FLAILING AROUND LOOKING
| FOR SOLUTIONS HERE." State that clearly, and a lot of political
| debates take on a different light.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _but prices for services have gone parabolic._
|
| A few years back, I had a chat with someone who helps
| developmentally disabled people with job training. The company
| she worked for billed the state $90/hour for her work, but paid
| her $15/hour. I'd love to know where the rest of that money
| went, because it certainly didn't go to those performing
| services, nor to their professional development, nor to
| disabled people.
| akvadrako wrote:
| A lot of it is surely the expertise to navigate the
| bureaucracy. It's not like it's simple to setup a competing
| service and manage to get a government contract.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Americans love to through around "beauracracy", but the
| article states we have too _weak_ and balkanized a civil
| service. This is a very different issue.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > It's not like it's simple to setup a competing service
| and manage to get a government contract.
|
| In Nebraska you have to ask your competitors permission to
| compete with them:
|
| "If you are allowed to drive a home health patient to get
| groceries, can that passenger also get her prescription
| filled? In Nebraska, that would be against the law unless
| you had permission from the government to operate a non-
| emergency medical transportation company. And, by the
| state's certificate of need or "CON" law, the only way to
| get permission is for the existing transportation companies
| to allow you to operate."
|
| https://ij.org/press-release/new-lawsuit-challenges-
| nebraska...
|
| Things like this happen all over the place nationally. To
| me much of it looks like garden variety corruption as
| opposed to some kind of reward for figuring out how to work
| with the government.
|
| https://ij.org/pillar/economic-liberty/?post_type=case
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > The company she worked for billed the state $90/hour for
| her work, but paid her $15/hour. I'd love to know where the
| rest of that money went
|
| I can tell you without looking, overhead and profit
| javajosh wrote:
| I encourage you to look into it yourself, and if you find
| something egregious (and it looks like your odds are good),
| make a ruckus in the channels that matter to the decision
| makers. (Finding the decision makers will take time, too!)
|
| Complacency in government contracts is standard, and you have
| to make noise before anything changes, and its work that does
| NOT scale. (Although I'd love to see standard data practices
| help reduce the time commitment required to do this kind of
| data activism.)
|
| One of the best things you could do with this information is
| _show up and yell about it_ at any and all public hearings.
| Anyway, I wish it was "sexier" to make trouble for local
| government that deserves it, but really its always a long
| paperwork slog.
| javajosh wrote:
| The economy is diverging on things vs. services because
| services require finicky human cooperation, understanding and
| knowledge, and "things" do not. Things can travel and stay on
| shelves, services can't.
|
| And also, humans will tend to cheat when they can, and the
| longer lived a game is, the more specialized it becomes, and
| the harder it becomes to even recognize what is cheating and
| what is just "regular practice". You get something like
| "regulatory capture", but worse, because every element of the
| entire society captures another, forming a Gordian knot. Yet
| another path to Collapse, I'm afraid (probably a common one,
| I'd guess).
| Sevii wrote:
| It's the post-scarcity trap. We spend more on services merely
| because we can.
| [deleted]
| DonnyV wrote:
| Multiple issues and its actually not labor.
| https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/03/03/why-american-c...
| [deleted]
| panic wrote:
| The author of that blog is also the author of the linked
| report!
| king_magic wrote:
| From the PDF:
|
| > Labor: in New York, the productivity of construction labor
| seems unusually low and wages high.
| beastman82 wrote:
| In a word: unions
| ralusek wrote:
| > bureaucracies in East Asia and Continental Europe tend to be
| better-staffed and more empowered to make professional decisions
|
| The key word here is "more empowered." If the state could just
| say "okay we're transplanting all of the people that live here
| out of the way so that we can put up a hyperloop, and these are
| the people who are going to do it, and we'll pay them this
| much..." infrastructure would move a lot faster, for much less
| money.
|
| Because the US government tends to have far less authority over
| its citizens than Europe, and especially Asia, it has many free-
| marketish half measures that create the worst of all possible
| outcomes. Because the US has to pretend to be market-driven, by
| allowing private companies and unions to bid on projects, as well
| as offer people fair market values for their properties in the
| way of infrastructure, you get all sorts of problems. The main
| one is that the government is not a normal buyer, and completely
| throws most markets out of whack. Just look at the "cost plus"
| sort of funding schemes that have existed in aerospace contracts
| for decades, a concept that would never in a million years have
| existed in the free market.
|
| I'm not saying that the European or Asian models are better,
| there are definite benefits to the liberties afforded to
| Americans...but it is without question far worse if the objective
| is timely and affordable infrastructure.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| US elites have managed to cut a deep gap between themselves and
| the ordinary American people, so that they are protected well
| enough to NOT worry about the reaction of middle-low class
| people.
| oblio wrote:
| > I'm not saying that the European or Asian models are better,
| there are definite benefits to the liberties afforded to
| Americans
|
| I'm curious, what liberties do Americans have compared to
| Europeans? The only thing that comes to mind is owning guns,
| and I'm quite convinced that's a net negative, a tragedy of the
| commons (everyone gets theirs and the community suffers for it,
| as a whole).
| ralusek wrote:
| Freedom of speech is the most notable. In general, lower
| taxes, fewer regulations regarding building, starting
| businesses, more checks and balances to government. Again,
| I'm not saying it's better or worse, the United States
| government is just more restricted in its capacity to impede
| individual liberties than European states, and far more so
| than Asian states. The rise of automation and increasing
| wealth inequality is putting the American model through the
| ringer, so we have yet to see if there's a place for it in
| the future.
|
| Unfortunately, it looks like what was perhaps in need of a
| correction is being leveraged by the sort of authoritarian
| overcorrection that has been the downfall of more modern
| states than any other philosophy.
| oblio wrote:
| You do know that there is freedom of speech in Europe,
| right?
|
| European tax rates are comparable with American ones, out
| of the rest only the bureaucracy aspect seems valid.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| Europe is more heterogeneous than the states, so it's not a
| fair comparison.
|
| However, if it's worth anything, there are no capital
| requirements for starting a company with liability
| protection, which isn't the case in several European
| countries.
|
| Americans also aren't required to register or deregister
| themselves with the local government whenever they move.
|
| I can think of other examples (the lack of television taxes,
| religious taxes, &c). Again though, these examples depend a
| lot on each country, so I'm sure you can find exceptions for
| each of these depending on the European country you look at.
| watwut wrote:
| It is easier to become prisoner in America.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| > bureaucracies in East Asia and Continental Europe tend to be
| better-staffed and more empowered to make professional
| decisions
|
| Not from what I've seen. The highway I drive every day is in
| the middle of an extensive refurbishment. The local government
| (I currently live in Europe) was given the option of shutting
| it down for a month, which was completely untenable, but in
| line with what I think the author was trying to get at. They
| were also given the option of keeping it running at full
| capacity and doing the construction work over a several year
| period.
|
| They chose the latter, for obvious reasons, at a significantly
| higher cost, since the highway has to be rebuilt and demolished
| several times over to keep all lanes of traffic moving at all
| times.
|
| The difference between here and the states is not the level of
| empowerment or the level of staff competence. They simply have
| a lot more money to work with, which lets them build to a
| higher standard of quality, do preventative maintenance on
| time, and refurbish or outright rebuild when it becomes
| necessary to do so.
| Aunche wrote:
| I think the problem is too much pathos is used in political
| debate. It's easy for the opposition of emanate domain point to
| an old lady being forced out of their home as an example of
| government overreach. Meanwhile, for every one of those out
| there, there are a dozen more people stuck in poverty because
| they have no means of commuting to a better paying job. This
| doesn't make for as compelling of a story though.
| ghaff wrote:
| >If the state could just say "okay we're transplanting all of
| the people that live here out of the way so that we can put up
| a hyperloop, and these are the people who are going to do it,
| and we'll pay them this much..."
|
| That is particular is definitely a tradeoff. The US did do it
| with things like the Interstate Highway System but I'm actually
| OK with Eminent Domain being difficult to exercise today.
| Anechoic wrote:
| _The US did do it with things like the Interstate Highway
| System_
|
| Which in part resulted in the passage of NEPA and our current
| morass.
| ghaff wrote:
| Of course, even the Interstate Highway System followed
| existing railroad right of ways a lot of the time. Although
| exit ramps and feeder roads still required a lot of eminent
| domain exercise. (The house I grew up in lost a bunch of
| property to eminent domain for this reason.)
| takk309 wrote:
| As someone that works for a civil engineering consultant in the
| transportation field I can attest to the bureaucracy from the
| State leading to higher costs. We routinely increase our bids
| because we know that the amount of time spent dealing with them
| will be large and delt with by a high paided, often highest paid,
| person on the project. There are quite a few things that we do to
| appease them people at state DOTs that we don't have to worry
| about when working with a City or private entity.
|
| It come down to two things, in my opinion. First is the nightmare
| that is Federal funding. The State administers the funding and
| has to take funding for multiple Federal programs a put it toward
| a given project. Ultimately they pass the paperwork off to the
| consultant instead of doing it themselves.
|
| Second is the number of people in positions of power that are
| only in that position due to time spent with the State. These
| individuals are ineffective at their job (see point 1), and feel
| they have to justify their position by critiquing stupid things.
| One example is when we tried to use a different san serif font
| and column justification on a report. We got a stearns talking to
| about how ariel is the preferred font and left justified is the
| preference of the individual. This of course took a half hour
| meeting that likely cost north of $500 when you account for the
| wages of the engineers involved.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I am genuinely curious. How did the meeting end? Did the font
| get changed? Did anyone say 'really?'? Obviously, the story is
| ridiculous, but I can't help but wonder how it worked out.
| m0llusk wrote:
| Much interesting analysis, but some strange mistakes as well.
| When NYC's Second Avenue was first proposed it was concluded that
| such a project was possible but would be far too complex and
| expensive to be reasonable. Over the next hundred years the
| Second Avenue Subway in NYC would be repeatedly proposed,
| analyzed, and then rejected as too complex and expensive to make
| sense. Finally the work went ahead and as usual this analysis
| claims that this was just another infrastructure project and that
| despite one hundred years of analysis revealing the extreme
| complexity and cost this paper claims that the work could have
| been done cheaply with cut and cover construction despite a
| hundred years of analysis rejecting the possibility of cheap and
| easy construction of the Second Avenue subway. Rejecting so much
| history seems like an awkward way of going about this analysis.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| This situation shows many aspects of American governance reaching
| a pathological level.
|
| You have the patchwork of local, county, state and Federal
| government. You have the adversarial legal and regulatory
| framework. And you have a powerful "anti-government" ideology
| that fails to even understand that most projects happen through
| the cooperation of industry and the state. And on the other hand
| you have a "left" that wants to cheer sticking-it-to whatever
| given corporation rather than pushing sane regulation. And you
| have dysfunctional ideologies around both taxation and government
| spending. And NIMBYism but with the opposite being developers
| wanting no fetters at all, etc, etc.
| yks wrote:
| I see American governance being stuck in different situations
| without a possible way out. For example, Prop 13 in California,
| it is clearly not a good idea long term, it will keep
| suffocating the state and yet I don't think it is possible to
| repel it, game theory is just that strong.
| distribot wrote:
| Many of the places in the world with better infrastructure than
| the US have more strict industrial regulation and, in some
| cases, a government that is much further to the left.
| DamnYuppie wrote:
| I feel all of those are underlined or caused by corruption. The
| left sees corruption of corporations, the right sees corruption
| of politicians. All of which leads to exactly the fracturing
| and ideological positioning that you describe. No nation can
| survive systemic corruption for very long, it is a cancer that
| eats away at everything.
| watwut wrote:
| I mean, right pick Trump for president I doubt they worry
| about corruption.
|
| Imo, things would be more solvable if people reacted to what
| parties do rather then bs they say.
| dgellow wrote:
| > No nation can survive systemic corruption for very long, it
| is a cancer that eats away at everything.
|
| While I appreciate the sentiment, I'm not sure that's true:
|
| - China is managed by corrupt elite since the last century
|
| - Russia is completely corrupt (as was the USSR)
|
| - India seems to have systemic corruption issues
|
| - France politicians are well known for their corruption
| scandals
|
| ...
| himinlomax wrote:
| > France politicians are well known for their corruption
| scandals
|
| No, the typical scandal is about them lining their pockets,
| which is related but not quite the same crime.
| nine_k wrote:
| Russia is not corrupt in the same sense the US is.
|
| In Russia, the bureaucrats can bend and break local laws,
| siphon out some funds, etc. But they are pretty strictly
| controlled by the "power vertical", up to the quasi-tzar
| who is Putin. This structure does not tolerate breaking
| _its_ internal rules, not keeping promises, etc, and is
| quick to unseat a bureaucrat which failed to conform, no
| matter how high in the hierarchy.
|
| This is why a number of things in Russia can be done
| quickly and relatively efficiently, when the higher-ups
| demand it. It, of course, is not very democratic and does
| not always align with the desires of the population, but in
| many cases it does.
|
| I suspect China has a similar structure: a bureaucrat may
| engage in corruption as long as he fulfills the orders of
| CCP; if corruption interferes with it, it is eliminated.
|
| This is the well-known efficiency of authoritarianism, e.g.
| of monarchy: if the monarch desires something good, that
| good thing can be completed very quickly and allocation of
| resources won't be a problem. (The trouble is, of course,
| that when a monarch desires something bad, the bad thing
| gets implemented as efficiently, for there's no
| counterbalance.)
| dantheman wrote:
| Except that corrupt corporations go out of business...
| munk-a wrote:
| It's true - Standard Oil was just minutes away from closing
| their doors before the breakup happened.
|
| It depends what kind of corruption we're talking about,
| nepotism and waste tend to get cleaned out pretty decently
| in private enterprise, but exploitation along with anti-
| competitive and unsafe business practices thrive.
| arkh wrote:
| Because no one has to gain from low prices. Not the people
| getting the contracts, not the politicians and their committee
| getting back donations, not the neighborhood associations suing
| to get compensation.
|
| That's why they want the money coming from the federal level even
| if it's just for some state infrastructure: the more "fly-over"
| state people pay for some SV vanity train line, the better.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The better for who? Certainly not the people from the fly-over
| states.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Fly over states are all net takers. California is a net giver.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Even more, they're net takers partly because they're have
| more expensive infrastructure. Lots of long roads and bridges
| that are infrequently used
| legitster wrote:
| From the paper:
|
| >Overdesign: American infrastructure is often overbuilt, not out
| of higher quality but out of agency turf battles, obsolete
| standards like NFPA 130 that have better foreign replacements, or
| scope creep.
|
| >Poor procurement practices: there is improper supervision of
| private contractors, and things are getting worse as public
| agencies offload more risk to the private sector, which responds
| by bidding higher to hedge against the risk; there are also some
| one-bid contracts, for example the 7 extension in New York,
| leading to even higher costs.
|
| > Poor project management: design review teams are usually
| understaffed and cannot respond to contractors fast, so there is
| little institutional capacity to build big projects. Wages for
| office workers are below market rate and hiring is difficult.
|
| >Labor: in New York, the productivity of construction labor seems
| unusually low and wages high.
|
| >NIMBYism: the United States makes it easy to sue, for example
| NEPA is enforced by lawsuit, whereas its Italian equivalent is
| enforced by the administrative state. Lawsuits in the US and
| other lawsuit-happy countries like Germany rarely win, but do
| delay projects, so there is defensive design, including
| unnecessary scope in order to buy off political support. Leah
| Brooks and Zachary Liscow have a paper on the growth in
| Interstate construction costs over the decades, blaming citizen
| voice lawsuits for the increase.
|
| >Politicization of projects: the civil service is weak compared
| with both elected politicians and their unelected political
| appointees, and there is not much continuity in design.
|
| One thing I think they missed, environmental impact studies (that
| aren't even associated with reduced environmental impact!) I
| remember Seattle's light rail project included 8 years of
| environmental impact review of a light rail extensions along
| routes that were planned along existing rail corridors!
|
| Also, relating to overdesign, I think younger generations suffer
| from a cult of perfectionism. But perfect is the enemy of good. A
| streetcar might seem so much cooler, but a dedicated rapid bus
| can do more with less money!
| alpha_squared wrote:
| > One thing I think they missed, environmental impact studies
| (that aren't even associated with reduced environmental
| impact!)
|
| The Atlantic has an article about exactly this happening in
| California[0] with increasing frequency, mostly fueled by
| NIMBYism.
|
| [0]
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/signature-...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Maybe this is an additional component to NIMBYism, but I've
| often noticed how public works projects get derailed from a
| myriad of busybodies coming out of the woodwork to halt the
| project based on some hitherto unknown concern. I can't help
| but think our public works projects are too public and it's too
| easy for some random Joe/Jane to have an outsized impact on the
| project planning.
| missedthecue wrote:
| American Electric Power Corp found that they could produce
| renewable hydro power in rural West Virginia for a few
| pennies per kWh and sell it in Washington D.C. for about
| twice that. To do this would require 85 miles of high voltage
| transmission line to transport the electricity from WV to
| NOVA. Guess how long it took them to build this?
|
| 17 Years. Almost all of which was permitting and licenses.
| Construction took 11 months.
|
| Meanwhile, when China needed to buy greater volumes of
| natural gas, they set up a purchase agreement to buy it from
| Turkmenistan and completed a _2900km_ pipeline project start
| to finish in just 22 months.
|
| Obviously, we don't want to ignore civil rights, but it
| really is absurd that to build anything in this country
| requires you to retain half the state bar association for the
| inevitable endless NIMBY lawsuits.
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| The railfication and arguably much of the settlement of the
| West in the USA happened because the government said
| "here's a swath of land 20/50 miles wide, go hog wild".
| That type of activity isn't really possible anymore, unless
| the government itself steps in.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is hard to argue with that. Anecdote time. My neighbors
| were petitioning against a library being built next to them,
| because:
|
| 1. It would add noise to otherwise comatose street 2. It
| would serve as a gathering ground for kids
|
| Both are true complaints ( and to an extent I would even say
| valid ).
|
| What happened was what seems to happen in similar cases. They
| were assured, the library would only remain so big, but those
| promises were quickly abandoned in ways not dissimilar to the
| way US handled Indian treaties.
| datavirtue wrote:
| None of these are valid complaints akin to their rights.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I disagree. You buy a house in a given location based on
| its current or future properties ( say, relative silence
| of the surroundings ). If that property is altered in a
| way that does not benefit you, it could affect their
| property rights.
|
| For the record, I think library is a good thing, net-
| wise. I understand their line of reasoning though.
| danbolt wrote:
| I've never been so yearning for Japanese-style federal
| zoning laws in North America until the past year.
| katbyte wrote:
| By this reasoning nothing should ever change ever lest
| someone's property rights be infringed?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Well, that is basically why, as a society, we have
| devised ways to deal with disagreements over the nature
| of what should be. In US that does mean civil suits if
| all else fails.
|
| Not to search very far, in Colorado neighbors sued for
| lowered property values due to marijuana smell from
| dispensary.
|
| For better or worse, US property values do make a
| powerful argument for people to take their rights rather
| seriously.
| burkaman wrote:
| > it could affect their property rights.
|
| I don't think "rights" extend that far. That's like
| saying if you buy stock in a company and then a
| competitor does something to drive the price down, that's
| violating your property rights.
|
| It's a reasonable thing to discuss and bring up at a
| meeting, but it's not an issue of property rights.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Yes, and note how many laws are on the books ( and how
| many scams exist ) that deal with falsely inflating and
| deflating the value. It is absolutely a property rights
| issue. Just because it seems minute to you does not make
| it less of a right.
| burkaman wrote:
| I feel very strongly that value and rights are not the
| same thing. Nobody has a right to future value. You have
| a right to own stuff, and a right to speak freely about
| how you think the world should be, but you don't have a
| right to your investment paying off.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I think agree with statement as written. That said, what
| happens when bad actors conspire to artificially
| lower/increase the value? Or are you arguing laissez-
| faire?
| himinlomax wrote:
| Having a pig farm setup shop next to your property
| reduces the market value significantly. Having a library
| does not, quite the opposite.
|
| Property should be protected by law so that people are
| not deprived of it, but it does not follow that owning
| property gives you the right to be capricious.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is a good argument, but it does not apply. Their
| complaint is about the increased noise-level, which, as
| far as humans go, we can agree it can become bothersome.
| We typically disagree over how much and when is too much,
| but noise absolutely affects property values and
| potential resale. Take me for example, I did not purchase
| a place by highway. Extreme example, but same principle
| applies.
| himinlomax wrote:
| Aren't library the place where you're precisely not
| supposed to make any noise?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| But isn't #2 a good thing? Like what's wrong with kids
| gathering at the library, isn't that the whole point of a
| library?
| scottious wrote:
| That's exactly why NIMBYism is so destructive -- overall
| it probably would be a net positive for the community.
| However one very loud resident (I'm exaggerating a bit)
| says "nah, I don't want the noise" and then the whole
| thing gets stalled.
|
| But that library has to go somewhere. It has to be in
| somebody's backyard. Just not MY backyard.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Is the NIMBYism that is so destructive or the fact that
| the terms of the agreement between were not upheld. As
| much as I don't see an issue with a library, I assure you
| after I learned of that story, I watch moves by my local
| city hall a lot more carefully since I know I cannot take
| them at their word.
|
| Trust is everything.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Yes and no. They don't like kids gather, because kids
| gathering in their mind equals trouble ( and, well, some
| summers I did see a swarm of kids jumping over fences and
| stuff; we actually had to call the cops -- but you know,
| kids will be kids ).
|
| But I take your point, kids attracted to a library tend
| to be less likely to cause trouble. Frankly, any non-idle
| hands activity is better than nothing.
| analog31 wrote:
| It could certainly be a good thing, but what strikes me
| from the description is promising one thing and building
| another.
|
| And I would add my own anecdote. The state decided to
| build a new office building by "selling" the land to a
| developer, who built the new building, that the state now
| leases. Also, the state passed a special law exempting
| this site from city zoning restrictions. The developer
| took out the parking lot and put up a multi level garage,
| for which they charge the office workers an annual fee.
| So the workers fanned out and park their cars along the
| streets in the surrounding neighborhoods, leading to
| congested streets and more traffic. The residents
| petitioned for "no parking" and "2 hour parking" signs
| along the streets in front of their houses. So now
| there's a 2-hour parking sign in front of my house, which
| I didn't ask for.
|
| My point is that an innocent measure to enrich a
| developer had a spillover effect into the entire
| neighborhood. And there's still a bunch of undeveloped
| land on the lot, which the developer will be free to do
| with whatever they want. This kind of stuff fuels
| NIMBYism and the need for precise specifications hashed
| out in painful detail.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| This sort of opposition is usually effected through the
| environmental review phase, as noted. It's a cleverly named
| little barrier that lets a lot of meddling happen -- because
| after all, only evil people who hate the environment would
| oppose environmental review. In places like San Francisco, in
| particular, there are many "stakeholders" who use the threat
| of litigation in this phase to extract concessions, whether
| that's NIMBYism, or preferring union labor, or some
| "environmental justice" concerns that can only be remedied by
| paying someone's favorite nonprofit -- it's a shakedown.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It is legalized extortion. Every utility-scale solar
| project in California has at some point been sued under
| CEQA by labor unions looking for more money.
|
| Same for urban housing projects and "community benefit
| organizations" aka neighborhood shakedown outfits.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > Every utility-scale solar project in California has at
| some point been sued under CEQA by labor unions looking
| for more money.
|
| Which union? IBEW (electrical, wireman not linesman) has
| solar project labor almost completely locked down,
| electricians assemble the racking and panels, run all the
| conduit, pull all the wire, and terminate everything.
| Site work/concrete/buildings are the only work that falls
| outside the IBEW scope.
|
| Edit: My employer does 8 figures worth of solar panel
| projects with union labor a year
|
| Second edit: So CURE is a coalition of labor unions that
| sue to hold up solar projects while they try and force
| the developer to hire union labor. That's pretty shady,
| there's plenty of work to go around for everyone, no need
| to do shakedowns to get contracts IMO. There's plenty of
| facilities that only hire union MEP contractors because
| the job will get done correctly, nearly all Class A
| office space, for example.
| lettergram wrote:
| To me this all reads as corruption. You know why SpaceX can
| build a new rocket, faster, better, cheaper? Because there's
| little corruption - aka bureaucrats, who's sole job is to
| justify themselves.
| himinlomax wrote:
| The point of this paper is precisely that bureaucrats, at
| least the right type of bureaucrats, are necessary for public
| works to proceed smoothly. Without (qualified, motivated)
| public servants, public works are driven by politics and
| lawyers instead of domain experts.
|
| I've seen the same kind of things happen in the private
| sector. A company with no in-house IT expertise regularly
| gets fucked over by their contractors. This is less common
| now but this was rather the norm 20 years ago, even for large
| enterprises.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Not really. China's big projects all have corruptions, but
| corruption can help sort things out. Read my comment above.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26483703
| munk-a wrote:
| SpaceX wouldn't exist without NASA sinking a lot of money
| into very risky R&D and training up a whole fleet of
| engineers capable of doing the work that SpaceX does. The
| public sector can be insanely bloated and slow - that's quite
| true - but it's necessary and contributes a lot to society
| that the private sector would never deliver.
|
| We need balance in all things.
| megaman821 wrote:
| The Government should do things it is uniquely suited to
| do. Like risky, multi-decade R&D that launched the first
| satellites and delivered men to the moon. Once these feats
| become more common-place, let private industry take over
| and put the cost-savings into new R&D.
| [deleted]
| munk-a wrote:
| >Politicization of projects: the civil service is weak compared
| with both elected politicians and their unelected political
| appointees, and there is not much continuity in design.
|
| This one may be especially relevant as the green line extension
| mentioned in the paper as possibly concluding in 2017 would've
| been under a new administration that especially worked to undo
| a lot of Obama era policies.
| Anechoic wrote:
| _One thing I think they missed, environmental impact studies_
|
| It's mentioned in the NEPA discussion on page 9, and in the
| litigation discussion.
| WalterGR wrote:
| For those who haven't read the article, before talking about
| the above reasons - which are indeed important - it leads with:
|
| "The difference in costs often boils down to domestic state
| capacity: bureaucracies in East Asia and Continental Europe
| tend to be better-staffed and more empowered to make
| professional decisions. The details are naturally more
| complicated, but the pattern is nonetheless clear: the
| countries with the lowest infrastructure costs are also the
| countries where the state acts swiftly, with mechanisms that
| limit the lag between financing and construction."
| nine_k wrote:
| I wonder why various administrative approvals don't have a
| time-out built-in. I would suggest that an approval process may
| take, say 6 months, and unless during this time good grounds
| for disapproval are found, the approval is considered granted.
|
| This will not work, of course. Bogus disapprovals will be
| issued at the last minute, then likely taken to court, which
| again can take arbitrarily long.
| wahern wrote:
| > One thing I think they missed, environmental impact studies
| (that aren't even associated with reduced environmental
| impact!)
|
| That wasn't missed. That's what NEPA is implicitly referring
| to. Environmental protection legislation is usually structured
| to first require the developer to create an environmental
| impact report (EIR). Thereafter almost everything revolves
| around the EIR, including the regulatory agency review as well
| as the lawsuits. Environmental lawsuits invariably challenge
| the accuracy of the EIR, or the application of regulatory
| agency rules to an EIR.
|
| An EIR is to environmental regulation what construction
| blueprints are to the building code. You need the paperwork,
| otherwise you just have a bunch of people shouting and pointing
| fingers and making wild claims.
|
| The issue with EIRs is who gets to challenge the accuracy of an
| EIR. Imagine if any old interest group could challenge
| construction blueprints for accuracy in court. It'd be a
| nightmare. Well, in some jurisdictions, like California, pretty
| much anybody can challenge an EIR in court. By contrast, under
| the Federal NEPA and most state regulations, the parties with a
| right to challenge an EIR are few--e.g. usually just the
| government agency in charge of approving it and maybe any
| adjacent landowners potentially impacted.
|
| I know somebody who is a low-income housing developer in
| California. According to her, the cost of compiling and getting
| approval of an EIR under NEPA is de minimis, with very low-risk
| if the reviewing contractor doesn't uncover any serious
| problems. By contrast, because almost anybody can challenge the
| EIR submitted under the California Environmental Quality Act
| (CEQA), and do so without any risk of punishment for frivolous
| or vexatious challenges, one of her biggest risks and costs is
| dealing with CEQA. (Because nobody wants low-income housing
| near them, any remotely nearby upper-income neighborhood will
| instinctively challenge her EIR, causing mult-year, even multi-
| decade delays. And this is even when zoning boards and every
| other government agency are 100% behind a project.)
| extrapickles wrote:
| Another facet is that the private companies are very good at
| finding ways that off the self designs are not suitable so they
| must make bespoke equipment when its not needed. For the
| streetcar they recently installed in Seattle, off the shelf
| rolling stock was not suitable because someone _really_ wanted
| it to be battery powered for part of the trip and they had to
| extensively modify an existing design, leading to all sorts of
| problems.
|
| What makes this even worse is that Seattle has extensive
| trolley bus (electric bus powered by overhead lines)
| infrastructure that works just fine, so they could have taken a
| trolley bus, put train wheels on it, and we would have had a
| faster and cheaper streetcar. Trolley busses are much safer for
| cyclists or anyone else sharing the road with the streetcar as
| the tracks pose a hazard to pretty much all other uses of the
| road.
| notJim wrote:
| IMO streetcars in general are a pretty bad investment, as
| they are generally just a way of making a bus, but more
| expensive and stuck on rails. (Streetcars are not usually
| grade-separated.)
|
| I learned recently that part of why streetcars have been in
| vogue is that the Obama administration made a big push for
| them in order to have some visible progress on their transit
| plans.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _IMO streetcars in general are a pretty bad investment,
| as they are generally just a way of making a bus, but more
| expensive and stuck on rails._
|
| The value of a streetcar or a bus depends on the volume of
| passengers that are served. The more people, the more a
| streetcar (maybe) makes sense.
|
| At some point you have so many buses and so many drives
| (salaries, benefits, 401k/pensions) that the main cost on
| the line becomes people and not equipment. (More buses also
| need more mechanics, etc.)
|
| There is a range of average daily ridership where buses,
| bus rapid transit (single/double lanes), light rail, and
| heavy rail each make sense.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_per_hour_per_dir
| ect...
| iggldiggl wrote:
| > they could have taken a trolley bus, put train wheels on
| it, and we would have had a faster and cheaper streetcar
|
| I don't think this'd work quite as easily as you'd imagine.
| If you'd literally take a bus, take out its steering and
| replace its wheels with train wheels, the resulting
| contraption would have diabolical cornering abilities with
| regards to the tight curves typically encountered on
| streetcar networks.
|
| Two-axle streetcars typically don't have a wheelbase much
| above 10 or 11 feet at most (and that's already pushing it -
| there's a reason why everybody moved on to vehicles with
| bogies or otherwise steerable axles), whereas modern buses
| have a wheelbase closer to 20 ft or so.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Don't forget rampant corruption. In my sleepy little town of
| Cincinnati the FBI has been jailing city council members for
| colluding with contractors and taking bribes. It is so bad they
| said it seemed to be ingrained into the culture. Pan over to
| somewhere like New York that is many factors worse than
| Cincinnati as has been documented in The Power Broker and has
| likely gotten worse since. I now consider local development
| corruption to be the norm over the exception.
|
| It is VERY difficult to get shovel ready for a two bedroom
| house, let alone a new bridge.
| kgin wrote:
| I will say that choosing light rail is helpful in that it
| forces a certain minimum amount of infrastructure to be built.
| Dedicated BRT _can_ be a good experience, but rarely is built
| that way. The same cost-cutting forces that drive the choice of
| BRT over rail usually keep on pushing until all you 're left
| with is a glorified bus stop.
| king_magic wrote:
| It blows my mind that an environmental impact study for a
| single light rail system can take 8 years, when multiple
| coronavirus vaccines were created, safely reviewed, then safely
| administered to hundreds of millions of people in record time.
|
| Edit: yes, I get the different level of scale/need between
| them. My point is: big things _can_ be done safely &
| responsibly without criminally wasting massive amounts of time.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| That's because environmental impact studies aren't really
| about studying environmental impact.
| dgellow wrote:
| What do you mean? That it is used as a political tool?
| Arrath wrote:
| In a lot of ways, yes. Kicking projects back for more
| environmental review has recently become a method to
| delay/soft cancel projects that are now out of vogue.
| FERC recently kicked a proposed LNG terminal in Oregon
| back for more environmental review[1], the Biden admin
| revoking the permit for Keystone XL, and so on. (I would
| note I am in support of both of those moves)
|
| Combined with a rising 'consulting class' if you will
| where it is only to their benefit to drag out these
| studies and billable hours.
|
| [1]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lng-
| jordancove/u-s-fe...
| api wrote:
| It's used as a political tool to block construction for
| NIMBY reasons, and as a way to line the pockets of those
| involved in the study.
| danaliv wrote:
| Yes. As a survivor of one of these battles, when the
| neighbors don't want you to do something, they will throw
| every wrench they can find into the works. "Good faith"
| is nonexistent. I'm very, very sympathetic to
| environmental concerns, but the way I've seen this sort
| of thing used in real life is absolute nonsense.
| dgellow wrote:
| Do you have some examples, just to get an idea of the
| problem?
| tomc1985 wrote:
| My high school was a bunch of trailers on a large tract
| of unused but school-owned land that would eventually
| become a full-blown high-school. It sat next to a Tractor
| museum and a small marsh-type thing the opposite side of
| its access road. The footprint of the planned
| construction was only maybe twice the size of the
| trailers, and didn't stretch across the access road, and
| the land it occupies now was mostly disused fields of
| dirt and shrubs.
|
| We were promised that our senior year would be in the new
| facility. However the school got hit with environmental
| studies around a specific species of endangered frog that
| was known to inhabit the area, and construction did not
| complete until 5 years later
| himinlomax wrote:
| What's crazy, viewed from outside the US, is that this
| kind of roadblocks seems to only apply to public works
| but not to private developments, or less so at least.
|
| In Europe, public works have less barriers of that type,
| as it's assumed they are for the general good, whereas
| private projects are required to demonstrate it.
| danaliv wrote:
| I'm afraid I can't get any more specific than that.
| There's still a lot of bad blood, and it might not be
| over yet.
| nym375 wrote:
| https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/09/25/sunnyvale-drive-
| throu...
| danem wrote:
| Plenty of examples in this recent article:
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/signatu
| re-...
| Lammy wrote:
| It is unknowable. People who truly want the best for the
| environment obviously exist, but the outcomes of our
| environmental policies have secondary and tertiary
| effects that would also benefit people who wanted to make
| population growth and population change difficult for
| other reasons.
|
| Apologies for the gross long URL, and as always
| correlation is not causation, but correlations are still
| worth thinking about: https://books.google.com/ngrams/gra
| ph?content=redlining%2Cen...
| rollinggoron wrote:
| No, there is a lot unnecessary red tape involved with
| them. They aren't used as a political pawn.
| Anechoic wrote:
| As someone who works on EIS/EIRs it blows my mind as well.
| But I do think that it's important to balance the interests
| of the community with the project, and I'm not sure that
| limiting litigation (as the paper suggest) would help with
| that.
| [deleted]
| twinge wrote:
| An EIS can be useful cudgels to impede construction. In
| Seattle, one portion of a very controversial multi-use trail
| had an EIS that took "more than three years at a cost of $2
| million. That's less than 7 feet of trail studied per day at
| a cost of $271 per foot. And that doesn't include any
| construction." [1] And that's from 2015, and the trail still
| isn't completed (lawsuits are still ongoing).
|
| 1: https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2015/06/19/18-missing-
| link-v...
| detaro wrote:
| There is a _slight_ difference in effort expended for the
| latter, and in effort expended and priority granted to make
| it _fast_. (And less legal system involved, which to a degree
| by principle is not fast)
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| Comparing constantly ongoing processes with an emergency
| response doesn't really stick.
|
| It's an exception that got elevated to the highest priority.
| There must have been some efficiency gains as well but the
| prioritization part doesn't scale by definition.
|
| That all said, 8 years is ridiculous. I have to wonder what
| work actually happened in those 8 years.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Maybe most of them stem from one common cause: large interest
| groups.
|
| On the other hand, there are also deep corruptions behind large
| projects in China, but they get to move forward fast.
|
| Things in the U.S. is strange, large interest groups
| (regulatory agencies, all kinds of big contractors, political
| parties) all want to take a piece from the big pie, but they
| don't care to move things forward. Maybe because everybody
| knows the things are overcomplicated anyway, and nobody is
| going to take the project away from them. If the heads of the
| large interest groups can take bribes (above millions) as those
| in China, I guess the projects can move much faster.
|
| More, because bribe money is out of sight, the game becomes all
| about power, i.e. politics. So instead of all sides comes
| together to take money, they fight for power, political
| influence. So comes backstabbing, sabotaging.
|
| In the old days, there were gangsters and big unions, whose
| lives were depended on those big projects, so they actively
| engaged in "persuading" politicians to push the projects and
| they resourcefully removed obstacles. Nowadays, gangsters are
| long gone, unions declined, politicians come and go, nobody is
| actively pushing those projects anymore.
| abarringer wrote:
| There are lots of dumb reasons but there are also things like
| we require Fire Extinguishers in our data centers to get a
| certificate of occupancy.
| PEJOE wrote:
| Fire extinguishers could come in handy [0]
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2B20NU
| austincheney wrote:
| So common are absurd freeway interchanges in Texas that we have a
| local term for them: _mixmaster_. If you search Google for that
| term you get results for the only interchanges Wikipedia knows of
| in Texas, both in Dallas. One of those is the only 5 level
| interchange I can find on Google:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Five_Interchange
|
| Ironically, though, the largest freeway interchange in the DFW
| area, actually 3 almost conjoined separate interchanges occupying
| a tremendous land area, is only 3 levels near the DFW airport
| north entrance. At the widest the freeway there is 7 lanes each
| way, plus 2 lanes of toll each way in the center for a total of
| 17 to 18 lanes of traffic. Yes, it still gets gridlock. You can
| see it here:
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@32.93809,-97.0628477,4001m/data...
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Tangential, and not a comment on the linked report, but it's
| interesting to see discussion of a multi-faceted complex problem,
| if you want to call it that.
|
| Everybody seems to pick out the pieces that confirms their
| personal opinions about What's Wrong With America, where the
| truth in almost all cases is 'sorta, but it's more complicated
| and nuanced than that'.
| [deleted]
| whydoineedone wrote:
| Simply put, there's no accountability. Nobody really wins if it
| gets done under budget and ahead of schedule. Lots of people make
| out like bandits if it takes forever and never gets done.
|
| Bureaucracy and ridiculous regulations are true but with
| accountability these types of problems can be surmounted.
| Government and government contracting attracts a lot of lazy
| people who under produce because they're not compensated on
| output but rather hours worked. Petty grievances between
| departments and individuals can tank projects just because some
| woman felt slighted by what some guy said to her in a meeting a
| year ago and they both have to approve a project etc.
|
| Companies literally get paid millions to build websites that most
| talented fresh college grads could handle in a few months.
| However, thanks to the arcane compensation laws, these kids have
| no experience so their labor category is low and they will not be
| compensated relative to their older, useless colleagues.
|
| The entire system is set up so that the government officials find
| a few competent individuals to do work and then try to keep them
| and the smart individuals build these relationships, start their
| own contracting shops and field out the work to smart fresh
| college grads and pocketing more than half of the pay they pass
| along.
| fungiblecog wrote:
| Because when your entire culture is based around the idea that
| making as much money as possible is a virtue greater than all
| others, there will be plenty of people breaking your systems in
| order to make as much money as possible.
| geodel wrote:
| The reasons in this report are like root cause analysis of
| failures in big companies. They are not usually false but still
| kinda bullshitty and rarely enlightening on why things happen the
| way they happen.
|
| Simply saying that 6 billion dollar project will cost 400 million
| in Europe so a wastage of 5.6 billion is hilarious until they
| give detail breakdown of costs. Maybe they can come out and say
| all american companies, government authorities, public,
| politician/ political system are dumb or just corrupt. For now I
| will just say they are just repeating lazy, half-assed cliches
| and presenting it like a report.
|
| From this report :
|
| "Building back flexibly requires empowering low- and mid-level
| civil servants to work flexibly and at arms-length with private
| contractors."
|
| What does this even mean?
|
| Should they work closely? from far to maintain impartiality? just
| give them verbal directions with no written record to move fast?
| Or it is just put all good sounding words with no cohesive
| meaning at all.
| himinlomax wrote:
| The thesis I believe is that in the US, the public service does
| not have the resources to do project management and outsources
| that, typically to those who also do the work and have an
| incentive to overcharge.
|
| In other countries, not only are there people employed by the
| state who do said project management and have the
| responsibility and expertise, but when outside PM work is
| required, it has to be done by a different entity.
|
| Nothing to do with being dumb, everything to do with bad
| incentives.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Don't know anything about American infrastructure but knows a bit
| about Canadian ones, or to be more precise, Quebec ones.
|
| In short: Corruption.
| williamsmj wrote:
| "The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth: How excessive
| staffing, little competition, generous contracts and archaic
| rules dramatically inflate capital costs for transit in New York"
| (2017) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
| subway-...
| magwa101 wrote:
| Cost plus contracts, duh.
| davidw wrote:
| Anecdotally, I was writing some side-project code to help learn
| about new housing to support where I live, and I found this
| project. In the middle of a new piece of the university campus
| they're building, they want to use a 35 foot flag pole, instead
| of a 25 foot flag pole. Look at all the paperwork that generated:
|
| https://cityview.ci.bend.or.us/Portal/Planning/StatusReferen...
|
| Notices were put up, letters mailed, comments sought (I wrote in,
| in favor!).
|
| All of that for a flagpole with a US flag right in the middle of
| the property.
| cs702 wrote:
| > The difference in costs often boils down to domestic state
| capacity: bureaucracies in East Asia and Continental Europe tend
| to be better-staffed and more empowered to make professional
| decisions. The details are naturally more complicated, but the
| pattern is nonetheless clear: the countries with the lowest
| infrastructure costs are also the countries where the state acts
| swiftly, with mechanisms that limit the lag between financing and
| construction.
|
| In other words, states with bigger _and better-run_ governments
| have lower infrastructure costs.
| dang wrote:
| We changed the URL from https://www.niskanencenter.org/report-so-
| you-want-to-do-an-i... to the actual report.
|
| We also changed the submitted title ('Why is American
| infrastructure so expensive?') to the actual title. Note the site
| guideline: " _Please use the original title, unless it is
| misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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