[HN Gopher] Why America can't build quickly anymore
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Why America can't build quickly anymore
Author : burlesona
Score : 174 points
Date : 2022-03-19 14:36 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fullstackeconomics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fullstackeconomics.com)
| a-dub wrote:
| the construction of the second avenue subway was slow because of
| hundreds of years of infrastructural technical debt in manhattan
| and reduced tolerance for utility disruptions in an affluent
| area.
|
| you can dig a hole (as elon musk has done) in nevada in the space
| of a few months.
| redisman wrote:
| The Alaskan Viaduct replacement in Seattle also wasn't absurdly
| slow or anything. It's easy to cherry pick a few bad apples
| lamontcg wrote:
| We knew we needed to replace it in 1989 after Loma Prieta. In
| 2001 the Nisqually quake damaged it and made its replacement
| mandatory. It wasn't decided to build the tunnel until 2009,
| it then took until 2019 before it opened.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| One thing that's pretty easy to understand is the network effect
| of complexity.
|
| You don't have to check many things if you have few things in
| place. Each item creates an exponential increase in complexity
| for the next one. Another reason why things slow down is that as
| you add things to a system, they have a maintenance cost, the
| more you add the more you approach an equilibrium of costs ==
| capacity.
|
| This is, in part, explains why it becomes inevitably hard to add
| to a very large codebase -- you might have many many scrum teams
| simply maintaining what is, and each Nth new item has to do N-1
| compatibility checks.
| lordnacho wrote:
| An absolutely enormous number of people in our western societies
| are employed in making reports. They don't do technical things,
| like engineers. They don't decide things, like management or
| politicians. They make a living by "contributing" to reports that
| actually do need to be written, essentially by ballooning the
| size and time taken to make the report. There are legitimate
| reasons why doers (engineers) and deciders (mgt, govt) need
| reports, but like advertising there's too much of it and we don't
| know what to cut once it's there.
|
| The reason there's these 575 page reports as mentioned in the
| article is that it's never enough just to say "the bird sanctuary
| will be harmed by this windfarm, let's think about that". You
| need a sweeping survey of how many birds there are, how many
| people visit the sanctuary, how much they spend at the shop, and
| so on. If you try to head this off by saying you want to just
| summarize it, you are the bad guy who wants to trample the rights
| of the kids who enjoy counting the birds.
|
| As mentioned, for large projects this naturally ends up in court
| as well, and that of course takes a long time.
|
| We also live in the age of PR, so it's not really in anyone's
| political interest to make a bunch of enemies. Even if those
| enemies have a relatively small claim to veto a project, it will
| inevitably loom large in the public debate about it. If TV news
| manages to find that a kid who likes the birds, they will put him
| on TV and you will have to find an appropriate face for the
| interview.
| zbrozek wrote:
| The packet for a recent city council meeting in my town of
| ~8000 people was >500 pages long. It's _ridiculous_.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| There are a bunch of different factors:
|
| - Wages are high, so labor for construction is very expensive
| (not unique to the US)
|
| - It's difficult to acquire property to build new stuff in
| existing cities compared to building in new places.
|
| - It is also incredibly slow/expensive to build subways if you
| try to prioritize minimizing inconvenience to nearby residents
| above all else (cut-and-cover is MUCH faster/cheaper than
| tunneling).
|
| - The US is also not very interested in trying to learn from what
| construction techniques, etc. have worked for public transit in
| other countries
|
| Aside from the first point, a lot of this comes down to the fact
| that even in places in the US that have decent public transit,
| transit is treated more as a toy that is nice to have than a
| serious priority by the government, and it is only built when it
| doesn't cause any inconvenience to residents/drivers/etc.
|
| The US has historically been willing to demolish low income areas
| and force people to move in order to build highways, however.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Is this last point still true? I would imagine most poor area
| land is still owned by rich people?
| api wrote:
| I'll add one more: there is a strong preference in a large
| percentage of the population for suburban and rural style homes
| and light business areas. We build a ton of that and often very
| quickly. We are very good at building that type of landscape.
|
| The HN crowd tends not to be the target market for this though
| so it gets criticized and downplayed here.
|
| There has been a shift toward urbanism in the last 25 years
| though, and prices exploding in the cities show that the market
| is lagging in satisfying that demand.
| _dain_ wrote:
| > there is a strong preference in a large percentage of the
| population for suburban and rural style homes and light
| business areas. We build a ton of that and often very
| quickly.
|
| Because that's the only thing you _can_ build. The zoning
| regulations don 't let anything else happen easily. You can't
| reason from this that this is what people actually prefer.
| sokoloff wrote:
| You can't reason that that's what most people prefer, but
| it likewise seems clear that if most people in some
| town/city _did_ prefer something else, the zoning laws
| would be changed.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| In a world where there is little to no friction and no
| incentives to prolong the changing of those laws, yes.
| Unfortunately, that is not the world we live in. Even
| something as simple as wanting to change it but seeing
| the immense amount of effort to try and get it noticed is
| enough to dissuade most people from trying.
| _dain_ wrote:
| No, that isn't clear at all. Bad and unpopular laws can
| remain on the books for a long time if there is a
| politically powerful minority who benefits from them.
|
| Also it might just be that most people don't even know
| about the problem.
| api wrote:
| There's a huge generational divide here. When Gen-X and
| younger people get control of city governments you'll see
| this shift.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Among young white people, this perception has shifted
| dramatically over the last 15 years.
|
| I was born and raised in a city, never before have so many
| young white people wanted to move here.
| coliveira wrote:
| One needs to consider, however, why people prefer this kind
| of homes in the US, compared to most countries. It is
| probably because life is so hard and expensive on most
| American cities. And I say this as somebody from another
| country, where cities are livable and provide lots of
| advantages -- something that we associate in the US only to
| New York City and its high associated costs.
| api wrote:
| The poor shape of America's cities is both a cause and an
| effect. There are numerous other reasons. Here's the big
| ones in no particular order:
|
| (1) America's very old and ongoing racism problem, hence
| "white flight" and cycles of re-development due to
| segregation.
|
| (2) The "law of rent" and the connection between the growth
| of the middle class and the use of suburbanization to
| escape high urban property prices and eternal rent to a
| landlord class: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent
| -- This one is tough to solve and is still a problem.
| There's a new re-suburbanization trend driven in part by
| young people realizing it's hard to build wealth if you can
| only ever rent. This is also a major driver of remote work.
| COVID just accelerated the remote work trend.
|
| (3) A cultural legacy of preference for the outdoors and
| the frontier and a desire of a large number of people to
| have at least some land. This is a romantic idea in
| American culture that is not as strong in Europe or Asia.
|
| (4) Cities were horribly polluted during the early to mid
| industrial era. Even those who lived in cities often
| maintained country homes or vacationed in the country
| whenever possible if they could afford it, with a major
| driver being to get away from the noise and pollution.
|
| (5) Lastly, cars were invented in the USA and the
| automobile industry was and still is a major economic
| engine and employer in the country. America is where car
| culture really took hold if not originated. Car culture is
| still quite strong even though younger generations seem
| less enamored by it.
| technobabbler wrote:
| Just putting in a quiet vote for Chicago, that most
| underrated and magnificent of American cities. If you don't
| mind the risk of getting murdered once in a while, the city
| is affordable, beautiful, walkable, full of great food and
| good people, and has arguably one of the country's best
| public transit systems. It also has household garbage
| collection, unlike NYC's trash mountains. It reminds me a
| lot of the great metropolises outside the country.
|
| It really makes other US cities like Portland, Seattle, San
| Francisco, etc. seem like quaint little backwater
| neighborhoods. Most of those have become little more than
| traffic-ridden strip malls, preserving a tiny downtown
| district but everywhere else is mostly just a bunch of
| drive-up destinations with little pedestrian activity and
| not much liveliness. Chicago's neighborhoods are still
| super vibrant and full of festivals, and even in the deep
| snow of winter people will bustle on the sidewalks and
| converge on the fun pubs and music venues and such. I've
| never seen anything else like that in the US.
|
| But, yes, walk a few blocks in the wrong direction and
| you'll soon be dead. Despite that, millions make it their
| home. It's an amazing place to live.
| cageface wrote:
| The brutally cold winters are a dealbreaker for me, even
| if they do contribute to Chicago's affordability.
| EricDeb wrote:
| it's so cold though how do you survive the winters?
| technobabbler wrote:
| Climate change... not so cold anymore. Last two years we
| barely even had a winter
| osigurdson wrote:
| What are the net advantages of being in a city? It used to
| be access to good employment was the main thing but with
| remote work this often isn't as much of a factor anymore.
| Access to better restaurants, music and sporting events are
| definitely advantages but limited access to nature, traffic
| congestion, etc. are disadvantages. I'd say it is more of a
| lifestyle tradeoff.
| almost_usual wrote:
| COVID has definitely slowed down urbanization.
| [deleted]
| yahn00 wrote:
| jrockway wrote:
| Yeah. The major slow projects I can think of in recent years;
| Second Ave. Subway, East Side Access, Crossrail, etc. all
| involve deep bore tunneling through some of the most densely
| occupied land on Earth. Utility relocation, minimizing
| disruption to residents and businesses, etc. are the "hard
| part" here. If you could just nuke Midtown, East Side Access
| would have been easy. If you could demolish half of the Upper
| East Side, build a subway in the crater, and then cover it with
| new buildings, it would have been ready sooner. But, that's
| impractical. People are emotionally attached to their homes and
| neighborhoods.
|
| That said, future projects can probably done more cheaply. IBX
| and QueensLink won't involve much underground work, and the
| right of way is already clear. The problem is that the benefit
| isn't clear enough to actually fund the projects and get them
| started. (That is an even more complicated problem. The MTA is
| a state body, subway lines entirely within the city are not
| something people on Long Island and Westchester want to pay
| for. Maybe there should be some sort of Independent Subway that
| the city itself pays for ;)
| pbourke wrote:
| See also Seattle's SR99 tunnel and Boston's Big Dig (though
| the latter is 15 years old now).
|
| Tunneling through an existing city, often near water, is just
| hideously complex and expensive.
| Fomite wrote:
| I remember when I was in Boston a discussion of how to
| expand one of the T-lines under Tufts Medical Center
| _without_ causing vibrational problems for the equipment in
| the hospital right above.
|
| That's a non-trivial engineering challenge.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I totally agree, though I think these primarily stem from one
| thing, which is that America hasn't been seriously tested for a
| very long time. When you're not challenged, you can easily
| settle into what is adequate, even if you support progress and
| innovation on paper. America is a great place to live despite
| its faults, but it's also stuck in the past. Take for instance
| our major cities; somehow much older cities around the world
| ironically have more modern elements than cities like Los
| Angeles and New York, which for all intents and purposes aren't
| significantly different from where they were in the 1970s
| (besides greater population and in the case of LA much less
| smog).
|
| If we want to build quickly and actually begin to address
| problems rather than just accept things as the way they are, we
| need to be knocked down a peg. I don't think that means getting
| nuked or whatever, but it would mean that our "too big to fail"
| status would need to actually be jeopardized in a meaningful
| way. Once the current generation of grey-hairs in government
| finally croak and pass on the torch, then there would be the
| chance to garbage-collect excessive regulations and better pick
| and choose what should be regulated heavily or not, rather than
| regulate with a broad brush. Laws and regulations should be
| designed with exceptions in mind, and not just for fat cats in
| the club.
| irrational wrote:
| > somehow much older cities around the world ironically have
| more modern elements than cities like Los Angeles and New
| York
|
| Somehow? Shouldn't this say "Much older cities around the
| world have more modern elements than cities like Los Angeles
| and New York because they were razed to the ground during the
| world wars and rebuilt in modern times."?
| dionidium wrote:
| That wouldn't explain why Phoenix and Seattle and Austin
| and Las Vegas (and other recent-growth cities) lack the
| amenities of similarly-sized European cities.
| bumby wrote:
| For discussion's sake, can you enumerate the amenities
| you're alluding to?
|
| If it's solely in regards to public transit, I think this
| is largely due to cultural differences. The US still has
| the remnants of an individualistic frontier mentality. I
| don't know, but tend to think it's not by coincidence,
| that the better public transit systems tend to be near
| the eastern seaboard.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > public transit . . . individualistic frontier mentality
|
| A century ago, most American cities had some kind of tram
| system. And the cities were connected by railroads -
| actual passenger trains. People were sold the idea of
| automotive independence. That notion was completely
| manufactured for our consumption. We didn't have the
| bureaucracy in place to keep mass transit in place, so
| when people used it less, it lost money and was largely
| torn out. Without bureaucracy in place to give people
| time to think, we're stuck with the swift wisdom of the
| market.
|
| When I lived in Seattle, I was half a block from an old
| commuter line that's buried in asphalt now. The city just
| installed "innovative" light rail a few blocks away.
| Progress! /s
|
| https://www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8562007/streetcar-history-
| demis...
| bumby wrote:
| That's the point I was trying to get across. The
| automobile created fostered an individualistic culture
| related to transport that is very hard for people to give
| up. Most cities still have bus routes, but people
| generally don't want to use them if they can use a car
| instead.
| bradlys wrote:
| It's not just public transit. Walkability. Bike paths.
| High density - potentially mixed use types. No emphasis
| on lowering noise. Etc.
|
| Basically anything you'd normally see in a Not Just Bikes
| video...
|
| It's not cultural btw. It's corporational. It's
| corporations which are driving these things - which don't
| seem to have as significant of a voice in other
| countries.
| bumby wrote:
| Certainly corporations drive some of it. But I do think
| there's also a cultural element. I've lived all across
| the US and the places that lack those amenities simply
| don't want them from my experience. Even when they do get
| implemented by well-wishing civil servants, they are
| often openly mocked as a waste of money.
| bradlys wrote:
| I wonder - do you think that people always loved cooking
| with gas as much as they do now?
|
| https://youtu.be/hX2aZUav-54
|
| A lot of "cultural" things are corporations at work. This
| is a very small example...
| bumby wrote:
| Do you think social media influencers are what drives the
| selection of gas stoves? That...is a very new take I've
| never heard.
|
| Most people prefer gas stoves because they are better for
| cooking than electric. They are generally considered
| better for cooking because they burn hotter than
| electric. It's been a long time since I've worked in food
| service, but I can't remember a single kitchen using
| electric stoves to good with and for good reason. This
| was when gas was much more expensive than it is now and I
| doubt the natural gas lobby has much influence on those
| choices.
| bradlys wrote:
| The thing is - induction is shown to be better now. It's
| faster and more powerful and doesn't create the waste
| heat. There are specialty ones for woks now too - that
| are curved and all.
|
| So really it is the gas lobby that is fueling this
| resistance to the switch. I myself used to buy into the
| cooking with gas was better because of all the media, my
| partner, and so forth. But the truth is - cooking with
| gas sucks for the most part. The newer induction ranges
| with temperature sensors and what not are actually
| better. And no waste heat and no toxic fumes except for
| what you're cooking.
|
| Honestly - I'm a big convert. I just need to move into a
| non-rental so I can install 230v induction instead of
| having to use 120v stuff. (Which is still good but
| obviously 5000w is much better than 1800w)
|
| And if we compare shit electric to a gas stove then yeah
| - gas is better. But once you start using decent
| induction... it's not really a problem unless you like to
| move your pan around _a lot_ and even then - you can
| learn a different technique to get a similar effect.
| bumby wrote:
| I agree and almost put in discussion about induction in
| my first reply. But I think the difference is one of
| economics for most people. I realize HN probably skews
| towards the higher income range, so sometimes I feel like
| this discussion comes across as tone deaf when the median
| _household_ (not person) income in the U.S. is about
| $67k.
|
| The newer induction ranges are awesome. But they are very
| expensive by comparison to a comparable gas range. For an
| average person, they are probably out of range (ha) in
| terms of price point. Add to it that your existing
| cookware may not work with it, and it's a deal breaker
| for a lot of average people. For someone like a landlord,
| they will almost always go with the cheaper option. If I
| was renting and had the choice between an cheap electric
| range or gas, I'd always prefer the gas. I hope the tech
| progresses enough to bring the price down to be
| competitive in the future.
|
| It's a lot like the discussions around heat-pumps. I love
| the ideas of heat pumps in homes. But I also realize the
| initial sticker cost is too much for people to bear. When
| natural gas prices have been as low as they have been in
| the last decade, it's hard to blame people for selecting
| a natural gas furnace.
|
| I love the more efficient options, but I do think people
| don't always recognize they are, to an average consumer,
| a luxury and a hard sell when they are just trying to
| make ends meet. That's partly why some of the talk comes
| across to some as elitist and it hurts the ability to
| convert people.
| bluGill wrote:
| Walkability is the fad now. Just like cars replacing
| streetcars was in the past.
|
| In this case one I'm glad to support.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| As a US immigrant with chronic health issues from walking
| miles to work in a 3rd world country, cars are a boon for
| me now.
| bumby wrote:
| I am glad to support it as well, but I can also
| acknowledge a lot of people scoff at it (and bike lanes,
| for that matter).
| renewiltord wrote:
| Nah, Thameslink beats any US line and it's from 1988.
| Lizzie line will be better too.
|
| Oedo line too. And Fukutoshin like.
|
| Blackfriars is over the Thames. I don't think there's a US
| station that is as creative in use of space.
|
| Not to speak of the overground or DLR.
|
| I think it's just trade offs. The US gives individual
| power, those other places give state power. Former excels
| in certain places but provides veto when you achieve steady
| state. So things stall here.
|
| Notice that in things which can be done with individual
| power, like developers making housing developments in
| Texas, outcomes are good.
| ehnto wrote:
| I think power to execute is definitely a big part of it.
| A neighborhood can't afford a major work, or organize
| one, so it won't, but when a government entity can afford
| a major work, the neighborhood often has the power to
| stop that. Even though the major work is likely part of a
| larger orchestration of infrastructure, that one
| neighborhood can put a halt to it.
|
| They tried to replace a level crossing with an overpass
| in my city, arguably good for everyone. Well, they did
| argue it, and it didn't happen. Even though there is
| already a train line there, apparently an overpass was
| too much infrastructure for them.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I don't disagree with most of that, but some places in the US
| do put some priority on public transit. Much to the annoyance
| of local neighborhoods, for example, Tri-met in Portland
| regularly proposes and then eventually builds out new light
| rail lines through existing neighborhoods. The bus network
| could be better in outlying areas but in the city proper it is
| pretty useful for many people, not a toy. And Portland builds
| new highways rarely. Aside from small extensions, there hasn't
| been a new interstate-size highway created in decades. It all
| stopped in the 70s (though the final bits didn't get finished
| until the mid 80s).
|
| Edit: IMO Portland could really justify another interstate and
| Columbia river crossing to the east of the city, but probably
| won't do it. It would primarily serve lower income people
| who've migrated out that direction, and they don't really have
| much voting power. I don't envy their commute since so much of
| it has to be on surface streets before they hit a major
| arterial. The light rail has a leg that direction but it's
| slow, and there's just one out there.
| crowbahr wrote:
| Highways do not serve low income areas, public transit does.
|
| Portland is entirely justified in not building expensive and
| low density transit solutions (highways) to service
| communities. A BRT or Light Rail line will justify the cost
| significantly better and lead to denser, transit oriented
| development along the path: All of which better serves the
| poor.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Beaverton, Hillsboro and Washington County meanwhile are busy
| widening roads like always.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| > Wages are high
|
| Maybe, but I think it's more that the managers/owners are
| greedy and need big profit margins, especially to pay back
| their political connections who gave them the contract to begin
| with.
|
| Corruption exists in some form at every step of a publicly
| funded project. People are too apathetic to care, and the
| process for getting a road repaved or whatever has been made
| almost entirely opaque to the electorate. Especially at the
| county and state levels, where serious cash gets gifted or
| grifted all the time.
| bumby wrote:
| > _the process for getting a road repaved or whatever has
| been made almost entirely opaque to the electorate._
|
| Most government contracts use an open bid process which is
| much less opaque than what happens in private contracts. What
| transparency are you specifically looking for?
| mastax wrote:
| I'm very confident that the amount of greed and corruption in
| New York in 1905 was greater than or equal to the modern
| amount. See: Tammany Hall.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| What if there is an overarching malaise of dysfunction,
| inefficiency and apathy towards ambition to build a better
| nation? 1950's USA was very different than today.
|
| I've worked with some brilliant government orgs (NIST) but more
| often than not, many have the problem of top-down management
| and bureaucratic class that has no checks and balances, that is
| impossible to get rid of, and perpetuate dysfunction,
| overbilling, etc. No one questions them, media is busy with
| other things, and we always talk about funding the gov, but
| never asking "Can we do more with the same amount?". At least,
| private enterprises have skin in the game and they'd be toast
| if their products and services does not perform or is
| overbudget. Similar to government agencies, as private
| enterprises get larger (GE, Lockheed, IBM, P&G, Mitsubishi),
| they have exact same problems as governments.
|
| The solution is to completely start over. We did that in 1950's
| when many new agencies were formed. They were vibrant and well
| functioning. Without a garbage-collector process so-to-speak,
| government agencies tend to become dysfunctional.
|
| I love Eli Dourado's blog, particularly these two articles:
|
| How to move needle on progress:
| https://elidourado.com/blog/move-the-needle-on-progress/
|
| Notes on technology in the 2020s:
| https://elidourado.com/blog/notes-on-technology-2020s/
| ehnto wrote:
| Re-orgs are often partially a garbage collection process, I
| have noticed. Lots of talk about "efficiency" and "better
| alignment". All fluff you expect, but in practical terms, a
| lot of people get let go, projects and org units disappear,
| and priorities are reorganized. The whole operation is
| expected to work as if the re-org never happened, and often
| it will.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Here's an inconvenient truth: Building itself is energy-intensive
| and depends heavily on emitting CO2 from the cement kiln to the
| trucks to the excavating equipment etc. Doing it quickly, more
| so. The answer is always to do less. Less travel, less building
| infrastructure for travel, less economic activity, and ideally
| fewer people alive. Nobody wants to hear that. Everything on the
| table in what passes for public debate represents one or more of
| the Kubler-Ross grief stages: bargaining, denial and anger.
| rayiner wrote:
| The end result of that logic is we should all just commit mass
| suicide.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the end result of "systems thinking" is that "balance" is
| found by smoothing out extremes.. it takes a combination of
| capacity, training, inputs and will to use a human mind to
| think in terms of systems, not just yourself, but many people
| are capable of that
| Centigonal wrote:
| We live on a spectrum between excess and efficiency. We could
| move to a point further in the efficiency direction that
| isn't morally untenable.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Why do people keep on reasoning this way!
|
| One must remember the capex opex distinction. Building e.g. in
| electricity generation with fossil fuels can be net negative,
| and even necessary, to bootstrap more electrified activity.
|
| I am not saying some sectors aren't just bad need to shrink,
| but other sectors are good need to grow. That is what Jason
| Hickel thinks too, incidentally!
|
| An across-the-board slowdown of economic activity is a very
| stupid --- both in terms of political impossibility and also
| needless sacrifice --- way to fix our climate issues.
| lamontcg wrote:
| What if we need to build mass transportation solutions in order
| to get Americans off of single occupancy vehicles? What if we
| need to build more housing in our cities so that housing
| becomes affordable and the homelessness problem is reduced?
| What if we need to build solar and wind farms so that we can
| turn off coal and natural gas generators?
|
| I don't know how you can propose doing literally nothing at all
| as the solution to the problem that has us on course for
| disaster.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Not proposing anything. This is the obvious solution that
| won't ever be considered. The disaster is is own solution.
| empiko wrote:
| What about Oroville dam repairs? It was a pretty successful and
| fast engineering project. I think that America can still build
| quickly if she wants to. But most of the projects are not that
| important.
| samtho wrote:
| That's kind of a strange example. Fixing things that provide
| existential hazards is always a priority, not to mention that
| the scope of the damn did not change with the repairs (the dam
| did not get taller, wider, etc). There was no reason for nimby-
| isms, environmental impact reports of building/expanding the
| reservoir, etc, as it was already there. It was a huge, ongoing
| emergency that required action to be taken and only cost the
| state $1.1B, from which they're trying to recover some portion
| from federal funds.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| > There [is] no reason for nimby-isms, environmental impact
| reports of building/expanding
|
| That's probably also the case in China, for everything. Which
| might be why they can build so qyickly and cheaply.
| jansen555 wrote:
| renewiltord wrote:
| MacArthur Maze repair was also under budget and before timeline
| because of the novel contract.
|
| The truth is that most US infrastructure is not required. We
| should let many of these roads rot and many of these super
| projects languish in design.
|
| Notice how CA HSR had delays because they wanted to use "first
| of its kind state of the art signaling system". Why "first of
| its kind"? There exist like a dozen HSR builders. Just copy
| them. But that's because HSR isn't required. So we just use it
| as a modern WPA-style jobs tool.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I think you're actually talking about Caltrain's CBOSS
| system, which while obviously related to the CAHSR,
| eventually, was designed and (not) implemented by a
| completely different agency at a prior time.
|
| https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-end-of-
| cboss.h...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Thank you for the correction! I did indeed mean that.
| gkop wrote:
| > The truth is that most US infrastructure is not required.
|
| Would you say more? This is a bold claim.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This comment box is too small to provide a proof ;)
|
| I'm sorry, it's not fair to make a controversial statement
| and then leave it at that but I only had the appetite to
| provide the hypothesis (easy) not the backing (I've got to
| collate my notes on this).
|
| But, if you're down to meet in SF one evening in April we
| could go over it.
| [deleted]
| yobbo wrote:
| The Empire State Building was built, from start to opening, in
| what seems like 14 months.
|
| Mary Poppendieck discusses this from the perspective of project
| management: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/tyranny-of-plan/
|
| I think nowadays the projects are simply more profitable if they
| are long and slow.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| NIRP/ZIRP could be a huge factor for that.
|
| When the cost of money is free / negative - there's less
| incentive to rush to completion.
| yobbo wrote:
| I think so too.
|
| Also consider this; for buildings/real estate, the market
| value of the finished construction may appreciate faster than
| the negative cash-flow from construction and financing. Just
| adjust rate of construction accordingly.
| jmyeet wrote:
| For public transit in particular, the US has billionaires and
| politicans who actively campaign against such projects [1]. The
| effect of this cannot be overstated. People buy into the
| propaganda that their taxes will go up and/or it will bring crime
| to their idyllic locales (where otherwise property prices keep
| the riffraff out).
|
| Landowners in the US have very successfullly voted in measures
| that limit further construction (including higher density housing
| and public transit systems) and increase the value of their
| holdings.
|
| I've mentioned housing here because it directly impacts a lot of
| potential construction, particularly public transport. You cannot
| build anything other than single-family homes in much of the US.
| This lowers population density and makes public transport less
| viable. It also diverts tax revenue to build infrastructure for
| the required cars: highways, parking lots, etc.
|
| There are a lot of local problems here too eg NYC's scaffolding
| laws [2], corruption in NYC construction projects [3] and CEQA in
| California [4].
|
| [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-
| pub...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2020/10/08/585902...
|
| [3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
| subway-...
|
| [4]:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/signature-...
| WalterBright wrote:
| > People buy into the propaganda that their taxes will go up
|
| That's not propaganda. State and local taxes in Wa state have
| gone nowhere but up for the last 40 years I've lived here.
| Sound Transit has gotten themselves huge tax increases.
| amrocha wrote:
| It is propaganda, the only reason you don't pay higher taxes
| is that car infrastructure is heavily subsidized compared to
| transit.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I certainly do pay taxes for the roads, bridges, and
| infrastructure.
| oblio wrote:
| When you factor in externalities you're living on
| borrowed time, debt and climate wise.
| WalterBright wrote:
| That's a different topic.
| oblio wrote:
| It's related since there's a very strong argument you
| (and Americans in general) aren't paying enough taxes and
| some things should be outright banned (single family
| homes on 75% of built land, in a country with an ever-
| growing population and a housing affordability crises and
| some of the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions;
| maybe that percentage should be 50% or 33%)).
|
| But that's political suicide to say out loud as a
| politician.
| boston_clone wrote:
| Propaganda can be true and factual; perhaps what the parent
| comment meant is that a minor detail can be exaggerated to
| dissuade / influence a voter's behavior.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Google's definition:
|
| "information, especially of a _biased or misleading nature_
| , used to promote or publicize a particular political cause
| or point of view."
|
| Emphasis is mine.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| > " This style of thinking is present especially in environmental
| laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) at the
| federal level, or the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)
| at the state level. These laws both require the government to
| conduct an exhaustive review of government projects--sometimes
| even permitting decisions on private projects--that might have
| negative environmental impacts."
|
| There's a reason those laws were passed, and it's because of all
| the massive groundwater and air and soil contamination problems
| created by unregulated free-for-all industrial development that
| have had to be cleaned up at great public expense. Those waste
| problems are solvable but solutions are often expensive, adding a
| large percentage onto the end-to-end cost of a manufacturing line
| for semiconductors, for example:
|
| https://www.epa.gov/superfund-redevelopment/superfund-sites-...
|
| As far as large-scale public infrastructure projects, a lot of
| that is repair and rebuilding of existing installations (bridges
| etc.), so there's not as much environmental review there - just a
| need to devote resources to the task. I suppose a more autocratic
| country like China (which has rapidly built out high-speed rail)
| wouldn't bother about EPA reviews, but the air in China can be
| pretty bad.
|
| As far as doing things quickly? The global supply chain problem
| is pretty evident right now, maybe offshoring and 'just in time'
| manufacturing wasn't such a great idea due to its lack of
| robustness under stress? Critical supply chains should be located
| domestically. Yes, that would either raise prices or cut profits
| due to increased domestic labor costs and pollution regulations.
| robinjhuang wrote:
| I don't think blaming the supply chain is fair. Big
| transportation projects, big city's housing problems all
| existed way before our current supply chain problems.
|
| Clearly considering the environment is important. But the costs
| of over worrying about the environment is becoming clear too.
| Negative externalities like the homeless crisis in the West
| coast are affecting everyone.
| dionidium wrote:
| > _There 's a reason those laws were passed, and it's because
| of all the massive groundwater and air and soil contamination
| problems created by unregulated free-for-all industrial
| development that have had to be cleaned up at great public
| expense._
|
| OK, sure, but what does that have to do with building a bridge
| or a train station? A similar objection occurs on a smaller
| scale when we talk about opening up zoning laws to allow more
| apartments. _" There's a reason those laws were passed. You're
| saying you want a chemical treatment plant built by your
| school?"_ No, what I said is that it should be legal to build
| apartments. Who said anything about a chemical plant?
|
| Supporting quick approvals for less hazardous projects doesn't
| suggest support for more hazardous projects, but implying that
| it does is an effective opposition tactic.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| What probably should have been done was to write a provision
| into the law for priority projects, allowing some activities to
| be waived or timeboxed.
|
| It's a bit unreasonable to expect a process that efficiently
| handles $x million / 2-year projects to scale to $xxx million /
| 10-year projects.
|
| If the risks of not having a port expansion / bridge or dam
| repair / rail transit / nuclear power are greater than the
| risks of not completing a comprehensive environmental review...
| well, there you are.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| there are two USAnian movies, of the very few that make sense to
| me..
|
| Still.Mine-2012 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2073086/
|
| Magnolia-1999 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175880/
|
| IMO some answer is somewhere in them..
| cellis wrote:
| We need some free-for-all zones to build new cities. I know with
| the current political structure it's near impossible, but
| "Hamsterdam" from the wire ( uhh, sans drugs and killings... ),
| comes to mind. A libertarian paradise. Perhaps it could start
| with more landgrants on just a fraction of the massive bureau of
| land management reserves. Free from entrenched politics of
| existing cities, these zones, if done well ( technocrats, here's
| your chance! ) could serve as inspiration for exporting the know-
| how to the existing cities.
| swearwolf wrote:
| You might like to read the book "A Libertarian walks into a
| bear". It's about a group of hardcore libertarians who took
| over Grafton New Hampshire with the goal to do a small town
| version of what you've described.
| a9h74j wrote:
| A libertarian, an Osho-disciple, and a Randian all walk into
| a small town ...
| hericium wrote:
| US generates little production know-how since Wall Street moved
| production to China.
| maxerickson wrote:
| This is gratuitously false. US manufacturing output today is as
| high as it has ever been. Even low value add industries like
| steel production are at a significant percentage of their
| historical maximum output (they do tend to be relatively
| mechanized and automated and not job centers anymore).
| gruez wrote:
| >This is gratuitously false. US manufacturing output today is
| as high as it has ever been
|
| Right, but manufacturing's _share_ of GDP is low as it has
| ever been.
|
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?location.
| ..
| wodenokoto wrote:
| In this context that doesn't matter.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > Right, but manufacturing's share of GDP is low as it has
| ever been.
|
| That only means that we are creating more jobs than
| manufacturing can provide. There is no point in
| manufacturing more and more if current levels are enough.
| For an analogy, agriculture is only 2% of GDP but it is
| good enough to feed everyone. Increasing the percentage of
| GDP of agriculture is pointless.
| sidlls wrote:
| That's different from having the "know-how", though. We
| have the knowledge and ability to manufacture a lot--as
| much as or more than any past point in time. We just
| "produce" a _lot more_ stuff that isn 't manufactured now
| as a share of our economic output.
| hwers wrote:
| Unions and safety. Quality of life and less risk for the workers
| which china et al has less of. Not a difficult question but this
| topic keeps coming up as some sort of indirect nudge to corrode
| those two components under the guise of an argument about global
| competitive advantage.
| passivate wrote:
| >Unions and safety.
|
| Do you have a comparison of safety data from projects over the
| years?
|
| > some sort of indirect nudge to corrode those two components
| under the guise of an argument about global competitive
| advantage.
|
| I don't see anyone making an argument against safety?
| lr4444lr wrote:
| No way. European nations with strong unions still build much
| faster and more cheaply than we do.
| gedy wrote:
| I don't mind things going slower and costing more for good
| reasons - what concerns me though is the intentional graft,
| feet dragging, and insertion of middle men to extract as much
| money as possible from an important project. Unfortunately
| unions are a big and willing part of the problem in the US.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| The fact that Union participation in the work force has
| declined from 20% in 1983 to 10% in 2020 [1] tells me that
| something else is at play.
|
| [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
| starkd wrote:
| While private union participation has sharply declined,
| public unions are still quite powerful and present a virtual
| lock on substantial changes. Witness the teachers' unions.
| Particularly, their obstinance during the pandemic and
| reluctance to providing true school choice.
| ISL wrote:
| The position of, "we would like to have safe workplaces
| during a pandemic," seems utterly reasonable.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| The argument against school choice us utterly
| unreasonable to anybody outside of the teacher's union.
| Their argument against is essentially that their pet
| school would go out of business because nobody would
| choose to go there if there were alternatives.
| irrational wrote:
| Depends on where you live. Where I live the teachers union
| supported moving to remote learning overnight and remote
| learning continued until halfway through this school year.
| In fact it is still ongoing for those students who chose to
| do remote learning instead of in person learning. They plan
| on continuing offering remote learning as an option
| perpetually into the future. One thing they learned during
| the pandemic is that there are certain students who do
| poorly with in person learning but they excelled with
| remote learning. They want to keep supporting those
| students who learn better with remote learning than in
| person learning.
| starkd wrote:
| Perhaps in high school level. But little kids, grade-
| school level, need in-person. They also should not be
| scared witless by mandatary rules that do nothing but
| leave them psychologically scarred for years to come.
| irrational wrote:
| Children are not so weak as you seem to think. It was
| children at all levels that showed remarkable
| improvements through remote learning over in person
| learning.
| TimPC wrote:
| True school choice is an illusion as long as private
| schools are free to decline unwanted students that cost
| more to teach. The advocates of such policies tend to
| ignore the fact that it would leave disabled and other
| special needs students in a public system that no longer
| had enough other students to pay for their higher costs.
| That's a problem that requires an adequate solution before
| any type of voucher is reasonable.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| >The advocates of such policies tend to ignore the fact
| that it would leave disabled and other special needs
| students in a public system that no longer had enough
| other students to pay for their higher costs.
|
| People already pay for public schooling through income
| and property taxes, whether they're children use it or
| not. I don't see how your theory prevents higher cost
| students from being taught. It just sounds like you're
| advocating for a crab bucket.
| TimPC wrote:
| Every proposal I've seen for vouchers tries to tie the
| amount to average spending per student. My point is
| that's fundamentally unfair because private schools are
| only interested in students that cost below the average
| to educate. They work hard to exclude and disqualify
| those with costly special needs. The result is you leave
| the public education system with all the high cost
| students but still getting the $X k they had per student
| when they had low cost students too. The net result of
| vouchers is raising the per capita cost of public
| education without raising the per capita funding. That's
| unfair to everyone forced into using that system.
| coryrc wrote:
| Stop holding 95% of students hostage to a tiny minority.
| They deserve better education. They deserve their
| teachers' focus instead of them having to devote
| inordinate amount of time to the mainstreamed special
| needs students.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| If you're issue is mainly with vouchers, then why not get
| rid of the need for vouchers in the first place by
| getting rid of limiting attendance by zip code? It's
| unfair for anyone, not just "high-cost" students, to be
| forced riders in an education system for which they have
| no agency. Fairness isn't determined on the basis of who
| in particular is negatively affected. Either the
| principle itself is fair or it isn't.
|
| The only solution compatible with choice and public
| education is to allow all students a free-for-all to
| attend any public school within driving distance. Tuition
| isn't usually the biggest or first barrier to entry in
| attending better schools, it's bureaucracy.
| starkd wrote:
| A fair point. But the unions have been anything but
| reasonable on this issue. True, some have opened up to
| charter schools, but many have rescinded that option as
| soon as it was politically feasible. True choice can only
| happen when a different management of schools is in
| place. They have been obstinately against this.
| randomdata wrote:
| In Ontario, the teachers ratified a three year contract in
| the spring of 2020 (i.e. COVID-19 was already raging), with
| the most notable feature being that remote learning would
| not be permitted, conceding to a paltry 1% raise in order
| to get the 'win'. Funny part is that they caved to the
| remote learning pressure in the end anyway.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| >reluctance to providing true school choice
|
| Interesting way of saying "I want poor children to go to
| school with poor children and rich children to go to school
| with rich children".
| starkd wrote:
| Wouldn't vouchers address that very problem? It would
| ennable poor children to go to wealthier schools.
| paconbork wrote:
| Is that not what already happens in the current system
| where living in the wealthy school district is required
| to go to the wealthy school?
| randomdata wrote:
| A lot of what unions once offered has been rolled into labour
| legislation. The entire workforce is now a member of the de
| facto union, so to speak.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| amazing to watch entire generations stumble forward without
| understanding "retirement,healthcare,workhours,promotion"
| since you know, "I have never had a problem".. Everyone is
| protected now.. yeah, thats it
| randomdata wrote:
| The unionization movement was built on solving the safety
| issues of the day for workers exposed to employers who
| found employees to be expendable. The topic here is about
| how those safety expectations once established by unions
| slow down construction. Labor laws now cover those
| concerns, so the decline in unionization is largely
| irrelevant. The entire workforce has become a member of
| the de facto union.
| pseudo0 wrote:
| That's a rather limited view of the role of unions. One
| of their biggest accomplishments was the establishment of
| a standard 40 hour work week as the norm. That was mostly
| about work/life balance, not safety. And that certainly
| isn't codified in labor laws, given the remarkably loose
| overtime rules for most salaried employees today.
| randomdata wrote:
| How does that pertain to the discussion? We're not
| focused on talking about unions here, we're talking about
| why construction projects take a long time, so what does
| that mean for project duration?
| taeric wrote:
| I lean in your direction on this. However, I am worried that
| this evidence doesn't say what we think it says.
|
| Is it that there was more growth in non union fields? It is
| conceivable that union work is still responsible for much in
| the building realm. That combined with a non growing
| workforce could easily explain slowness. Combined with basic
| supply/demand thinking can then explain costs.
| crowbahr wrote:
| > Is it that there was more growth in non union fields?
|
| Most unionized labor in the US was outsourced during the
| deindustrialization of the USA.
|
| More than 6 million manufacturing jobs were lost in the US
| between 2001 and 2010 (representing approximately 1/3 of
| all manufacturing jobs).
|
| So yes: non union fields are growing, mostly because
| unionized jobs were busted by companies shipping production
| overseas. The jobs that "replaced" the good labor of
| industry are mostly poverty wage service jobs which require
| very little training. As there's little investment per-
| worker Unions have effectively 0 bargaining power: Scabbing
| a strike is simple when you only need 2 hours of training
| to do their jobs.
|
| Funnily enough the USA manufactures more goods than ever in
| its history, accounting for ~6 trillion USD of our GDP in
| 2019.
| taeric wrote:
| But this really doesn't feel to be talking to my
| question. Local building of infrastructure isn't really
| offshoreable, is it? Such that I get a ton of things were
| shipped overseas. Not entirely clear that explains why
| building locally is so expensive.
|
| Your last line indicates that robotics and other large
| scale industrialization can be pointed at. We manufacture
| more with far fewer resources?
|
| But, back to my hypothesis that i would love to see shot
| down. Is the only labor left in large unions in a
| position that they are in the critical path of building?
| (Note, that if true, the answer isn't necessarily to bust
| unions, but to expand their base significantly. I could
| easily believe that their funds have been starved such
| that they aren't growing due to so much money being
| funneled away from them.)
| V__ wrote:
| Is this really the case? I would have assumed that
| planning/zoning/permits/slow bureaucracy is more to blame than
| the actual building phase.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I remember the housing boom around 2005-ish in my area. They
| were throwing houses together at an amazing pace. Private
| building contracts with a friendly regulatory environment.
|
| My state is ranked among the highest in fraud related to
| public works projects like building roads. Basically the game
| is: Start a company, bid so low you know you won't succeed,
| take your cut, start a build, declare bankruptcy,
| rinse/repeat. Easy money, no consequences.
|
| I'm pretty sure the government/bureaucracy is in on the take
| because they do nothing about it. The mayor of my city was on
| the board of the company that manages the toll system.
| kiba wrote:
| No. It doesn't completely explain the ossification of our
| society not should that be an excuse to not build more.
| [deleted]
| bluGill wrote:
| You didn't read the article. Instead you made something up and
| presented it as fact with zero evidence.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the bridge in Philly that was blown-up right before the
| infrastructure funding visit by Biden.. how does that fit into
| your narrative?
| blululu wrote:
| The Germans, Japanese and the French would like a word.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Germany and France are a pretty bad example to use here.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Why?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Berlin Brandenburg is the poster child for why.
| looperhacks wrote:
| Germany is absolutely the wrong example here (I am from
| Germany):
|
| - the last U5 extension in Berlin (2.2km) took over 10 years
| to complete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U5_%28Berlin_U-
| Bahn%29?wprov=s... - the Stuttgart 21 project was presented
| in 1994(!), started construction in 2010, was protected to
| end in 2019 and by now, the main station is expected to be
| finished in 2025, with more to follow. Of course it went
| massively over budget and was probably one of the more
| protested against projects in the last few years
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21?wprov=sfla1 - the
| BER airport is probably one of the most "famous" projects.
| Planning began in 1991, construction in 2006(!). The planned
| opening was in October 2011, but the first plane landed in
| October 2020, nine years later https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Berlin_Brandenburg_Airport?wpr... - NIMBYs preventing wind
| turbines is a big issue too, the most recent discussion was
| about Bavaria preventing new plans with ridiculous
| requirements (sadly no English source here)
| https://www.br.de/nachrichten/amp/bayern/wie-viel-
| windkraft-...
| CPLX wrote:
| Have you heard of Europe?
|
| This argument is ridiculous.
| yosefjaved1 wrote:
| I never thought about the length in time it takes to build things
| in the US today when compared to previous time periods in the US.
|
| I had to double-check this but it did really take 4 years to
| complete initial construction of the NYC subway system; however,
| what's failed to mention in the article is that a plan was
| approved to build the NYC system 6 years prior. In total, it took
| 10 years of planning and construction to actually have an initial
| system in place.
|
| Even though the author failed to mentioned the planning period in
| that instance, it doesn't take away from his argument that things
| are slower today in getting large projects built or renovated due
| to legal and political structures that stop each of these from
| happening through procedural delays.
|
| I have a great local example of this. My interstate bridge has
| been in need of repair for the last 30 years, but nothing has
| been done of it due to so many groups getting in the way. It's
| been a nightmare and that bridge is very much needed for the
| local community to stay as strong as it is. I believe the
| political will to do anything has vanished out of frustration.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Believe it or not, New Hampshire does pretty well with building
| bridges, I saw them build a large bridge within 6 months and it
| seems roads are kept in a decent shape. In a nearby state where
| I am, I think it can outdo what you see in your state. Took 10
| years to replace a very small bridge across some railroad
| tracks. That road was closed for 10+ years.
|
| Over rivers ? Where I am, I suggest before you cross, open all
| your vehicle windows and wear a life preserver, I am serious.
| tonystubblebine wrote:
| I've wondered about state level differences too. Most of the
| east coast has terrible roads. That's especially true in NYC
| where I live. But I did a trip down to Delaware and was on
| freeways like I'd never seen in the US. Just really nice. Are
| some states just run much better?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| It's less "how well states are run" and more that some
| states just get way more money. Delaware gets approximately
| 50x as much money as California or New York does from the
| federal government on a per-mile basis.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Why does Delaware get more money per mile?
| jmclnx wrote:
| Biden ?
|
| he is from there and has been a leader in Gov for
| decades.
| rayiner wrote:
| It varies county by county too. "Conscientious Republican"
| counties--like in Northern VA when I was growing up in the
| 1990s, or California from the 60s to the 80s--are the most
| well run. I live in a traditionally red county in Maryland
| (went Romney 2012, split evenly in 2016) and everything is
| super well run.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| I grew up in a super-red county in California. Things
| were horribly run. The area has been under Democratic
| leadership for the past twenty years and it is a _world
| change_ in terms of how much nicer, better, and more
| efficient everything is. The roads are better, the
| schools are better, the neighborhoods and people are
| better.
|
| It turns out than when you have people believe that
| government should exist, and that government can do a
| good job, you get people who do good work. And when your
| government consists of people who think it shouldn't
| exist...you get morass.
|
| Contrast blue counties with red counties in most states
| and you'll notice a huge difference in how much nicer
| things are in the blue counties. There's a reason so many
| Republicans retire to LA and NY: after they've made their
| money railing "against the libs" they just want a nice
| place to live out their golden years.
| rayiner wrote:
| Did your county see a change in significant improvement
| in socioeconomic status during that time period? Because
| that's not a fair comparison. Note I said I was talking
| about places Northern VA in the 1990s, or Silicon Valley
| in the 1970s. I've never seen these places get better
| under Democrats.
|
| Also, virtually no republicans "retire to LA and NY" lol.
| Maybe billionaires who can insulate themselves from the
| dysfunction of those cities. For middle class people, the
| major internal migration trend in the country is people
| leaving those places for Texas, the Carolinas, etc.
| bluGill wrote:
| Democrats and Republicans each have things they do well
| and things they do bad. Roads are generally a Republican
| thing, and roads are visible.
| rayiner wrote:
| Not just roads. Northern VA's excellent educational
| system was built under republicans, with a few
| conservative democrat governors. Building and permits are
| much easier. Even just efficiency of government offices.
| Getting a copy of my kid's birth certificate in my county
| took like 10 minutes. In bored strokes, at state and
| local level, republicans tend to focus on serving the
| majority, while democrats are focused on equity and
| redistribution for minorities.
| MaysonL wrote:
| It's not just state level, the same thing happens at the
| municipal level. There's a trip I take a few times a year,
| and I always notice the transition from one town to another
| by the sudden deterioration of the road.
| fsflyer wrote:
| New Hampshire doesn't divert gas tax money away from road
| maintenance. [0]
|
| [0] https://reason.org/policy-brief/how-much-gas-tax-money-
| state...
| [deleted]
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I presume this is Portland OR to Vancouver WA?
| CSSer wrote:
| It could just as easily be Cincinnati, OH. That's how bad our
| infrastructure has gotten.
| runarberg wrote:
| The I-5 Columbia river replacement bridge just recently got a
| ton of funding from the WA state legislator, so maybe things
| are finally moving forward. However I guess delaying the
| project has been bickering on what to actually put on the
| bridge. E.g. they want to more then double the car lane
| count, then they also want light rail on there, and
| potentially even high speed rail. This feels like a classic
| case of overdesign.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not see how incorporating mass transit is over design
| for something expected to last 100+ years. Especially for a
| region that has been adding tens of thousands of people per
| year for 10+ years, at an increasing pace.
| runarberg wrote:
| Neither do I, however WSDOT has not released any details
| on the project but their renderings indicate they want to
| widen the freeway to some 10+ lane monstrosity[1].
| Meanwhile Cascadia High Speed Rail has ideas about
| replacing the existing BNSF/Amtrak bridge with a double
| deck four track + four care lane bridge in addition to
| the I-5 bridge[2]. This combined makes a ridiculous
| amount of car lanes train + railway tracks and a
| redundant bridge. There must be a better--and cheaper--
| way to cross this river.
|
| 1: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/02/18/dont-widen-
| highways-i...
|
| 2: https://cascadiahighspeedrail.com/portland-to-seattle/
| rayiner wrote:
| Note that the 4.5 years cited for the NEPA process is just the
| average time to reach an initial decision. It doesn't include
| the years of litigation challenging that decision that
| inevitably follows for any significant project.
|
| My kid's school tried to convert a declining golf course in a
| residential area into athletic fields. We're not talking about
| a Texas high school football stadium--its some ball fields and
| tennis courts for an artsy school where sports doesn't exactly
| attract big crowds. They were tied up in litigation for the
| better part of a decade. They spent half as much on the
| litigation as in purchasing the property.
| asdff wrote:
| Coincidentally I've been supporting trying to keep around a
| local golf course over letting a local private school expand
| athletic fields on it in my area. In my eyes the golf course
| is better for the community. People from all ages from the
| local area come there to play cheap golf or tennis and get
| reasonably priced lessons. Meanwhile if this plan were to go
| through, suddenly that area is private and reserved for rich
| people who can afford tuition at this private school, and all
| those opportunities for local people to get some activity
| outdoors vanish for good. Plus that school in question
| already has athletic facilities, these would just look more
| collegiate looking I guess...
| madengr wrote:
| ec109685 wrote:
| One thing they do now is get a half of a plan in place without
| any idea of how to fund the rest, so that ends up drawing
| things out.
|
| "Hard to argue that promises were not kept, but something has
| to be done with an already started project. In that light, one
| thinks of former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown's principle, "In
| the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a
| down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start,
| nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start
| digging a hole and make it so big, there's no alternative to
| coming up with the money to fill it in." "
|
| https://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/story/opinion/2019/02/13/w...
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| That was 6 years of planning mostly _what_ to do, presumably.
|
| Another problem with the US legal environment is that all this
| "planning" effort we do now goes into the _whether_ , not the
| _what_. That means despite 1000s of pages, final designs are
| often lousy and ad-hoc, rather than a plank in a longer term
| integrated vision.
|
| Public transit makes the problem especially clear, as the
| benefits for integration vs random flashy projects to hype up
| the Andrew Cuomo du jour is extremely stark.
| runarberg wrote:
| When I think about American infrastructure projects in the 70s
| I think about all the minority neighborhoods they ploughed
| through and all the roads they closed during the entire
| construction livetime.
|
| I don't know how accurate that historical perception is, but if
| it is that is not how things are done today (thankfully). E.g.
| I've been observing the planning of ST3 in Seattle, and they
| indeed compromise on design all the time in order to displace
| as few people and businesses as possible, and they often end up
| with a much more expensive and much longer building times in
| order to allow traffic to flow (mostly) unhindered during
| construction. Without those constraints I bet building would be
| far quicker. (that being said neither of those are excuses for
| why it has taken over 2 years to fix the West Seattle bridge).
|
| Interestingly those two constraints clash in the new
| International District/Chinatown station. One of the
| alternatives would displace and disrupt more minority owned
| businesses on the 5th Ave. while the other would disrupt
| traffic flow for 5-6 years on the 4th Ave. Curiously this is
| one of really few portions of the ST3 plan where they don't
| have a preferred alternative.
| ipsin wrote:
| Yes, it was definitely a thing.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-
| of-...
|
| In Los Angeles the two closest lessons I took were the 210
| Freeway in Pasadena (which literally cut through poorer,
| Blacker neighborhoods) and the 710 Freeway which was supposed
| to connect to it.
|
| The last part of the 710 Freeway was meant to go through a
| richer, whiter neighborhood. Some houses were purchased, but
| the connector was held up in lawsuits from at least the
| 1970s, and remains unfinished to this day.
| archhn wrote:
| Probably due to bureaucratic overhead. Everything needs to pass
| through ten layers of approval and every bureaucrat plays power
| politics the whole time.
|
| I was once involved in a small city project, and the town liaison
| treated the project like we were in charge of the nation's
| nuclear arsenal. It's mind blowing how something so trivially
| small can become such a big deal when there are too many cooks in
| the kitchen.
| soxxer wrote:
| We can't compare ourselves to China when we have a labor
| participation rate of 160 million and they have 50 million
| construction workers.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > The bigger problem is that urgency just isn't there
|
| Pretty much says it all. Unless it's something like replacing a
| critical bridge that collapsed (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge...
| ), there just ain't much of a constituency for quick, affordable,
| and competent construction of anything.
| fvdessen wrote:
| The downside of a system that allows to build quickly is that it
| allows to quickly build really stupid things as well. For example
| in the 70's Brussels decided that the city should really look
| like Dallas and quickly destroyed complete neighbourhoods to
| build inner city highways and skyscrapers ...
|
| I guess high speed disasters like that are part of the reason why
| nowadays some people are afraid of going too fast with important
| things
| skybrian wrote:
| I'm wondering if environmental reports could be made faster and
| for less money? Maybe someone should do a deep dive into that?
| TimPC wrote:
| Not when anyone can sue because a certain detail is missing.
| The fundamental interface to environment work needs to change
| not just the length of the reports.
| clairity wrote:
| the biggest reason is simply financialization, which infiltrates
| every nook and cranny of our socioeconomic perceptions.
|
| it creates the perception that everyone else is getting ahead of
| you by hook or by crook (which is true in the minority but not
| the majority), rather than building stuff for the pride of having
| done it. that distorts all of our incentive structures for the
| worse, which is just one of the many adverse effects of
| financialization (which i define as economic activity focused
| solely on money itself, which includes most of real estate these
| days).
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Are you sure? It sounds like you're applying a pet/fad theory
| to somewhere where it's not super-applicable.
|
| Some of the biggest advocates for inefficiency in construction
| (at least here in Australia) have been Union members getting
| cushy jobs for their mates.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| So what's the solution? Pay people in peanuts and words of
| advice?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| In modern history - nearly ever major infrastructure effort has
| been financed with debt.
|
| This is especially true for the US.
|
| IFF we used to be able to build things in the US, and we can't
| anymore - why does financing have anything to do with it?
| clairity wrote:
| you're conflating financing with financialization, which are
| two very different points in a multidimensional spectrum.
| financing is certainly helpful to allow capital projects to
| shift forward (or backward) in time to deliver (and perhaps
| capture) greater value. and under the constraints of
| scarcity, it helps allocate resources more efficiently, price
| risk more accurately, and provides necessarily liquidity in
| markets.
|
| we're way beyond the constraints of scarcity and the ideals
| of efficient resource allocation because we've decoupled
| finance and the money supply from the natural constraints
| under which our economic theories "work" (i use that term
| loosely, since economics has done a poor job of accounting
| for actual human behavior vs. the idealized). we're at a
| point where economic activity is about the _money itself_ ,
| rather than what it represents in the real world, things like
| bridges, restaurants, and dry cleaning. that's
| financialization, when it becomes decoupled from real value.
|
| all that takes away from wanting to build real things,
| because the perception is that it's just easier to "get rich
| quick" via financialization schemes. if you can get the money
| without the hard work of delivering real value, why not? is
| the thinking. that's corrosive to social fabrics, not to
| mention economies themselves. that's why we're where we're
| at, rather than a simplistic demonization of 'financing' in
| isolation.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| I was surprised when I learned the Golden Gate Bridge was built
| in 4 years started in 1933. I wonder how long it would take
| today.
| thwarted wrote:
| For a really rough comparison, you can look at the building of
| the east span of the Oakland Bay bridge. It's also worth noting
| how many people died while building them. (Disclosure: I've
| never looked this up or done this comparison myself)
| tinkertamper wrote:
| Before you wax poetic about this period, please read more on
| the complete disregard for the families and communities
| impacted by the large construction projects from that time.
| Replies comparing the US today to China would also benefit from
| the same. Public works has a lot of issues with cost and
| inefficiencies, but I think we should all be happy that eminent
| domain is not wielded with the same disregard for human life as
| it once was.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Crimean bridge was also built in 4 years or something like
| that.
| Wistar wrote:
| The newest Tacoma Narrows Bridge took about five years to
| construct, beginning in 2002 and finishing in 2007. It is about
| one mile long.
|
| https://www.historylink.org/File/8214
| randomdata wrote:
| There is a new bridge being constructed here over a ~200 foot
| span across the river and it is nearing four years of work and
| not yet done.
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| A very interesting read that is somewhat bogged down by the
| author's apparent acceptance of the most alarmist of climate
| alarmist views.
| zionic wrote:
| Because we are a civilization in steep decline, and this is just
| another symptom.
| mulmen wrote:
| I made a similar comment yesterday and was rightfully downvoted
| so I'll try again here.
|
| The US military is a jobs program. Politically it is suicidal to
| support "socialism" but that's exactly what military spending is.
|
| So, what if we expanded that idea? What if we had a domestic
| infrastructure version of the US Military? Or at least a peaceful
| national service program?
|
| The benefits seems clear to me. Opportunity, well lubricated
| gears of commerce, and a stronger sense of ownership among the
| electorate.
| quesera wrote:
| This is the WPA. It worked pretty well. You have my vote.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration
| mulmen wrote:
| Agreed. Unfortunately "New Deal" language is also politically
| toxic. Not sure how to leverage the appetite for military
| spending to build infrastructure. Declare war on potholes?
| black_13 wrote:
| asfarley wrote:
| Diana Moon Glampers, applied to infrastructure.
| robinjhuang wrote:
| Having lived in Shanghai during 2005-2012 and seeing the
| construction boom there, I noticed some differences immediately
| after arriving in the US. It's common to hear about
| transportation projects taking decades to expand a few stations
| here. Mean while, since the time I left the Shanghai subway
| station has opened 21 new lines composed of 516 stations.
|
| Certainly, the air/water was worse in China but workers also had
| to work much harder (later nights, weekends, etc). But perhaps
| most importantly, the government would waste no time in getting
| land that it needed, and it certainly wouldn't ask for your
| consideration if it needs to do construction on a Saturday
| morning.
|
| While I appreciate that there is an inherent trade off between
| environmental consideration and speed, I think the author makes
| it clear that it's reached comic proportions in the US. The
| article is short, but I think the main premise is overwhelmingly
| accurate: The system exists to protect the status quo.
|
| There's also the reliance of transportation agencies on
| consultants:
| https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/21/mbta-o21.html
| dv_dt wrote:
| While acquiring the property takes more time in America, I
| can't help but notice once construction starts it also takes a
| ridiculously long time too. It really seems like the interests
| of the power brokers in various areas are far outstripping the
| interests of the utility to society in multiple areas in
| America.
| dixie_land wrote:
| > government would waste no time in getting land that it needed
|
| by blackmailing, intimidation, and literally murder by
| bulldozing houses with people in them when they refuse to leave
| qiskit wrote:
| > by blackmailing, intimidation, and literally murder by
| bulldozing houses with people in them when they refuse to
| leave
|
| That doesn't explain nail houses though...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china.
| ..
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| That explains them though.
| winrid wrote:
| Source?
|
| I have relatives in China that got paid to leave their house
| last year.
|
| They had actually just built it, but the local government
| offered enough to build 3 more, so they took it.
| dixie_land wrote:
| Here's one from NPR:
| https://www.npr.org/2020/08/10/893113807/china-speeds-up-
| dri...
|
| and simple Google searches yield many results.
|
| Undoubtedly some people greatly benefited from the land
| purchase, when such offers are made. I've also heard of
| stories (friend of a friend kinda, I do not directly know
| one) of people actually getting rich (not middle class,
| like rich rich) by having properties in areas that the
| government happens to like. (more so in suburbs of big
| cities like Shanghai or Shenzhen)
|
| However the point is even one forced eviction is one too
| many and the people who come out better for it (good for
| them) does not justify the poor treatment of people who
| simply dare to say no to the communist party.
| vkou wrote:
| > However the point is even one forced eviction is one
| too many
|
| People get evicted all the time, for all sorts of reasons
| that may not be their fault. Why do you draw the line at
| eminent domain?
| robinjhuang wrote:
| I think this is a question worth asking. Should we let a
| small number of people hold hostage over public projects?
| dixie_land wrote:
| > Should we let a small number of people hold hostage over
| public projects?
|
| I think by phrasing the holdouts as "hold hostage over
| public projects" is misguided if not disingenuous. This is
| a common propaganda used by authoritarian regimes to paint
| anyone they don't like in a bad light: surely they're not
| victims of government brutality if they're "enemies of the
| common good."
|
| But if we accept we can discard one individual's (or a
| small group of individuals') rights, then it's not long
| before everyone's rights become disposable. That's how
| people like Putin and Xi justifies their aggression (surely
| I can kill millions of people in Taiwan if it stands in the
| way of "progress" of 1.3 billion mainlanders!)
|
| P.S. As someone as pointed out, this is not a China/US or
| eastern/western issue. The U.S. has its own fair share of
| blatant violation of private rights too.
|
| But my point is that it's wrong when U.S. does it, it's
| wrong when China does it, it's wrong when anyone does it
| and it shouldn't be something we aspire to.
| jdasdf wrote:
| Offer to pay them what they want.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's an awful solution. Some small fraction of people
| in the way shouldn't get an enormous multiplier over
| market value, in some kind of giant prisoner's dilemma
| auction.
|
| If you offer the _group_ a certain percentage of market
| value, that could work out well. But unanimous consensus
| is not a reasonable way to get land for big public
| projects.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Do you say that applies to pipeline projects too?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That depends on how you're defining "small number of
| people". If a big fraction of the people in the way of a
| segment object, then that's probably not small. If a
| couple family farms object, then that's not very
| important.
| robinjhuang wrote:
| Oil gas pipelines? Sure. The reason I say this is because
| it seems to me that democracy is a system designed to
| favor the majority over the minority. So why not for
| public projects?
| nouveaux wrote:
| This is a good question. Where do we draw the line at human
| rights? Should land ownership be a protected right? It
| would cost a lot less if the government just took the land
| instead of paying fair market value.
|
| It would also cost a lot less if we forced all criminals to
| work for free (though right now, they practically work for
| free). The problem is that we would quickly run out of
| criminals since there are so many projects that needs work.
| We could just randomly enslave people to do work for free.
|
| Enslaving citizens wouldn't be fair or popular with the
| citizens of our country. Another option is to use our
| military might to subjugate other countries and bring them
| over to work, say to work on our farms. That would allow
| for very high gdp growth.
|
| So where do we draw the line and who gets to draw that
| line?
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| We draw the line where there's an obvious problem. For
| every reductio ad absurdum looking at slavery and trying
| to put down another country's citizens at the benefit of
| our own, there is a counterexample looking at how
| ridiculous it is we have ultra-rich deciding their little
| game of looking at numbers going up and people living in
| McMansions just to show off being more important than a
| giant middle class unable to afford housing where their
| grandfathers and grandmothers could living a lower class
| lifestyle.
|
| Surely somewhere we can accept that a bunch of wealthy
| playing the investment game on very limited resources
| instead of the realm of producing solutions or
| improvements isn't the way to further society as a whole.
| We don't have to put down those already in the ditches
| further, we got a swat of people above to look at.
| nouveaux wrote:
| I think we both agree that we shouldn't be protecting the
| wealthy. I just think we should do it another way. IMO,
| high housing prices exist because of the lack of supply.
| I think it's possible for the government to increase
| housing stock and have reasonable property rights.
| xvector wrote:
| There is a balance between letting a single individual
| stall progress for all of society, and respecting human
| rights. A single individual certainly should not be able
| to block the construction of a public transit system that
| will bring jobs and improve the livelihood of millions.
| At the same time, the government can provide reasonable
| alternative accommodations or pay market value (not
| decided by the individual in question.)
|
| Eliminating NIMBYism and individuals' selfish obstinacy
| does not need to lead to a global hegemony enslaving
| billions.
| amrocha wrote:
| "Property rights" are not human rights, stop conflating
| the 2.
|
| And the absurd examples you tried to come up with are
| literally things the US is doing today, you're just being
| sinophobic.
| patentatt wrote:
| Your comment about the Shanghai subway sparked my curiosity.
| Wikipedia says the Shanghai metro consists of 396 stations
| across 19 lines, and has been operating since 1993. How does
| that square with "since [2012] the Shanghai subway station has
| opened 21 new lines composed of 516 stations"? Especially when
| Wikipedia also says "During Expo 2010 the metro system
| consisted of 11 lines, 407 km, and 277 stations." Seems like
| they opened 119 stations and added 8 new lines since 2012.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro
| rubicon33 wrote:
| The problem is the massive bureaucracy / government we have
| today. Massive swaths of government workers literally being
| payed to sit all day in zoom calls on "meetings" talking about
| approving projects and budgets, from local infrastructure to
| schools, to medical, etc.
|
| Source: Live with someone with said job. See them in meetings
| all day long, accomplishing nothing other than getting their
| paycheck.
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| My department has four managers that do this and I work in a
| private hospital. We've been asking for a break room for two
| years.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'm curious if it's not time to solve the chronic
| manageritis in large workplaces. It pains me to know end
| that resources are wasted on babbling while people doing
| the work are on their knees.
| tchock23 wrote:
| It's funny. My partner has a government job and works much
| harder than anyone I know in private industry (as do her co-
| workers). Also, it is a better organized place to work than
| most enterprises I've consulted for.
|
| Goes to show YMMV and it's not worth making sweeping
| generalizations about a sector of workers.
| bluGill wrote:
| It is possible to work very hard without doing anything
| worth doing.
| vkou wrote:
| And it's possible to work very hard, doing something
| that's very worthwhile for your employer, but very
| detrimental to society.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| Of course "sweeping generalizations" aren't always right.
| That's obvious.
|
| It doesn't mean that generalizations themselves aren't
| worthwhile, and sometimes accurate enough to frame a
| problem. Exceptions to the rule shouldn't completely
| invalidate the rule.
|
| In this case I also never said anything about them working
| hard per se. No doubt they work very hard, but seem to
| accomplish nothing. Working hard, not smart.
| ip26 wrote:
| Yeah, this framing was taken in a piece a few years ago about
| the failure to revitalize a rail project [1] in New York, which
| ultimately pinned the blame on tipping the balance too far in
| favor of private property rights. A single person/holdout can
| grind a project valuable to millions to a halt. It's the most
| compelling explanation I've read.
|
| In short, if private property has absolute veto power, you can
| never get big public projects done. (This is why eminent domain
| exists) There's a balance between private property rights &
| public good; in the times of great public works, the public
| good was given more sway, while recently private property
| rights have been given more (and stifled public works).
|
| [1]: I think it was
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
| slothtrop wrote:
| New York has an interesting History of projects being
| ramrodded through dubious means (at the expense of the
| public) under Robert Moses in the early 20th Century, I
| imagine stops were put in place to prevent that from
| occurring again.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| IMO the problem is why such stubborn holdouts exist and why
| can't the government work with them (are those holdouts being
| paid or otherwise motivated to hurt public good? organized?
| do they have pathological distrust to the government, how can
| that be worked out? etc.) rather than the governments not
| having the crazy power to just do anything they want if they
| think it is "public good". The latter is horrifying, I fail
| to see how it is ever desirable (even if it occasionally
| leads to positive outcomes, it cannot be trusted to do so
| reliably).
| ip26 wrote:
| There's a host of problems. A simple example is a holdout
| who sees they are the only remaining obstacle to a project,
| and demand ten million dollars for a fifty thousand dollar
| plot of land the government needs for the project. A very
| capitalist mindset! But poison to public works. There's no
| "working with" someone who thinks they are sitting on a
| winning lottery ticket.
|
| Another simple problem is that of guarantees. If the
| government is certain to be able to secure the land in a
| reasonable timeframe, they can structure the whole project
| on top of that certainty, planning from start to finish,
| establishing financing, signing contracts... If acquisition
| is an open-ended negotiation in which the holdout can
| linger for decades, either nothing can be done until every
| last square foot of land is secured, or else you risk
| suspending everything halfway (very expensive).
| retrac wrote:
| > why such stubborn holdouts exist and why can't the
| government work with them (are those holdouts being paid or
| otherwise motivated to hurt public good? organized? do they
| have pathological distrust to the government, how can that
| be worked out? etc.)
|
| A highway extension here in Ontario was blocked for years
| by homeowners who, as far as I can tell, just didn't want
| their community bulldozed to put in a highway. An entirely
| reasonable position to hold, regardless of whether the
| highway is to the public good. There is no reasonable
| incentive you could give to get some people to give up land
| they have been on for their whole lives. When one is
| talking hundreds of properties as in the case of that
| extension, you will absolutely find a stubborn person who
| will say no.
| fpig wrote:
| Usually they're trying to profit by being the last
| holdouts, hoping they will be able to get more money this
| way. It may not be worth paying everyone 3X, but if
| everyone except one person agreed to X, then paying the
| last holdout 3X is not a huge expense and gets the project
| going. At least that's what they're hoping for.
|
| There was a case in my city where they wanted to build a
| shopping mall and offered the people who owned homes on the
| plot a deal. Only 1 person refused and asked for much more
| money (in his words "Who accepts the first offer??"), and
| since this plot wasn't critical for the project, they never
| even contacted him after that and just built it without his
| plot: https://www.vecernji.hr/media/img/38/97/a9f29b9fca446
| 02d5b41... (the lone house in the "corner"). He got mad,
| sued them, etc.
|
| This was a private company; I'm not sure why the government
| would have this problem, since they can exercise eminent
| domain for stuff like infrastructure, it's literally why it
| exists.
| jolux wrote:
| > why such stubborn holdouts exist and why can't the
| government work with them
|
| Because if the government can't exercise eminent domain
| then those people are incentivized to extract maximum value
| from the government over the land. They may not want to
| sell it, or they may charge an exorbitant price.
| narag wrote:
| _IMO the problem is why such stubborn holdouts exist and
| why can 't the government work with them..._
|
| I suspect the legal system is one of the reasons. Judges
| and precedents carry more weight than in other countries,
| where parliaments can just pass a law that's unassailable.
|
| On the other hands I read here news about authorities
| summarily seizing (not just freezing) assets from people
| that are only accused. That's unconceivable in other
| jurisdictions.
| z1nc wrote:
| Then the important thing is that a process of weighing those
| rights/costs/benefits and so on exists. e.g., if they needed
| to tear down a couple of apartment buildings and disrupt
| hundreds of folks, I could see an argument against that. But
| for just one guy? Eh...
|
| ---
|
| That article has a lot of disturbing things in it- 200 extra
| workers (that even the union guys said weren't needed),
| inflated costs, low competition driving up bids, gifts given
| to government officials from contractors, and so on.
|
| This bit is the most concerning:
|
| _"Is it rigged? Yes," said Charles G. Moerdler, who has
| served on the M.T.A. board since 2010. "I don't think it's
| corrupt. But I think people like doing business with people
| they know, and so a few companies get all the work, and they
| can charge whatever they want."_
|
| If you gotta play semantics on whether you're in a rigged
| system or a corrupt one...
| nouveaux wrote:
| "an inherent trade off between environmental consideration and
| speed"
|
| It's not just environmental consideration. Speed also
| incentivizes corner cutting, nepotism, and all sorts of corrupt
| behavior. Evergrande is a great example of speed. Banks in
| China made the same mistakes that banks in US made in 2008. If
| banks in China had tight regulations for the last 20 years,
| real estate growth would be significantly hampered.
|
| China should be given credit in that their leaders learned from
| other countries and leveraged their population size to grow
| with incredible speed. However, I would argue that China's rise
| to power has less to do with their efficiency and more to do
| with laws of growth. If we exclude Covid, I am willing to bet
| that China will not be able to sustain double digit growth ever
| again. In fact, I am willing to bet my house that when China
| achieves US's per capita GDP levels, China will never achieve
| double digit growth ever again.
| oblio wrote:
| China will most likely never reach US GDP per capita levels.
| Japan or Germany or Sweden aren't.
|
| Maybe GDP per capita PPP levels, even though that's also
| debatable.
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| Many have reached US levels of economic output per hour.
| The key difference is that while Europeans have opted for
| better work-life balance, Americans are increasingly worked
| to the bone. There seems to be no end to stories about
| people working 3 job, never having vacation, sometimes not
| even weekends.
|
| The other challenge is that many other countries are more
| aggressive about keeping resource usage to a minimal.
| Compare e.g. usage or resources, water, land and energy per
| dollar of GDP and the US is really high.
|
| European countries, Korea and Japan may not have as high
| GDP but is often on a far more sustainable path.
| xvector wrote:
| I would counterargue that corners are often cut just as
| terribly in the US. The corners are simply cut slower,
| because everything here is done slower.
|
| For example, electronics built in the US are typically
| shittier than electronics built in China, despite taking
| significantly longer to build and employees being paid orders
| of magnitude more (as noted by companies like Apple, Purism,
| etc.)
|
| Within our culture in the US there is a clear and comically
| obvious problem of bureaucracy and red-tape. This doesn't
| really exist in software yet, but the day our government gets
| its claws into the software industry is the day that
| innovation in the US can be put to rest. (Well, it's already
| happening - if you try to create a software startup that
| processes user data, you are probably breaking tens of laws
| you don't even know exist.)
|
| There is also a cultural difference. One thing I have noticed
| when working with my Chinese coworkers is that they do not
| bullshit nearly as much as my other coworkers. They get
| straight to the point, deal in metrics and facts, and don't
| try to inflate their accomplishments. Maybe that's just my
| current work environment, maybe it's a cultural thing - I
| suspect the latter.
| nouveaux wrote:
| > "I would counterargue that corners are often cut just as
| terribly in the US."
|
| I would agree with you. The bay bridge had issues with the
| steel[0]. The millenium tower[1] also has corner cutting
| problems. The question is the frequency. I believe corner
| cutting happens far less in the US than say China.
|
| As a Chinese person in the US, I would bet dollars to
| doughnuts that people in China would prefer foreign
| products over Chinese ones across the board. The last time
| I was in China, my friends tell me that they prefer
| products from Korea over ones in China. The problem is the
| cost.
|
| > "Within our culture in the US there is a clear and
| comically obvious problem of bureaucracy and broken red-
| tape."
|
| People often complain about bureaucracy and broken red-tape
| in the US but after thinking about this deeply, I'm
| beginning to suspect that the US government is one of the
| more efficient governments in the world:
|
| 1) How many people in this world can honestly say "Wow my
| government is so efficient that it's more efficient than
| the corporations in my country."
|
| 2) The US has some amazing departments. National parks,
| military/CIA/FBA/NSA, federal reserve, state department,
| FDA, CDC, DOD (research), public universities, community
| college, consumer protection, USPS, etc. What they actually
| accomplish is amazing and is at the top of the world or
| near the top.
|
| 3) The US accomplishes so much while maintaining a
| democracy. The US pioneers human rights around the world.
|
| [0] https://www.wired.com/2015/06/mystery-brand-new-bay-
| bridges-...
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/10/san-
| francisc...
| robinjhuang wrote:
| When's the last time you were back in China? That used to
| be the case, but increasingly less so. Especially after
| Trump's trade war. Chinese people I know proudly buy
| Huawei and Nio cars. Even American products that Chinese
| people love like iPhones and Tesla are produced in China
| now...
|
| Also 1. I don't think people generally say that.
|
| 2. CDC made a huge mess of the pandemic (eg not stocking
| enough PPE). USPS is in big financial trouble.
|
| 3. This is huge topic but I'm inclined to say US messes
| up as often as it succeeds. Afghanistan will have 22
| million people starving this year because of US
| sanctions. They promote democracy, but not human rights.
|
| But overall I think you're right to say the US government
| is one of the "more" efficient ones.
| vkou wrote:
| USPS is in big financial trouble because half the
| government is actively trying to kill it, by not allowing
| it to raise prices.
| jamie_ca wrote:
| Not to mention a level pension funding obligations that
| no other government agency has to suffer through.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > They promote democracy, but not human rights.
|
| A point of contention: Democracy is the surest way to
| safeguard human right long term in a nation. Historically
| speaking, there isn't even a second place when it comes
| to other forms of rule operating effectively on the
| necessary timescales.
|
| Promoting democracy is promoting human rights the same
| way promoting exercise is promoting health and well-
| being.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| > 1) How many people in this world can honestly say "Wow
| my government is so efficient that it's more efficient
| than the corporations in my country."
|
| Quite a few. This isn't unique to the US, and quite a few
| corporations do not drive themselves to bankruptcy being
| extremely inefficient or even malicious for multiple
| years. We've seen plenty of examples in the last few
| decades.
|
| > 2) The US has some amazing departments. National parks,
| military/CIA/FBA/NSA, federal reserve, state department,
| FDA, CDC, DOD (research), public universities, community
| college, consumer protection, USPS, etc. What they
| actually accomplish is amazing and is at the top of the
| world or near the top.
|
| You could replace "the US" with any Western/Northern
| European country, Japan, Korea, Oceania, Canada and quite
| a few other countries and they would fit the bill pretty
| well, give or take a few aspects.
|
| > 3) The US accomplishes so much while maintaining a
| democracy. The US pioneers human rights around the world.
|
| Same as the above. The US isn't the only country
| maintaining a democracy. The US has also been leagues
| behind on several countries in some aspects for decades.
|
| Meanwhile, most of these European countries face the
| exact same problem the US will in the future if things
| continue the way they are. Doing things "better" or
| "best" is not a cop-out for letting problems continue to
| the point of a crisis. Housing in Europe is a prime
| example of this, where regulations are arguably hurting
| us more than they are helping, but the majority of the
| population still believes we'll be living in rundown
| apartments if we don't keep these regulations (often
| citing the US as 'evidence', ironically).
| boulos wrote:
| The Bay Bridge faults have non-trivially been blamed
| (rightly or wrongly is unclear) on Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy
| Industries Company who provided a lot of the materials
| [1]. The Wikipedia article doesn't talk about the steel
| itself (surprisingly!) but does mention they did the deck
| work, the automatic welds, and so on. There was plenty of
| blame to go around though.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacem
| ent_of_...
| tablespoon wrote:
| > People often complain about bureaucracy and broken red-
| tape in the US but after thinking about this deeply, I'm
| beginning to suspect that the US government is one of the
| more efficient governments in the world:
|
| In a lot of cases, I think US complaints about
| "bureaucracy and broken red-tape" are more a function of
| anti-government ideology. It's not like businesses don't
| have annoying bureaucracy, but the complaints tend to be
| selectively directed at the government, because for many
| people government is a boogeyman.
|
| For an example, take Google. Wouldn't it be light-years
| better if they had customer support that was as good as
| the the _worst_ DMV 's?
| _dain_ wrote:
| >Speed also incentivizes corner cutting, nepotism, and all
| sorts of corrupt behavior.
|
| Slowness is surely even better for nepotism and corrupt
| behaviour.
| nouveaux wrote:
| I'm not familiar with this so if you can help me
| understand, I would appreciate it.
|
| From my understanding, one of the causes of slowness in US
| is waiting for bids. Government related work is required to
| open projects up for bids for a period of time, review all
| the bids and document the process. In many other countries,
| the project goes to the company with better relations to
| the project manager or the companies with the best bribes.
| _dain_ wrote:
| The longer something takes, the longer it is expected to
| take. Delays compound on themselves, it becomes harder to
| plan further into the future. Costs skyrocket. More
| opportunities for bad actors to enrich themselves.
| nouveaux wrote:
| Maybe. The way I see it, transparency and fairness takes
| far more time than nepotism and corrupt behavior. How
| would you suggest that the government be more fair,
| transparent and fast?
| taurath wrote:
| In the US bribery is just legal, and harder to access
| secondaryacct wrote:
| I live in China, I think the best way to summarise everything
| we do at all level is: the end justifies the means.
|
| Need to seize power ? Murder all members of the former power.
| Need to make poor peasants rich middle class ? Build entire
| cities, put them there, and done. Need to build a metro station
| ? Take the land, build it. Need to make Hong Kong a more
| physically integrated part of the country ? Build a gigantic
| bridge to Zuhai even if nobody actually need to use it.
|
| The problem ofc is that sometimes the means is more costly than
| the benefit of the end result, and also that the goal of the
| end result is never debated, but I suppose that will change
| eventually, once we've incurred too high a cost for too little
| a benefit overall.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Somewhere between US stagnation and China/UAE building for
| the sake of building lies a happy medium.
| caycep wrote:
| I also somewhat worry the attention to safety standards make
| Aperture Science seem like a paragon of OSHA compliance....
| throwusawayus wrote:
| at all levels ? there must be limits to this approach right
| ???
|
| otherwise this way of thinking gets terrifying fast and
| rapidly descends into conspiracy theory land
|
| example: "need to find a socially-acceptable solution to a
| demographic time bomb caused by decades of one child policy,
| while still maintaining ethnic homogeneity ? perform gain-of-
| function research to develop a vector that disproportionately
| harms the elderly"
|
| to be absolutely clear, I don't believe this was actually the
| case in 2019 at all - but as an no-limits "end justifies the
| means" thought exercise - it is easy to arrive at inhuman
| dystopian nightmares
| peakaboo wrote:
| It's all conspiracy theories until it's true. During covid,
| there was like 20 vaccine conspiracy theories that become
| facts and truth about 6 months later.
| phs318u wrote:
| I'm sorry but what are you referring to? This seems like
| a pretty extreme claim. Care to expand?
| KoftaBob wrote:
| >Sometime in living memory, the built environment of the U.S.
| began to freeze in place. I'd mark the time roughly at *1970*,
| but it's a process, not a single seminal event.
|
| > It is obviously fair for authorities to take some time to plan
| things out and weigh the costs and benefits. But they spend,
| well, an inordinate amount of time weighing the costs and
| benefits. In a 2018 study of environmental impact statements
| under NEPA, *the mean statement took 4.5 years to complete*
|
| "The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), *enacted
| in 1970*, established a policy of environmental impact assessment
| for federal agency actions, federally funded activities or
| federally permitted/licensed activities that in the U. S. is
| termed "environmental review" or simply "the NEPA process."
|
| ---
|
| Things like unions and safety regulations had more of an effect
| on costs of projects. In terms of time to complete projects, what
| you see above is the biggest culprit.
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| What's weird is how common it was to have completely polluted
| rivers inside US cities.
|
| And how Nixon needed to make it an Agency first because he
| didn't want Congress to have a Department of the Environment
| which would be out of control from the executive.
|
| And how that has shaped the US environmental plans by making it
| a bargaining chip of the executive rather than a foundational
| aspect of our representative government.
|
| Disband the EPA and create a Department of The Environment
| under Congress. Executive Orders do not have the gravitas
| required for a solid policy.
| Frost1x wrote:
| Regulations took previously externalized costs passed to labor
| and made them internalized costs to businesses.
|
| A lot of that which is cheap is only cheap because a
| combination of exploitation that involves externalizing costs
| and pushing constant pressure on labor efficiency. Every now
| and then we get gains in reduced cost from a technological
| innovation where a simpler or improved process is able to shave
| things off vs passing them on. In these cases, gains tend not
| to be externalized but instead internalized unless competition
| can drive the gains to be externalized.
| rangersanger wrote:
| I know the author can't possibly include every cause of
| slowness but it seems disingenuous to not include the
| preservation movement, especially given the decision to talk
| about downtown San Francisco.
|
| The 70s saw a change in how historic preservation was handled,
| I'd argue because of the success of Jane Jacobs. It became less
| about saving patriotic sites and more about saving the look and
| feel of the idealized early 1900s city. From the 70s to the 90s
| we stopped protecting battlefields and started protecting whole
| neighborhoods.
|
| The big catalyst here was in 1972: State Legislation The
| Advisory Council of Historic Preservation provides guidelines
| for State Historic Preservation Legislation. State Preservation
| Officers were established in 1966 as well, but each state had
| different legislation. While every state has its own
| priorities, the guidelines were meant to streamline the
| legislation.
|
| Now, standards that were explicitly written to help
| preservationists maintain places like Mount Vernon apply to
| important chunks of our major cities. Sure Chicago and sfo have
| maybe 2-3% of parcels protected, but they are highly clustered
| in desirable areas. And blanket block or neighborhood
| designations cover parcels of dubious distinction. Additionally
| it seems like every time there's a major project announced in
| major cities these days, someone is going to come out and try
| and protect the "landmark."
|
| In Milwaukee there's a project proposed to tear down an early
| 1900s hospital on the college campus. The school doesn't have
| funds to maintain it. It's a minor project by a minor architect
| and is not particularly unique. The preservationists are trying
| to block the demolition and honest to god, the reason given is
| that some of them were born there. They'll probably win.
|
| I think the authors point on heavy handed but well meaning
| legislation from the 70s needs to be revisited is applicable
| here as well. I'm for preservation but the mechanisms seem to
| have gone completely out of whack with the realities of our
| cities and current needs.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| One factor is workplace safety. We (rightfully) don't allow the
| kind of unsafe conditions that allowed us to build things so
| quickly in the past. We were very fast loose with human lives in
| the past. Look at Dubai, they're building quickly, but at great
| cost to the workers doing the building.
| prithvi24 wrote:
| Underrated show: https://www.reddit.
| com/r/DownUnderTV/comments/dpytin/utopia_au_s01s04/
|
| Australian comedy show about government infrastructure- scary how
| similar some of the episodes are to the Massachusetts windmill
| example
| huffmsa wrote:
| We can't disturb the habitat of the western red land grouse in
| the name of progress.
|
| How dare you.
| raldi wrote:
| The motto of America's utility-monster-coddling public policy is,
| "The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many."
| bkraz wrote:
| -People spend more time thinking about what they might lose
| instead of what they might gain by doing something. Partially,
| this is because wealth and prosperity are generally higher.
|
| -People were more likely to ignore things they didn't like, and
| so building consensus was faster when dissenting people simply
| weren't talking. It's more common now to encounter people who
| feel it's their civic duty to search for things they feel are
| undesirable.
| robinjhuang wrote:
| "A dozen lawsuits have targeted environmental aspects of the
| projects, including another suit by the town of Atherton that
| argued, among other things, that the rail authority had conducted
| an inadequate analysis of where the train should be elevated
| along the San Francisco peninsula. A court ruled that the
| analysis had been properly done."
|
| This is straight comedy.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/us/california-high-speed-...
| drewrbaker wrote:
| I'm trying to build a house on empty land in Los Angeles. It's
| about 15mins from downtown in Mt Washington. We bought the land
| in April of 2019 and started on the design and permitting process
| immediately. Despite it being in populated Los Angeles, we need a
| septic system, to widen the road and add curbs, move a power
| pole, relocate 3 trees, and extend a water line. We won't have
| gas as we want to go all solar. All of this the city is making us
| pay for.
|
| Our permit for a small septic system took 14 months to approve.
|
| The power department has told us it will likely take 12 months
| for them to approve the pole movement (the city is making us move
| it as part of the road widening).
|
| The water main needs to be extended 12 feet, and it's mandated
| that the utility company must do that work and it will cost us
| $75k.
|
| The tree permit took us 12 months to get and requires us to get a
| bond too.
|
| We still haven't got approval for the road widening, it's been
| almost 18 months. Keep in mind this is just the road in front of
| our house in a residential area of Los Angeles. There are lots of
| homes on our street already.
|
| I'm originally from Australia. The American bureaucracy is
| insane. The agencies don't talk to each other. Often times we
| have been acting as the go between for different departments that
| worked in the same building!
|
| Los Angeles has a huge housing shortage. If my experience is
| anything to go by, it's because the bureaucracy is so dense it
| takes years to just get the permits in place. It would be cheaper
| and better if I could just pay a bribe and get it done quickly.
|
| Americans seem to know what the problem is, but just accept that
| nothing can be done about it. Like you all know the DMV sucks and
| the USPS sucks, but everyone has just accepted that's it's just
| the way it is and decided to live with it. Why?! Hold your
| officials accountable to actually run government effectively.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I had a similar experience. After 20 years off the power grid,
| we wanted to connect to the grid and the nearest line was about
| 1/4 mile away. The state and PG&E wanted ~500k and several
| years to extend the power to the home.
|
| Ended up finding a private company to put in the poles, line
| and transformer for <50K, and they could start within a month.
| It was still hell to connect it to the grid, but vastly faster
| and cheaper than the alternative.
| xvector wrote:
| The problem is that there is no incentive for a government
| service to perform as its existence is not at risk.
|
| There is no competition to the DMV, so there is no incentive to
| run it well.
|
| The USPS will always exist due to being a federally funded
| service, so there isn't a massive incentive to compete with
| FedEx, UPS, etc.
|
| Since these organizations do not live in competitive
| environments there is no drive for them to ever improve.
|
| They cannot be improved with elections because the political
| state of America is so polarized that it is broken. Elections
| are decided on one thing alone - whether you run as red or
| blue. Platform objectives (eg "fix the DMV") are irrelevant
| because they no longer sway voters. All that matters in an
| election at this point is whether you are Republican or
| Democrat.
| AvesMerit wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment with the DMV, but I would remove
| USPS from your example.
|
| That specifically is not federally funded, does have
| alternatives (FedEx, UPS), is under both economic & political
| pressure to compete, AND outcompetes the private alternatives
| by serving all addresses in the continental US. In fact,
| FedEx and UPS often add USPS to their routes for last-mile
| deliveries when it is economically advantageous - so it is
| those private carriers who are being subsidized by USPS
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The USPS will always exist due to being a federally funded
| service, so there isn't a massive incentive to compete with
| FedEx, UPS, etc.
|
| USPS is not federally funded. The federal government mandates
| the USPS to serve every single address in the US, even if it
| causes them to lose money, but does not give USPS any money.
| So they have to subsidize that with their other pricing, but
| FedEx/UPS do not.
| oblio wrote:
| It's deeper than that, since you also have the "competitive"
| telcos.
| ec109685 wrote:
| The CA DMV is way better now than it was a few years ago (it
| was horrible). Nearby, there's a massive driver license /
| renewal center and you can do more online than before. And
| some positive stories here:
| https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/03/16/grieving-parents-
| get-...
|
| It also doesn't make sense that you need competitive
| elections to fix something like the DMV. There are humans in
| the seats of government and why wouldn't they want to do a
| good job?
| EricDeb wrote:
| I generally agree but also the local residents (who do vote
| in local elections) don't want permitting to be speedy. In
| fact they want it to be slow because there is a lot of
| NIMBYism and protectionism around property values. So in this
| case I think it actually is what voters want.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| The other side of that coin is that they are not driven by
| profit motive, so the cost of improvement is not passed on to
| the users as "what the market will bear", but instead "at
| cost" so improvements are much more likely to be worth it for
| users of the service instead of just a new and exciting way
| to justify price increases.
|
| As for "no reason to improve" well, there's no reason for
| people to do more than the very bare minimum, and yet they do
| it all the time. Sometimes organizations improve because they
| want to. I might even argue that it's _harder_ to improve
| under existential crisis, not easier.
|
| I think it's become a bit of truism that private businesses
| are more efficient than government run organizations. I
| wonder if that holds up under scrutiny?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Sounds bad but objectively Los Angeles has the fastest
| permitting process and the lowest fees of major California
| cities according to data compiled by the UCLA Lewis Center. Not
| to say you are lucky, only that this problem is actually much
| worse than you've described.
|
| The median time to get planning approval for residential
| construction in San Francisco is 47 months!
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Yeah LA isn't "bad" compared to most places. Try to build a
| house in Boulder Colorado hahah
| eximius wrote:
| I wonder what the cost of the fines would be if you built
| anyway. If they didn't make you tear it down and the fine was
| less than the difference in costs, it might be optimal to skip.
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| Much of what you describe is specific to California and to a
| lesser degree democrat run states in general.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Mostly correct, but many republican counties are far more
| reasonable.
|
| Meanwhile, in the bay area a building permit is required to
| replace a water heater, toilet, or dishwasher.
|
| moreover, When you do a renovation yourself, the fees are
| based on the typical cost materials and labor, even if you do
| the work yourself.
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| They make you get a permit to replace household appliances?
| My goodness...
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Why do you even want to live there?
| oblio wrote:
| Job, family, a million reasons.
|
| I really hope you're not gatekeeping.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| No, it just seems like such an arduous process that I would
| pick somewhere else if it were me. I'm personally likely
| aiming for Montana.
| zbrozek wrote:
| This sounds fast for California. It's taken me about two years
| to get a site development permit to edit my roofline a bit to
| make it better at shedding water. I don't have a building
| permit yet. I desperately want to move out of this state, but
| my wife (who isn't handling any part of the project or our
| costs of living) likes the weather and so we're stuck here.
|
| I think we could fix the housing shortage turbo-quick if we
| passed a constitutional amendment that offered property rights
| to landowners. But owning land right now is almost meaningless.
| It's the right to ask for permission to do something on that
| land, and local governments exist seemingly for the sole
| purpose of preventing any change whatsoever.
|
| It's probably one of only a handful of root causes of American
| ossification and cost disease.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Completely agree. I bought land in 2019 with the hope of
| building. Not only is the government painfully slow, no
| builder will take on the project unless the budget is north
| of $5m. That's what I was told. $5m and they'll sign a
| contract to start in 2025. Anything less than $5m and they
| aren't interested. This is the case for around 6 builders
| I've talked to. I'm probably going to just end up selling the
| land.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| I wrote software for an environmental consulting firm. It is the
| dark side of construction and permitting in the US. Basically,
| people that worked in government permitting would leave their job
| after 10 years in the public service then work for us in the
| private sector. Let's say you wanted to build a mall. You would
| need us to come in analyze the land check for vernal pools,
| cultural artifacts, rare species of salamanders... the list is 20
| pages long. We would then run software (me!) to find places which
| you could pay to protect (the pay off)- in order to get a permit
| for plowing over that area. Our firm would spend months analyzing
| a rock to ensure it wasn't an arrow head or watch if bats would
| bread in your area. "Why can't America build quickly anymore?" I
| would say permitting is a large portion of the answer. If you
| wanted to build without knowing this system or you fought it -
| your application would sit in some bureaucratic office for years.
|
| Somewhat off topic:
| https://twitter.com/billmaher/status/1376644161172987905?lan...
| bill maher wanting to build a shed in CA. Hilarious.
| jmeister wrote:
| This is insane. Thanks for sharing your anecdote.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| permitting is indeed at the center of it; I suggest that if it
| wasn't bats and salamanders, it would simply be something else
| to stall about.. even with extreme stories, and their opposite
| where a real estate developer finds and kills the last flower
| or butterfly on the land (which is true also), I _support_
| saving bats and salamanders. You know how easy it is to mix and
| pour a portion of an acre of concrete? or run a chain saw?
| literally forty years of growth can be killed in a half a day..
| easy..
| [deleted]
| qiskit wrote:
| It's because we have no national purpose because we are no longer
| a nation. Instead we are an empire controlled by a conglomeration
| of vested interests ( foreign and domestic ). We used to be able
| to build massive projects like cross country railroads in the
| 1800s. Of course it came with genocide of native americans, theft
| of their land and the wiping out of bison/animals across the
| continential US, but at least we had a direction. We are now
| captainless ship and instead of trying to take control of the
| ship and give it direction, the elites (foreign and domestic )
| are simplying offloading as much cargo as they can before the
| ship sinks. How else do you explain legalized gambling, drugs,
| culture wars, fixation on lgbt, etc? Yahoo sports has the
| "Sportsbook" tab in between NCAAB and NCAAF. Gotta get the young
| college students addicted to gambling while they are young. That
| tells you everything you need about the US.
| jldugger wrote:
| Plenty of examples of massive speedups in repairs:
|
| 1: https://www.enr.com/articles/51917-caltrans-shaves-months-
| of...
|
| 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TKjwblp1XI
|
| It's not that we can't "build quickly," but that we can't build
| anything _new_ quickly.
| paulwilsondev wrote:
| This is an easy question. The answer is people started watching
| television.
| zackmorris wrote:
| You know, your answer is the funniest one but also the closest
| to the truth.
|
| This is a great article, but comes to a roundabout conclusion
| that endorses deregulation so that more community-affecting
| projects can get built. Which of course is the wrong solution
| since it merely doubles down on what we're already doing, so
| will only exacerbate our race towards environmental collapse.
|
| I feel that the answer is in stuff like solarpunk.
| Specifically, helping someone else by solving our own problems.
| Every house off the grid reduces the demand for electricity,
| lowering its price so that others can afford it too. Backyard
| hydroponic/robotic gardens lower the price of food, and so on.
| After we pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, we have the
| resources to help others do the same.
| [deleted]
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| A problem with analysis like this is that these problems are in
| no way limited to the US or the public sector. All Western
| countries have these problems to different degrees and it also
| exists within private enterprise which do not face the same
| problems outlined here.
|
| Boeing e.g. had been terrible at making pretty much anything from
| planes to space rockets. Everything is delayed.
|
| I suspect there are deeper more fundamental problems. E.g. how
| companies are managed and organized. Companies used to be far
| more engineering oriented. Today they are very sales and MBA
| oriented. There is also way more outsourcing and fragmentation of
| business. Business used to be far more integrated.
| stadium wrote:
| Value extraction may be part of the problem. Competition would
| take care of a lot of inefficient private sector businesses.
| Duo/Mono-polistic profit margins leave a lot of room for waste.
| Resource constraints breed innovation.
|
| Boeing for example competes with Airbus on commercial planes,
| that's about it. And SpaceX is eating into their profit margins
| on rockets. They need to innovate to keep up with SpaceX
| rockets, while the 737-max fiasco is a great illustration of
| waste and inefficiency on commercial airplanes. If they _had_
| to be more competitive to survive, they may not have cut so
| many corners.
| steve76 wrote:
| lvl102 wrote:
| TimPC wrote:
| I think the author is fundamentally correct on the main point:
| the interface for environmental review needs to change. The
| current interface is that you generate a report and anyone can
| sue to require that report to have additional details provided a
| court agrees those details are unaddressed environmental impacts.
| This leads to 4.5 years for just the environmental assessment and
| 575 page environmental impact reports. It allows for excessive
| detail and thoroughness at the expense of time and cost. I'm not
| sure what the better interface is but it's quite clear we as a
| society need to figure it out and halt the current trend of
| building less and less for more and more cost. Other issues
| people raise are parts of the problem but it's clear that 4.5
| years on one aspect of planning for a single project is not
| reasonable.
| jspaetzel wrote:
| Don't forget the perverse incentives of the folks working on
| these things. They don't get paid for projects getting completed,
| they bill by the hour.
|
| And if that wasn't bad enough, taking a call on the way from one
| job to another? Bill them both for the time.
| [deleted]
| xyst wrote:
| It all begins with the urban sprawl experiment in the 1950s. As
| people left the city for the white picket fence in the suburbs,
| cities around the country began to subsidize the wealthy SFH
| owners. Sewers, water, electricity, roads, and gas
| infrastructure; and fire, EMS, police services are not cheap.
|
| The tax collected from a SFH suburb does not cover the expenses
| to build and maintain the infrastructure. So to help meet the
| increasing costs, municipalities need to raise property taxes for
| everyone. This increases the cost of living for everyone. So
| combined with inflation and the increased COL, the wages of your
| construction people on the ground (you know the people that
| actually build fucking thing you need) need to keep up with this
| trend so companies need to pay more.
|
| This doesn't come free so this is then passed on to the American
| tax paying populace. It's a never ending cycle. Low housing
| supply, homelessness and substance abuse are all symptoms of an
| underlying cause.
|
| Solution: it's a multifaceted approach - involving changes at the
| local, state, and federal levels. First, American cities need to
| get rid of SFH zoning entirely and re-zone for high density mixed
| use residential and commercial and get rid of any car-centric
| building policies (eg, car parking minimums). We need to get
| people out of their private vehicle. Second, need to introduce a
| luxury or inefficiency tax on existing SFH owners to minimize
| lost tax revenue and discourage people from buying a SFH (people
| that are poor can apply for waivers). Then earmark the luxury tax
| towards incentivizing developers and paying for infrastructure
| and enhancing public transit. Third, need to introduce extensive
| toll road fees for people commuting from the exurbs into the
| city. Why should cities continue to subsidize infrastructure for
| people that do not pay taxes within that county? Interstate
| travel will not be tolled.
|
| Then at a state level, DoTs need to re-examine where IH traffic
| can be redirected. In America, the highways often cut through the
| cores of each city. This not only reduced the amount of land that
| is available to cities to build on but contributed to the
| displacement of poor and marginalized people; and decreasing air
| quality. We need to follow in the footsteps of Dutch cities like
| Amsterdam and move towards a more scalable way of transportation
| and city planning. Additionally, at the state level re-examine
| where it's possible to reduce dependency on O&G sources of power.
|
| At the federal level, need to support states and cities through
| funding and providing research. Need to move the grid off of
| fossil fuel sources ASAP. Continue to provide green incentives
| and encourage people to make their homes more efficient (better
| HVAC units, solar power panel installations, ...).
|
| It will definitely not solve the problem in 5 years or 10 years.
| But maybe our grandchildren might have a chance.
| mcdermott wrote:
| Perhaps it's that disease of a profession named "project
| management". In the past we had engineers and architects running
| large projects. They knew the industry, the people, and how
| everything works. Now we have professional projects managers that
| don't really understand the details of what is actually required,
| or how things work, so they crank the process overhead up to
| almost fetish levels. Even in the IT world, a one year project
| just 10 years ago is now a 3 year project.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| The problem is that any publicly funded initiative is immediately
| treated as a cash cow that has to be milked to death. Industry,
| lobbies, special interest groups, insider deals, etc. etc.
| Everyone has to get a piece of sweet sweet cake. The longer this
| takes the more money is needed and the more cake there is. This
| is true regardless of whether its for infrastructure, schools, or
| defense acquisitions. Its functional systemic corruption, even if
| no laws are broken (because those who make the laws are part of
| the system).
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