[HN Gopher] MI officials fast-track bridge fix after man says it...
___________________________________________________________________
MI officials fast-track bridge fix after man says it 'collapsed
under my feet'
Author : lando2319
Score : 134 points
Date : 2022-05-19 15:29 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.detroitnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.detroitnews.com)
| MrLeap wrote:
| There's a lot to unpack here. Guy enters the news for being the
| good guy donating a baseball to a museum instead of collecting a
| big check for it. Later, on his way to a baseball game while
| discussing things with a "fellow attorney" he falls through a
| hole in a public bridge?
|
| Is there an award for greatest plaintiff advantage? I can imagine
| him on stage next to a school bus full of paralegal orphans. Glad
| the dude is okay.
| yabones wrote:
| And he didn't just fall through the bridge, he dusted himself
| off and went to the game anyways! Guy didn't even go to the
| hospital for days despite being obviously concussed...
| londons_explore wrote:
| I'll be honest... I think he's lying about falling through
| the bridge.
|
| He probably found a hole in the bridge, then decided to
| scratch himself up a bit and jump down through the hole to
| claim compensation. Doing it while on the phone to his mate
| is a good way to have a 'witness'.
|
| Going to the hospital a few days later was probably because
| people told him he wouldn't get much compensation unless he
| had a doctor say he suffered substantially, recommend time
| off work, etc.
| s5fs wrote:
| I have to disagree as you have no evidence to support your
| position.
|
| Based on the information provided, it seems highly unlikely
| to me that a guy who passed up an easy payday for a
| baseball would get an attorney friend to lie for what is
| likely going to be a very small claim. He still attended
| the game, and another game a couple days later, which
| likely rules out substantial suffering. So, given the low
| potential payout what would be his motivation? Simplest
| explanation is the guy just fell through an ill-maintained
| bridge. Could happen to anyone, really!
| klyrs wrote:
| Funny thing about brain injuries... we don't always make the
| best decisions in their aftermath.
| geonic wrote:
| He also lost his 21 month old son in 2018. Poor guy.
| mbg721 wrote:
| After the record-breaking Mark McGwire home runs years ago, the
| IRS went after the people who ended up with the balls, arguing
| that even if they didn't sell them, the balls represented
| reportable income. Just another thing to think about.
| justin66 wrote:
| Given that the guy who caught the Albert Pujols ball donated
| it to a 501c3, there's really not much to think about.
| renewiltord wrote:
| He gets to deduct the whole value, though, right?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Yes, his income increases by whatever the value of the
| ball is when he takes ownership of the ball and he
| deducts the same amount when he donates it to a 501c3.
| How else could that possibly work?
|
| Obviously, the deduction cannot reach any of his other
| income, because it is, by definition, consumed by the
| value of the ball.
| justin66 wrote:
| Under a truly strict reading of the law, there might be
| some problems since the guy might not itemize deductions,
| in which case there's a pretty modest limit to the total
| value of charitable deductions he can make, which he
| might not have declared anyhow. Which might or might not
| be a problem depending on the dollar value of the ball he
| received and immediately gave away, if the whole thing
| came to the attention of the IRS. They theoretically
| might potentially want him to refile and itemize his
| deductions if they had an opinion about the value of the
| ball, and that refiling could affect his refund for that
| year by a small amount.
|
| This all falls pretty firmly in the "who gives a shit?"
| area of tax law.
| BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 wrote:
| The rebar is totally rusted. Last properly inspected maybe a
| decade ago. It takes time to get to that state of deterioration.
|
| Also a hazard to traffic below from chunks falling off.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| mhmmbt wrote:
| [deleted]
| curiousgal wrote:
| The American Dream: getting wronged by a city and suing them!
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post nationalistic flamebait. It leads to
| nationalistic flamewars, which are one of the things we want to
| avoid here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| juanani wrote:
| Unless it's about Russia, then flame away!
| dang wrote:
| Not so - we very much care about this rule regardless of
| country - it would be deeply hypocritical to do otherwise.
| Unfortunately, massive global trends overwhelm moderation
| and there's a limit to what we can do under one of those
| tidal waves. For one thing, it's not possible to read all
| the comments.
| jnovek wrote:
| Dude was standing on a bridge which crumbled under him like a
| cartoon.
|
| You really, truly, honestly think he should have to pay his own
| medical bills for this?
| curiousgal wrote:
| Did I say that? I'm just saying he's lucky!
| pg_bot wrote:
| I'm going to guess if you were to ask him that he would
| prefer to have the bridge stay intact while he was walking
| on it.
| pooper wrote:
| The fact that we have to sue the government for it to
| cover the cost of medical treatment after falling because
| of literally crumbling infrastructure is what is
| ridiculous. They should be falling head over feet to
| offer to pay this person.
| paulmd wrote:
| There is a bridge in Flint where the support pillars are held
| together by giant steel clamps because the concrete is crumbling
| underneath them. As you go northbound on I-75 and it makes that
| 90-degree left turn next to some kind of auto plant, there is a
| 3-level interchange and the support pillars have giant clamps on
| them. Every time I drive under it, it's a bit of a laugh, but who
| knows how safe it really actually is.
|
| I don't think that's an exception either. The state of
| infrastructure in this country is indeed terrible and people have
| been sounding the alarm since forever, and it just never gets
| fixed. But there is always money for new tanks that get sent
| straight to the boneyard, or fighting whatever extremely-
| important war we're into this year.
| exabrial wrote:
| The Democrats passed $1,000,000,000,000 Dollar "infrastructure"
| bill, of which 5% of which "went" to roads and bridges, and
| give the effectiveness of the government spending money, that's
| about .05% actually making it to the street. So one bridge
| might get fixed.
| hemreldop wrote:
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| Do you have a source for your "5%" claim? That conflicts with
| what I'm seeing here: https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-
| does-only-11-percent-bil...
|
| > The 2,702-page bipartisan bill, summarized in a fact sheet
| issued by the White House, contains $550 billion in new
| spending, in addition to funding allocated each year for
| various infrastructure projects. The allocation for roads and
| bridges ($110 billion), railroads ($66 billion), airports
| ($25 billion) and ports ($17 billion) alone totals $218
| billion, which is just over 18 percent of the overall
| spending over the 10-year period-- significantly higher than
| the 11 percent touted by Trump.
|
| > An additional $240 billion is going toward upgrading and
| improving the nation's power grids ($73 billion), water
| infrastructure ($55 billion, plus another $8 billion for
| Western water infrastructure in response to ongoing droughts
| across the West), public transit systems ($39 billion) and
| broadband ($65 billion). In the past, all of that has
| typically fallen under the "public infrastructure" umbrella
| and would raise the share of "real infrastructure" to at
| least 38 percent.
|
| > The addition of more contentious elements that arguably
| fall under a looser definition of public infrastructure--such
| as safety enhancements ($11 billion), electric vehicle
| charging stations ($7.5 billion) and electric school buses
| ($7.5 billion), along with $47 billion for cybersecurity and
| climate change mitigation--would tip the total over 44
| percent.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| > it just never gets fixed.
|
| Its because public spending on infrastructure is "socialism"
| and it is better to give loans to private companies and let
| "the free market" fix the infrastructure; any day now.
|
| Its an unexplained miracle the US hasn't collapsed yet.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If public spending is socialism then why don't states that
| don't the one party blue states that don't get antsy about
| "socialism" have great infrastructure?
| fabianhjr wrote:
| > If public spending is socialism
|
| It isn't, my comment is a jab on US politics and discourse;
| though neoliberalism and "minarchism" has corroded the
| existing infrastructure through "austerity" (money
| redirection towards forever wars and imperialism) and red-
| scare tactics.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Are interstates recipients of Federal funding or only state
| funding?
| kevingadd wrote:
| No blue state is actually okay with socialism at any higher
| level. The Democrat party leadership hates left-wing
| politics. Just the other day Pete Buttigieg was trying to
| explain how we can't solve baby formula problems the
| socialist way so children have to starve for the sake of
| factory owners:
|
| > Biden's secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, has
| argued that this kind of socialist experiment would be
| unacceptable -- even to stop babies from starving to death.
| "Let's be very clear," Buttigieg told CBS, "This is a
| capitalist country. The government does not make baby
| formula, nor should it. Companies make baby formula."
|
| (For the record, "Socialism" would not fix the US's bridge
| or baby formula woes because they are both the results of
| decades of neglect and bad policy that can't be undone in a
| year.)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > "This is a capitalist country. The government does not
| make baby formula, nor should it. Companies make baby
| formula."
|
| Singapore would disagree that government manufacture of
| baby formula represents socialism. The government can do
| what it wants without impairing the market. Where
| socialism comes in is when the government intervenes to
| protect its baby formula industry, by barring competitors
| from participating in the market or by subsidizing its
| own formula manufacture with tax revenues.
| uoaei wrote:
| I'm also a bit confused why that came up, considering
| he's head of transportation. Do they also concern
| themselves with manufacturing?
| munk-a wrote:
| Biden's approval numbers are absolute garbage - I suspect
| he'll have a contested run in 2024 (or "voluntarily"
| decline to run) and all the sharks want to start getting
| their names in the headlines.
| [deleted]
| swearwolf wrote:
| It's starting to. Remember that bridge in Pittsburgh that
| spontaneously collapsed? I'm sure there are many other lesser
| known examples.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Its because public spending on infrastructure is
| "socialism" and it is better to give loans to private
| companies and let "the free market" fix the infrastructure;
| any day now.
|
| nonsense. It's the governments job to do this maintenance.
| There are entire departments dedicated to it. The problem is
| that they are underfunded, in part because the money goes
| ummm somewhere else, and because for some reason taxing
| people or business enough to cover state expenses is
| considered bad practice.
| SkittyDog wrote:
| The post you're responding to was pretty obviously
| sarcastic... Note their use of quotes around "socialism"
| and "the free market, and the phrase "any day now".
|
| So the other poster was making the exact same point that
| you made (unsarcastically), but it sounds like you may not
| have realized that? At any rate, you both seem to be
| largely in agreement about the current state of affairs.
| xtian wrote:
| Our "state expenses" in no way reflect the immediate needs
| of the people or any kind of popular democratic will. The
| average citizen in the US gets extremely little from the
| state relative to the taxes they pay, so opposing higher
| taxes is very rational.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Agreed. It's not the amount of taxes per se, it's the
| (perception of) value. Few are favor of higher taxes
| because they currently feel that they get (next to)
| nothing from what they pay now. Who wants to pay more for
| more nothing??
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Few are favor of higher taxes because they currently
| feel that they get (next to) nothing from what they pay
| now. Who wants to pay more for more nothing??
|
| Interestingly, a lot of these people also aren't in favor
| of paying less for less nothing.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Yes, introduce use taxes that fully pay for such
| infrastructure. Stop overbuilding everything--no reason to
| make a 4 lane overpass when 2 is sufficient.
| p1mrx wrote:
| These pillars?:
| https://www.google.com/maps/@42.9825563,-83.7311805,3a,90y,3...
| paulmd wrote:
| Yup! That next bridge 100 feet farther north looks even worse
| too, lol. Don't think you're supposed to be able to see the
| deck like that.
|
| From what I remember, that set of bridges has had problems
| with chunks coming off and hitting people as they drive on
| the highway. A chunk of concrete at 70mph is absolutely
| lethal.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I was going to guess the opposite, you're supposed to be
| able to see the deck but they've stuck a layer under the
| bottom to keep debris from falling on the road
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I wonder how much of the 2 trillion infrastructure bill
| will actually go to improving infrastructure
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Those look incredibly spindly and fragile, even if they
| were in good condition. I don't think I've ever seen a road
| bridge constructed as delicately as that here in Scotland.
|
| I guess you don't get wind, rain, or snow there.
| paulmd wrote:
| > I guess you don't get wind, rain, or snow there.
|
| Hahahah. It's michigan. We get some of the more intense
| winter weather in the states.
|
| That's actually part of the problem, it's an _extremely_
| variable climate, we get over 100F in the summer and
| under 0F in the winter. It results in a lot of road wear
| compared to more southerly states, due to the freeze-thaw
| cycle.
|
| The west side of the state is comparable to New York,
| tons of lake effect snow. No hurricanes here though.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> There is a bridge in Flint where the support pillars are
| held together by giant steel clamps because the concrete is
| crumbling underneath them.
|
| They've been replacing a bunch of bridges on I-94 in Detroit.
| Many of them had lots of rebar showing on the pillars where the
| concrete had crumbled a way. Not just a bar showing, but a
| decent sized grid. It doesn't surprise me that a pedestrian
| bridge got overlooked with all the road bridges in need. Still
| no excuse.
| mfer wrote:
| The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) is doing a
| terrible job. A recent audit found problems in the way they
| audit bids for work. I've spoken with people at road
| construction companies who have told me about changes that make
| the situation worse than a few years ago for the speed and cost
| of building roads. Policy things making it slower and more
| expensive that are baked in to the contracts.
|
| It's not just spending, which isn't efficient. Michigan has
| been (for decades) on the of the lowest spending states per
| capita on roads. This is across both Republicans and Democrats
| in the governor's seat.
| GravityisaHoax wrote:
| No wonder their roads are so bad.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Someone should copy the way that Japanese do lightening-fast road
| maintenance.
|
| These roads in Japan are like pristine and awesomely smooth; USA,
| not so much.
| [deleted]
| mishftw wrote:
| I lived not far from here when I was in Detroit. Honestly this
| guy is lucky not to be seriously injured.
|
| The highway, M-10 or the Lodge Freeway, in my opinion should be
| converted to a boulevard that supports multimodal transit. This
| freeway cut off my neighborhood from the more vibrant (as it can
| get for Detroit) downtown and midtown neighborhoods.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-10_(Michigan_highway)
| rmason wrote:
| Saw that story this morning and it really took me back. Further
| up that freeway there is another bridge that my sister and I
| crossed each day to go to school. For Detroiters on here it's
| Edison Elementary and unlike a lot of Detroit schools it's
| still open;<). The difference is when we walked it the bridge
| was fairly new. Sure hope that there's a state agency watching
| at least old bridges that school kids use.
| wcunning wrote:
| From the article, MDOT is supposed to be doing yearly
| inspections on all of these bridges, but they clearly skimped
| on that the last couple of years or they would have closed
| this one sooner. They are kinda responsive to heavily
| trafficked ones -- I used to have to take I-96 to M-39
| (Southfield Fwy) and the ramp between them had a large hole
| you could see the next layer down through for a couple weeks
| before they repaved, and it was only like 6 more months from
| when that happened that they redid the whole ramp, making my
| commute unbearable for a month.
| rmason wrote:
| Well then someone isn't doing their job! I wonder if the
| past two years if they got to work from home?
|
| Remember a few years ago when the freeways flooded and they
| found out copper thieves had stolen the copper out of their
| pumping stations! They should have known to check because
| one of them who was a bit learning deficient electrocuted
| themselves and it made the news.
| zip1234 wrote:
| There really is no reason to have this freeway there. It makes
| the area worse and goes nowhere.
| oefrha wrote:
| Isn't it sort of a gift to be cut off from downtown Detroit?
| I've never been there but I've got an acquaintance who was held
| at gun point while fueling in "vibrant" downtown Detroit...
| lostlogin wrote:
| There is someone who was held at gunpoint in pretty much
| every town on earth.
|
| Poor guy.
|
| Stupid jokes aside, the safest city on earth has victims of
| crime.
| oefrha wrote:
| You and I both know Detroit is very far from the safest
| city on earth. It's among the most dangerous in the U.S.
| justin66 wrote:
| Eh. It's #14 for Violent Crime / Robbery, behind a pretty
| interesting list of other cities:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_citie
| s_b...
|
| The main thing I'm getting from that list is that I sure
| don't remember Fremont being some kind of mecca, of
| safety or otherwise. So that's surprising.
| samatman wrote:
| #3 in murder, after St. Louis and Baltimore.
|
| The thing about the cities in really bad shape is that
| all we get is the _reported_ crime rate, which tends to
| be lower. Murder rates are a more accurate statistic
| since you can 't ignore a body like a jacked car or a
| rape.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| lando2319 wrote:
| I posted it.
| tsomctl wrote:
| While I agree that it's a somewhat mundane article, there's
| normally comments that make it interesting. For example,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31436869
| avgDev wrote:
| Why are you on HN?
| semireg wrote:
| Infrastructure spending.
| asdff wrote:
| Infrastructure in the midwest is aging and failing and
| unfortunately the region lacks the tax base to do much in the way
| of overhauling it. Arguably the more costly issue than aging
| bridges are the aging storm drain systems, sewers, and water
| mains. Thankfully most electric is above ground and service can
| be restored usually soon after storms disrupt connections
| (running a wire off a spool is a lot easier and cheaper of course
| than tearing up an arterial road to access the water main). As
| storms grow stronger and dump more water at once with climate
| change, these systems are further strained. When the wastewater
| system backs up in a storm waste is usually diverted to
| watersheds, many of which are already eutrophic. These are just
| the public issues too, private property is even more poorly
| maintained. As the housing stock ages groundwater may intrude
| into your basement foundation, your mains themselves may be some
| ancient hardware in need of a retrofit before they burst that
| might cost a huge sum relative to the value of the home. Who
| knows the state of the roof or how much mold lurks behind the
| drywall.
|
| Eventually the federal government is going to have to write some
| grants, both to state dots, but also county dots who are in
| charge of a lot of infrastructure, municipalities, and also
| property owners facing the prospects of condemnation due to
| natural causes. I can't imagine that will be an easy or a clean
| process when it eventually becomes necessary in the next few
| decades.
| hemreldop wrote:
| zip1234 wrote:
| I'm in the midwest and they are spending money widening roads
| and freeways while letting everything go into disrepair.
| maxsilver wrote:
| > the region lacks the tax base to do much in the way of
| overhauling it
|
| We have plenty of tax base (speaking of Michigan specifically,
| we've got approximately double the total population and parcels
| of property in Michigan right now, than we had back in ~1950,
| when we built half of this stuff). We just keep wasting the
| public funds elsewhere. (i.e, 'Economic Development Groups' /
| 'Public Private Partnerships' / Tourism + State Advertising,
| additional spending on Police, etc.)
| asdff wrote:
| I expect in michigan like anywhere else in the rust belt that
| there are plenty of municipalities that are hurting for
| funding. You can't lose the population like you've lost
| within the actual city limits of detroit or flint (never mind
| the metro area population might be unchanged due to people
| flocking to suburban municipalities), and continue to
| sufficiently maintain infrastructure fit to handle twice the
| population. Another issue with some suburbs is an aging
| population. A window generates a lot less tax revenue for the
| city than two working people in that home, and thats
| increasingly a larger portion of the population. Schools have
| closed because there aren't as many families in the area as
| there were in decades past. Even NYC struggles maintaining
| infrastructure due to how costly it can be, and that city is
| far better positioned financially than anything in the
| midwest, a lot better than Chicago certainly where I see
| buckets catching drips from the roof of OHare even on a sunny
| day.
| maxsilver wrote:
| > I expect in michigan like anywhere else in the rust belt
| that there are plenty of municipalities that are hurting
| for funding.
|
| Only because we stole their funding, not because they are
| under-funded.
|
| > You can't lose the population like you've lost within the
| actual city limits of detroit or flint (never mind the
| metro area population might be unchanged due to people
| flocking to suburban municipalities), and continue to
| sufficiently maintain infrastructure fit to handle twice
| the population
|
| You absolutely can.
|
| Infrastructure spending in Michigan is less than ~10% of
| tax revenue in all townships and all counties across the
| state. You could _double_ all road spending, and it would
| barely even be noticed. (Using real numbers, in Kent County
| Michigan, for example, the entire county road commission
| yearly budget spend is just ~$9.69 per person per month. It
| 's _literally cheaper than the cheapest Netflix plan_ to
| maintain all of that infrastructure).
|
| Yes, county roads aren't every road (there's city and state
| and federal stuff mixed in there) -- but those numbers are
| just tiny portions of the budget their respective budgets
| too. And yes, there are hyper-rural counties that have no
| cities and therefore have to spend more, to service those
| roads across such a small population. But even those
| counties only average $20 to $35 a month. (Using Cheboygan
| County Michigan as an example, comes in around $32/month
| per person).
|
| It's _really_ not a funding issue. There 's _zero_ problems
| with the tax base, or population, or aging. It 's truly-
| and-only a priority issue. We keep taking money away from
| roads and other infrastructure, we spend it elsewhere
| (usually on junk) and then complain that _" municipalities
| are hurting for funding"_ as if it's some great mystery.
| throwtheacctawy wrote:
| TimPC wrote:
| The US had designed a system where large numbers of
| municipalities need more revenue then they actually produce. This
| has led to large swathes of the country having crumbling
| infrastructure as tax revenues are not adequate to maintenance.
| The solution is to maintain things like highways federally and
| move to a system of living that generates more funds. This likely
| means higher property tax rates in suburbs which is wildly
| unpopular and part of the reason all the infrastructure is
| crumbling. I know the specific piece of infrastructure isn't in a
| suburb but failing cities have similar revenue problems.
| zip1234 wrote:
| That piece of infrastructure (the entire highway for that
| matter) only goes from downtown Detroit to the outer suburbs.
| It is there for commuters.
| threads2 wrote:
| "Build back better"
|
| hahahahhahaha
| JTbane wrote:
| It'd be nice if politicans funded butter (infra) and not guns
| (ridiculous military spending and foreign aid)
| bmitc wrote:
| I always look at bridges and wonder who inspects all of our
| infrastructure and how often. Looking at the underneath picture
| of that bridge, it appears absolutely no one is inspecting these
| things.
|
| How bad are things getting when we can't even trust the bridges
| we walk and drive on?
| s5fs wrote:
| I think there's a gap between an inspector turning in a report
| and the repairs being prioritized, funded, and executed. Out
| here in Oregon we had a tunnel collapse and kill the inspector
| (this was back in 1999). News reported that the tunnel was
| inspected twice the year before it collapsed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_L._Edwards_Tunnel
| every wrote:
| moneywoes wrote:
| isn't the MI govt under a huge deficit?
| ryathal wrote:
| MI hasn't had any real budget issues for a decade. There was a
| brief period early in the pandemic when things were looking
| grim, but the feds flooded sates with money.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> isn't the MI govt under a huge deficit?
|
| Not since education got funded by the lottery. They promised if
| we got a lottery the money would all go to education. Never
| mind that for every dollar that went to education from the
| lottery, there was a dollar reduction coming from the general
| fund which got diverted.... apparently not to infrastructure.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Honestly, I think the story about Hydes is more interesting than
| the bridge itself.
| Arrath wrote:
| The state of infrastructure, both physical and technical, in this
| country is quite sorry.
|
| There would be plenty of well paid union and trades jobs to be
| had if we could pony up the funds to rehab, repair, and replace
| the crumbling bridges, roads, pipelines, sewers, etc across the
| country.
| bluescrn wrote:
| The problem is that the funds wouldn't go to tradespeople doing
| the hard work, most of it would go into the pockets of CEOs and
| shareholders.
|
| (And any attempt to build anything these days, at least in the
| UK, will face a horde of NIMBYs and environmental activists
| trying to stop it, adding more to the cost and timescale if the
| project ever happens. Even 'green' projects like wind and solar
| farms face heavy opposition)
| nickff wrote:
| Do you have any evidence for this? I ask because I've heard
| that public projects are overburdened with unnecessary
| unionized staff.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| When I look at other industries I would expect that if the
| unionized staff causes overhead and more cost then
| shareholders and management take a multiple of that for
| themselves.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Typically what happens is that the government contract
| effectively requires the use of union labor, which then
| fixes a substantial element of the cost for all bidders
| due to union work rules and salaries. Insofar as price is
| a competitive element of the bidding, you're then talking
| about the other costs.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| There's no need for hearsay on this. This is a true
| statement.
|
| During the construction of New York's East Side Access
| subway project, union rules required 18 workers to run and
| supervise one of the tunneling machines. The manufacturers
| of the machine say no more than six are required to do
| this, which is how many are used in hardly-slave-labor
| countries like Norway.
|
| Underground construction projects usually require three to
| four times as many staff in NYC as they do in Asia or
| Europe.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Are those government employees?
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| No; they're unionized construction workers, tunnelers,
| carpenters etc.
| nostromo wrote:
| It's not a funding problem.
|
| The US funds infrastructure handsomely. In fact we probably
| even over-fund it.
|
| Unfortunately we get very little back for all that funding. If
| you compare costs for rail and airports and bridges in the US
| to Europe or Asia, we pay for one bridge what other similar
| countries pay for three, four, or five bridges.
| Arrath wrote:
| You're not at all wrong that we don't see the benefit we
| should for each dollar spent, and I wish we could see some
| systemic fixes to address these issues beyond the age old
| "throw more money at the problem"
|
| I will add a fresh anecdote however. I was recently involved
| in bidding a project for a municipality, it was a FEMA
| mandated sewer improvement project. There was one respondent
| to the RFP (ours), that was substantially higher than the
| Engineer's Estimate. Aspects of the bid are still under
| review by state offices and FEMA, thus the bid was rejected,
| and the project will circle back for another round.
|
| Was the bid high? Was the Engineer's Estimate low? Both? Why
| did no other contractors bid on the job?
|
| There only being one respondent can certainly have pushed the
| price higher. I know for a fact that my portion of the work
| was estimated responsibly, but it was nonetheless expensive
| due to a tight schedule required by the city, and
| restrictions placed upon the work by proximity to residences
| and historic structures of concern.
|
| Can the schedule be opened up to allow for less pressure? Can
| the specifications or restrictions be relaxed? What will
| entice other parties to bid? Can the review process by
| outside agencies be sped up to allow for the project to
| proceed? In my experience, such reviews always eat away at
| the project lead-up time, without respective time added to
| the schedule to allow the work to be performed. It's a lose-
| lose.
|
| And I kinda lost what I was even going for here. Anyway, you
| can see any number of stumbling blocks that can be addressed,
| for one small sewer project. Expand this to public works
| across the country and imagine it.
| paulmd wrote:
| It's a complex situation. I have a relative who works for
| MDOT and apparently for road marking painting there are only
| 3 contractors in the state who do it. One of them wanted to
| buy one of the others and only stopped when they realized
| that being down to 2 contractors would hit the mark for
| "extreme consolidation" and would allow MDOT to go out-of-
| state for counter-bids.
|
| To some extent the more rules and oversight you put in, the
| more you chase out any "honest participants". I've seen it
| personally in federal contracting, the only participants who
| can get through the bidding process are the exact companies
| (like the big 5) who you _don 't_ want doing your project.
| The oversight and complexity of the bidding process chases
| out anyone who is not willing to spend half their time on
| meetings and contract overhead if that's what the customer is
| willing to pay for. It's the dead-sea effect but for
| contracting, if you chase out the good participants and then
| tighten the noose, you will just end up with worse and worse
| participant quality on average every time you repeat the
| process.
|
| There's no easy answer.
| bluGill wrote:
| Also, the larger the contract the bigger you need to be to
| attempt to bid on it. I could bid on building the
| proverbial bikeshed (as a programmer it wouldn't make
| economic sense, but I could do the work), but no way could
| I bid a bridge. However if you break the bridge down there
| are a number of operations I could bid on and get done.
| However that breakdown requires more oversight and work on
| the governments par, so for a bridge that is probably too
| much breakdown. Somewhere there is a point where projects
| are too big, and thus only the big 5 dare bid on them, we
| need to break projects down smaller than that, but not too
| small.
| mfer wrote:
| Don't just look at the "big 5". I know people there. A lot
| of the things people get frustrated about are things MDOT
| requires them to do.
|
| Not long ago I was listening to someone at one of those
| "big 5" companies complain about how new state rules were
| radically increasing the time it takes to pave a road while
| increasing costs, too. All with no quality difference in
| the end. As a tax payer, they were frustrated by it.
| paulmd wrote:
| What specifically? I can run it by that relative and see
| what he thinks.
|
| He's also expressed the inverse to me, that a lot of
| times they are trying to get the contractors to do things
| a specific way and the contractors just wanna rush
| through as fast as they can and get to the next contract.
| Sometimes, like in most engineering, there are reasons
| things need to be done a specific way, but building a
| road isn't really a collaborative thing, they just need
| to build it the way it was ordered.
| wcunning wrote:
| I had a conversation with one of the city engineers in Ann
| Arbor once about why a street near my house was gravel for
| like 6 months, and he said that one of the big asphalt
| contractors had bought out the one that bid on that single
| block of repaving and then wouldn't do the project on
| anything like the original timing because they needed the
| equipment elsewhere. At this point, there's only one or two
| road asphalt contractors that do anything in greater metro
| Detroit, so it's hard to get stuff done on time and in
| budget. It also didn't help that we had a strike from the
| union that does the work for that contractor and shut down
| major projects for an extended period in 2018 or 2019.
|
| Beyond that, we have a history of not making good on things
| like road warranties -- the state called in the warranty on
| I-275 back in the 90's and that caused the construction
| company to literally go bankrupt, so now there's a general
| reluctance to call in major warranty work. For instance,
| they haven't replaced the chunk of I-94 near the Indiana
| border that feels like you're in a paint mixer because the
| steamroller that did those few miles had a bad bearing, but
| everyone over there knows about it. It's getting replaced
| nearly a decade later in the next 6~18 months because that
| section just needs repaving in general now.
| sleepdreamy wrote:
| This is correct - Through marriage I've met some insanely
| powerful people who fix our highways/build bridges on the
| East Coast. These mother fuckers are _loaded_ and they 're
| seriously assholes seeing as I would've never met them by
| chance and people with money stick together. This is the
| true answer. There are only a small number of companies who
| have the logistics/money to actually bid and complete
| projects like these. It also takes years to do one project,
| so when there is only a small number of companies who can
| ever legally / viability afford these jobs this is what we
| get. Every sector seems to have a big 5. Tech, Finance,
| Construction, etc;
| cco wrote:
| > There's no easy answer.
|
| Seems like a fairly easy one, MDOT opens a few job reqs for
| road marking painting, buys some trucks, and paints lines
| on our roads. Private contractors makes a lot of sense in
| some situations, but this doesn't seem like one. MDOT knows
| how many roads need to be marked, how often, etc, why pay a
| private company to do so?
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Well... our stuff costs more because we're having to pay so
| much extra for the social safety nets like universal health
| insurance... Oh... wait... nm.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I think you meant graft and corruption :D
| micv wrote:
| The US government is also spending massive amounts of
| healthcare without actually delivering healthcare to way
| too many people. The whole system is bonkers.
| munk-a wrote:
| It's funny but up here in Canada employees cost companies a
| lot less overhead to employ than in the states. Not the
| bear minimum overhead, mind you, the states is by far the
| cheapest place to be able to call someone "your employee"
| without offering any benefits but if you're actually paying
| for healthcare, life insurance and the like Canadian per
| employee costs come in quite a bit under those in the US.
|
| It's almost like skimping on common human decency social
| services isn't actually saving anyone any money and just
| serves to perpetuate a gigantic industry of health insurers
| and pharmaceutical companies.
| oefrha wrote:
| In my experience the productivity of American construction
| workers seems to be shockingly poor.
|
| A few years back a small single-story structure (~5000 sqft)
| was built near me. Every workday a plethora of workers would
| show up and make noise 8-5. Somehow took them the better part
| of a year to finish it. Really beggars belief.
| bluGill wrote:
| That seems long for a 5000sqft house: I'd expect 150 days
| max from the time the hole is dug until the owner moves in.
| (smaller houses would be 100 days). You didn't specify what
| kind of structure it is though, some types of construction
| need more time.
|
| Most people who complain about people standing around have
| no idea what is going on. Half of the time someone is
| moving materials they are completely empty handed going
| back to the pile for more materials. In some operations
| there is downtime where nothing can be done, but the need
| to do more work will happen soon enough that you can't send
| anyone to a different job (concrete work has a lot of this)
| danans wrote:
| > That seems long for a 5000sqft house: I'd expect 150
| days max from the time the hole is dug until the owner
| moves in.
|
| Maybe for a production-builder built tract house,
| although I bet a lot of those are built in parallel and
| not sequentially in order to maximize throughput.
|
| But for a custom 5000sqft house, 150 days is a very tight
| timeline if you're not using pre-manufactured modular
| framing components like SIPs.
|
| Even if you did build with modular framing, consider the
| amount of interior detailing required on such a massive
| living space (probably many bathrooms and a huge
| kitchen). That takes a lot of time.
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| The construction site near me has 4 workers whose only job
| is to watch trucks going in and out of the site...there is
| no disbelief coming from me after seeing that
| Arrath wrote:
| I've seen sites catch fines for having mud, dirt, or
| rocks fall from trucks leaving onto the roads, so I get
| where they're coming from. 4 workers doing it? Jeez.
| bluGill wrote:
| If they are building something large I could see it. A
| hospital could easily have 4 different construction
| entrances to watch.
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| 2 workers each on 2 entrances
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| In NYC, it's common for cranes to be rented for
| construction work - the company that owns the crane is
| responsible for maintenance etc. However, the crane
| worker's union requires that the contractor performing
| the building work hire a master mechanic, as well as
| oilers (no, really) for the crane, as well as the actual
| crane operator who sits in the cabin and does the work.
|
| Usually, these people are not permitted by the crane
| owner actually to perform any work on the crane at all.
|
| By the way, salary for a master mechanic in NYC is around
| $150,000 p/a.
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| This article on MTA construction in NYC gives a good
| overview of the kind of money that goes to waste due to
| union worksite staffing requirements
|
| https://secondavenuesagas.com/2018/01/01/inside-times-
| deep-d...
| waqf wrote:
| Last year a man died after falling through disused stairs up to
| a highway bridge in Boston. To be fair they were fenced off and
| were obviously unusable, but still ...
| https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/newly-released-video-sh...
| bxparks wrote:
| Similar to the software industry, politicians don't get elected
| for maintaining old bridges. They get elected by building _new_
| bridges.
| wwweston wrote:
| Can you explain more about how this works? Even if we're
| being totally cynical and seeing politics entirely in terms
| of who can distribute favors within their network (which I
| think is _at best_ partly true), it seems to me contracts to
| repair or rebuild bridges could be at least as lucrative as
| building a new bridge.
| wcunning wrote:
| It's more that politicians respond to incentives --
| repairing bridges requires money being spent and taxes
| going up, since states can't run at a deficit for very
| long. Often this angers voters. Similarly, people get
| pissed off about what we refer to in Michigan as "Orange
| Barrel Season" when you cant' get from here to there
| because of the construction snarling traffic. As a result,
| it doesn't build goodwill to maintain infrastructure before
| it's at the verge of catastrophic failure from a political
| standpoint. On the other hand, building _new_ freeway
| through mostly farm fields has concentrated costs (the
| farmers losing land, who are then paid fairly well for the
| loss) with obvious benefits to everyone. It 's pretty "no
| downside".
|
| In Michigan we've also run into issues where infrastructure
| crumbles before the bonds that built it from scratch are
| paid off, which then causes significant pain in paying for
| repairs, since it requires all new taxes or significant
| other service cuts. This was one of the main arguments in
| the 2018 gubernatorial campaign and then in the early part
| of Whitmer's term.
| nemomarx wrote:
| I don't think it necessarily has to be about kickbacks -
| it's also about acclaim and reputation?
|
| In software, you talk about a project you headed or a new
| feature you developed when you're looking at promotions. In
| a political career, a new bridge or a new project has more
| advantages than simply upkeeping an old one for basically
| the same reason - it can be associated with you
| specifically in a stronger way, you can talk about it as an
| accomplishment to more people. "I funded repairs so this
| bridge didn't fall" is a lot more of a non event, at least
| until the bridge actually falls and someone has to be
| blamed.
| Arrath wrote:
| > I don't think it necessarily has to be about kickbacks
| - it's also about acclaim and reputation?
|
| Exactly. The classic ground-breaking or ribbon cutting
| ceremonies attract a lot more acclaim than "We're going
| to shut down one lane of the road a a time for 3 months
| to re-pave it and make traffic living hell"
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| Or in the case of some politicians; How many bridges they can
| burn.
| drcongo wrote:
| What _is_ the deal with construction in the US, how is this
| allowed to happen?
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Civil Engineer here.
|
| It's... complicated.
|
| A big problem IMO is the politicization of funding.
|
| So for example, when doing road maintenance, it's unique in
| that it is essentially ALWAYS cheaper to do the maintenance
| NOW rather than later. So like doing a cheap slurry seal/
| chip seal on a road that was just paved 2 years ago is
| probably actually a really good idea. If you do maintenance
| like that, you can pretty much maintain that road
| indefinitely at remarkably low costs. As roads degrade toward
| failure, the costs to repair them go up exponentially.
| However, the public doesn't get it. They see the road that is
| already failed, full of pot holes and cracks and wonder why
| they're spending money fixing a road where nothing is wrong
| instead of doing the same thing to the failed road. What they
| don't realize is that the cost to repair the failed road is
| 10x, 25x maybe even 100x more expensive than that cheap
| slurry seal. But they can't differentiate between a seal, or
| an asphalt overlay or a full repair of the road and subgrade.
| So the optics of correct and optimal road maintenance
| strategy are weird, and make the road works strategy
| dependent on political whims.
|
| Now the problems really start to compound. Politicians in the
| US have been divorced from the reality of costs for a long
| time. Local jurisdictions essentially rely on "emergency
| funding" to do the really expensive (over 10-100x cost)
| repairs that could have been entirely avoided if they had
| just spent the money to do the maintenance earlier. But they
| had basically NO incentive to do so. If anything, to get the
| big money from the state or the fed, they have to let it fail
| so that it looks really bad and becomes a genuine priority or
| safety issue.
|
| They also just can't help but spend the money on feel-good
| sexy-looking bullshit out of the general fund instead of
| properly funding the boring infrastructure projects, because,
| like a good IT guy, no one notices at all when you're doing
| your job well.
|
| Couple that with polarized politics: Republicans can't help
| themselves but fight to cut taxes that should go to things
| like this because they are displeased with government waste
| and Democrats can't help but spend the tax revenue on other
| things without worrying about how to pay for them all until
| tomorrow. So the end result from both sides is: There's just
| not enough money to do things the cheap way, so now there's
| REALLY not enough money.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| How efficient would you say the government is when it is in
| fact doing the work?
|
| I find myself frustrated when it seems there are more
| workers than necessary, when potholes aren't at least
| filled with a stopgap filler so it doesn't suck to
| drive/bike on (doesn't seem that hard to do, even if it
| doesn't fix the road long-term), or when there are many
| simultaneous projects where you could be working on one
| site 24/7 to get it done so you have fewer impediments to
| traffic. (I understand paying for a night shift is more
| expensive, but the man-hours lost in traffic due to extra
| projects that take longer seem absurd).
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| How many construction projects have you managed?
|
| How many workers for particular jobs do you think is
| appropriate?
|
| Where did you get this information and why is it correct?
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Were you offended by my comment? I'm asking someone
| familiar with the industry exactly because I don't know
| the answers.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Not quite, I'm offended by people assuming they know the
| correct answer about something and making baseless
| assertions.
|
| Asking your friend _first_ would have been the move
|
| This is something that seems to happen in the US on a
| constant basis. People just assume they know or
| understand things that they have never learned about nor
| had contact with and then we get people voting and making
| policy decisions based on that info that was pulled out
| of someone's ass
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > Asking your friend first would have been the move
|
| How did you know I didn't ask a friend first? And second,
| if my friend agreed these are good questions, then I get
| to ask an expert? Or do I have to ask more friends? How
| many unknowledgeable people do I have to ask before I get
| to ask someone knowledgeable to get an answer?
|
| > Not quite, I'm offended by people assuming they know
| the correct answer about something and making baseless
| assertions.
|
| Thirdly, who are you to say any of my assertions are
| baseless? You don't know if any of my other experience is
| relevant enough to form a meaningful base on which to
| pose a question.
| justin66 wrote:
| > This is something that seems to happen in the US on a
| constant basis. People just assume they know or
| understand things that they have never learned about nor
| had contact with and then we get people voting and making
| policy decisions based on that info that was pulled out
| of someone's ass
|
| Thank God that sort of thing is limited to the United
| States.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| I know you're likely being sarcastic and I definitely
| understand. I can only speak to my experience and that's
| in the US, although I can't reasonably doubt that it
| happens elsewhere
| pueblito wrote:
| I paved highways for 5 years. The people standing around
| are because there is a surprising amount of manual labor
| involved. One example that isn't obvious is raking.
| Sometimes rocks slip through the cracks at the hot plant
| and the paver leaves big rocks in the hot mix. There need
| to be at least one guy just standing around looking at
| the asphalt to get the rocks out and throw in replacement
| hot mix between the first and second rollers.
|
| Asphalt is mostly crushed rock, and you need different
| sizes of rock from fines to bean size. Part of the QA
| process is checking that the rock mix is composed of the
| right ratios and have enough faces to meet the spec. This
| is done with random samples from the asphalt as it's laid
| down. They also check the temp, if it's too cool it won't
| work. So they mostly stand around. On the other side of
| the paving train is another QA where they use a
| radioactive density meter to check the asphalt after the
| rollers hit it, and they also take core samples along the
| joint to confirm the rollers are doing right.
|
| Then there is a guy from DOT supervising. The State owns
| the roads, he's there making sure no one is cutting
| corners and to coordinate the train with the supervisor
| of the crew.
|
| Add in a couple more hands to rake/shovel (think
| guardrails etc) and it LOOKS like 5 guys working and 10
| standing around but it's 15 people taking turns in a
| continuously moving operation, often in live traffic
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Thank you for your in-depth response. I appreciate
| hearing from people with first hand experience on topics
| that I don't personally have experience with. There's
| things we don't think about when its so far out of our
| usual field of expertise.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Virtually all of that work is through private contractors
| (most likely) or local governments.
|
| When you ask about inefficiency, what incentives do
| private contractors have to not milk funds dry?
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| There's a fun story in Ash Carter's book about the F-35
| project. He wanted Lockhead Martin to start hitting cost
| targets. So in a meeting over it he warned that the
| pentagon would be curtailing it's order unless the
| targets were met. Reportedly the LM executive replied
| "you tell me how much money you have, and I'll tell you
| how many planes you get." This apparently pissed Carter
| off enough to reply "how about none" and walk out of the
| room to let them stew for a while.
|
| Anyhow, end result was a renegotiation of the contract
| where overruns would largely come out of LM's side.
| Shockingly they suddenly started hitting the targets. /s
|
| It's really hard to structure the incentives right here,
| and to some extent relies on having government leaders
| willing to rock the boat in negotiations.
| Arrath wrote:
| Liquidated damages for not holding to schedule, having
| bonds taken, disbarment from future contracts due to poor
| performance to name a few. However these tend to lead to
| protracted claims processes and court battles.
|
| Not enough incentives, in any case. I do believe that
| there should be more incentives for finishing under-
| budget and ahead or on schedule to allow rolling
| efficiently into the next project. Assuming these aren't
| perverse incentives that invite corner-cutting, record
| falsifying, and so on.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| I ask about efficiency because I'm interested in whether
| more money is a good investment.
|
| I don't really care if the government or private
| contractors are doing the work. In either case, if the
| work being done is extremely inefficient, I'm less likely
| to vote for a candidate that wants more money to spend on
| roads.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| > I ask about efficiency because I'm interested in
| whether more money is a good investment.
|
| Maybe.
|
| > I don't really care if the government or private
| contractors are doing the work.
|
| Okay, so you really mean can government do a good job of
| funding a massive infrastructure project?
|
| It can, but everything has been setup over decades to
| make it fail.
|
| Is the government rarely allowed to break down large
| projects into smaller ones, and bidding happens on each
| small slice?
|
| Why are incentives aligned to hamper this?
|
| And how do you prevent different states battling to get a
| bigger slice, at the cost of others?
|
| > In either case, if the work being done is extremely
| inefficient, I'm less likely to vote for a candidate that
| wants more money to spend on roads.
|
| Increased spending doesn't mean inefficiency. Not until
| you factor in pushed-off expenses.
|
| If maintenance cost $1.00 per year but rebuilding costs
| $100.00 after 20 years of neglect; then wouldn't you say
| the inefficiency was from the politicians that
| blocked/prevented said maintenance?
|
| How much revenue do our bridges and roads generate? What
| would be the loss if even 30% of said roads were to
| crumble overnight?
|
| Perhaps it's just me, but I think being pennywise and
| pound foolish as bad thing.
| notacoward wrote:
| > to get the big money from the state or the fed, they have
| to let it fail
|
| Same thing with schools. The state won't pay for updates or
| maintenance, but they will for an entirely new building.
| School districts deliberately set up their budgets to
| maximize the state contribution, which means foregoing
| obvious updates and maintenance until the buildings become
| run down enough to capture those sweet sweet state dollars.
| Even in very affluent towns. That's how two out of six
| elementary schools in my town got replaced with buildings
| worthy of a FAANG campus. It's why people _applaud_ the
| school board 's decision to teach high-school classes in
| converted trailers through my daughter's entire time there,
| and now the state's going to pay a good chunk of the cost
| for a nine-figure replacement (that she might never even
| see). It's really pretty sick.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| One thing I think American governments need to do better,
| if they're going to be in charge of indestructible
| projects, is creating an informed electorate. Much of what
| is in this answer is new information to me, and I'm pretty
| sure I'm not unusual in that way. That still doesn't fix
| the problem that politicians don't understand these
| tradeoffs, but if they could be brought to that
| understanding and encouraged to communicate it clearly, it
| would at least direct public pressure the right direction
| to some extent.
| drcongo wrote:
| Definitely didn't expect such a comprehensive answer,
| thanks for that. We have different funding conflicts here
| in the UK, and while there's definitely a lot of that "do
| the shiny thing" going on, we also have a weird annual
| event where local councils try to use up any remaining
| budget they have just to make sure it's seen that they
| needed it, and it won't get cut the following year. So
| every Feb / March, you see a sudden increase in road
| maintenance across the country as councils who've ignored
| your reports of a giant pothole all year suddenly decide to
| fill every pothole in the county.
| est31 wrote:
| > If anything, to get the big money from the state or the
| fed, they have to let it fail so that it looks really bad
| and becomes a genuine priority or safety issue.
|
| That reminds me of DB, the german railway company,
| sometimes trying to get bridges demolished and rebuilt from
| scratch instead of renovation, because if they are rebuilt,
| the federal government pays for it while a renovation has
| to be paid by the DB. The funny part is that the federal
| government owns 100% of the DB shares.
| bombcar wrote:
| Combine this with the local government in charge of
| building/maintaining the bridges _being the same one that
| inspects them_ and you have a recipe for disaster.
|
| If there was a separate "department of closing shit
| infrastructure" then the politicians might not be so
| inclined to "keep things open" just to prevent complaints.
| yabones wrote:
| Decades of neoliberal gutting and privatization has basically
| ruined the public sector & infrastructure in the US. What's
| left is crumbling and dangerous.
| guardiangod wrote:
| What does "Neoliberal" and "privatization" has to do with a
| government not maintaining its bridge properly? Are the
| inspections or repairs outsourced?
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Yes to both? In order to improve 'efficiency' the
| government delegates everything to private contractors
| whose incentive is to get the longest and most profitable
| government contract possible. The entire goal of
| neoliberalism is as much privatization as possible.
|
| I used to work as a government contractor and I came out
| of it with the strong opinion that it's nothing but
| wasted tax payer dollars designed to enrich private
| companies over actually getting work done.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > What does "Neoliberal" and "privatization" has to do
| with a government not maintaining its bridge properly?
|
| Privatization is almost the definition of a government
| not maintaining its bridge (and calling it proper that
| the government not maintain the bridge is part of the
| neoliberal attitude). It is exactly the delegation of
| what some might consider government responsibilities to
| the private sector.
| [deleted]
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| At what point was building and maintenance of
| infrastructure in the U.S. done by the government? I remain
| to be convinced on this point, but my gut feeling is that
| even for things like the construction of the Interstate
| system most of the work was privately contracted.
| pram wrote:
| Most of the stuff was planned and managed by companies
| like Bechtel, even during the depression.
| [deleted]
| xbar wrote:
| This smacks of rhetoric, not an explanation.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| Detroit is a shrinking city, and has been for 70 years.
| Cities can really only afford to maintain everything if they
| keep growing, staying flat isn't enough either. A lot of
| people don't care about a pedestrian bridge. A lot of
| politicians don't really care about something unless it helps
| them get reelected. Or put another way, unless something bad
| happens while they are in office they can kick the can down
| the road, maintenance is boring and can be put off for
| decades in many cases without an emergency. So a pedestrian
| bridge is on the bottom of a long list
|
| Also most 70 year old concrete bridges are fine, even as they
| go past their original designed lifespan with deferred
| maintenance. But an increasing number of concrete bridges
| will need major refurbishment or to be replaced entirely.
| Something like 40% of bridges in the US are past their
| original lifespan
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Wasn't a lot of this supposed to happen in the 2008 financial
| crisis relief funding? I remember a lot of talk about "shovel-
| ready jobs." Turns out they didn't really exist (there were
| plenty of infrastructure problems, just very few shovel-ready
| plans to deal with them).
|
| Also, when you throw huge balls of government money at these
| problems once every 10 or 20 years, it's a lot less efficient
| that just funding needed maintenance every year. Those huge
| federal spending bills tend to get frittered away on all kinds
| of middlemen and pork projects, and when the dust clears the
| original problems have not gotten any better.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| The country has totally forgotten the concept of the greater
| good and to invest in basic infrastructure that benefits
| everybody. It's all about profit for some groups. You see the
| same in healthcare. Nobody can seriously argue that the current
| setup is beneficial for the country as a whole but the people
| and institutions that benefit from the dysfunction will fight
| any changes tooth and nail.
| anthropodie wrote:
| I am from India and just yesterday I saw episode of John
| Oliver related to state of Utilities in the US [1]. After
| that episode I was like thank God we don't have issues like
| this. The energy infrastructure in India is mostly owned by
| Government companies and yeah their are some issues but the
| grid works and it is maintained surprisingly well.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-YRSqaPtMg
|
| Edit: I am getting down voted lol. Maybe our infrastructure
| is not producing as much Energy as US but I am mostly talking
| about Grid. I guess I should have cleared that.
| notacoward wrote:
| I used to visit Bengaluru pretty frequently. The grid is a
| _mess_. Besides the very visible - and visibly dangerous -
| rats ' nests of wires just about everywhere, it wasn't very
| reliable. My colleagues had outages all the time. We
| couldn't put a data center there for lack of decent power.
| And this in the relatively affluent parts of a city often
| touted as a (if not the) high-tech center of the country.
| I'd guess you're getting downvoted because many here have
| _first hand experience_ directly contrary to what you 're
| saying. Your experience is what it is, but it's clearly not
| as generalizable as you make it out to be.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I think perhaps then you got the wrong idea then because
| generally the service provided by utilities in the U.S. is
| far-and-away superior to that provided in India.
| anthropodie wrote:
| Not sure if you lived in India briefly or where you lived
| to have bad experience with the power companies. But I
| can attest that service in one of the most remote regions
| of India is very good. There are no power cuts and if
| there are because of some storm or other natural disaster
| they are resolved within 2-3 days.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I lived in Bengaluru for several years.
|
| In the U.S. we expect to be able to drink the water that
| comes from the tap, cutting off entire parts of a city
| for a day or more from the water supply is largely
| unheard of; same for electricity. We expect actual storm
| drains and sewage works as opposed to streets just
| flooding every time there's rain. etc.
|
| I'm not trying to be "down" on India but - having lived
| with both systems - the U.S. experience is objectively
| better from every point of view other than price.
| anthropodie wrote:
| When was this?
|
| I never lived in Bengaluru but I have lived all over
| Maharashtra and power cuts use to be norm almost over a
| decade ago but it has changed over last decade.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Within the past decade.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > In the U.S. we expect to be able to drink the water
| that comes from the tap, cutting off entire parts of a
| city for a day or more from the water supply is largely
| unheard of
|
| The population of Flint might disagree, although
| technically that water kept running while poisoning its
| population.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| No; the people in Flint would _entirely_ agree that they
| expected to be able to drink their water - that 's why it
| was such an outrage that they couldn't.
|
| On the other hand, the fact Puri, in Odisha, got safe
| drinking water from the tap was a major news story last
| year - since it was the first city in India to have that,
| and even just general availability of piped water _at
| all_ is uncertain for many in India - many, many people
| get water delivered by road on tankers.
| bluGill wrote:
| Service to the remote regions of the US is very good,
| even in places with far less population density than
| India. There are sometimes power outages, but not very
| often, and they are resolved fast. It has been this way
| since the 1950s for most people. (the exceptions are rare
| enough that you cannot compare the rate of them between
| countries)
|
| Now the US has some very remote regions that don't have
| good power. When it is miles between humans there isn't
| enough demand to put up wires, but the only people living
| in those areas like being self sufficient and wouldn't
| want utility power if they could get it.
| omegaworks wrote:
| The country attempted to move forward on infrastructure, but
| the bill died in an anti-democratic institution dominated by
| right-wing austerity hawks (the US Senate).
| tylersmith wrote:
| Bridges can be fixed without federal laws. It's ridiculous
| to blame all poor infrastructure on a single law failing to
| pass.
| omegaworks wrote:
| It's not really ridiculous when the federal government
| controls the power to issue currency. Any infrastructure
| improvement that occurs at the local level needs to be
| paid for by either tax or debt. Taxes take money out of a
| local economy and debt is typically more expensive for
| local municipalities.
|
| The federal government can borrow at extremely low
| interest and literally create currency if needed. If the
| infrastructure expands the productivity of the economy as
| a whole that currency creation does not contribute to
| inflation.
|
| At a macro level bridges enable more efficient commerce,
| so issuing currency to pay for them can be the most
| optimal way forward for the society. If the bridge saves
| 1,000 farmers $150,000 in fuel/transportation cost over
| the course of its life, that bridge created $150,000,000
| of new value in the economy.
| jaywalk wrote:
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The country is not a democracy, so the Senate being
| "anti-democratic" is entirely irrelevant.
|
| Insofar as the government claims (and, more importantly,
| insofar as those subject to the government believe that
| it is important for a government to be able to claim)
| democratic legitimacy through consent of the governed,
| both the fact that the government as a whole is radically
| antidemocratic in structure despite superficial rituals
| of democracy, and the fact that the centerpiece of that
| antidemocratic structure is the Senate matters a whole
| lot.
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| Those people are not austerity hawks. They are austerity
| hawks if and only if the President is a Democrat. Otherwise
| they run budget deficits.
| ars wrote:
| > There would be plenty of well paid union and trades jobs
|
| There are already. There's more work than people right now. All
| that work you describe is so expensive we can only do a small
| portion of it.
|
| What's really needed is more trade school so we can get more
| people in those positions (and yes, this increase in supply
| will lower wages).
|
| It actually seems there's more work than money in every single
| field. We need to figure out how to make a world that doesn't
| take so much work to keep running. Demographics being what they
| are, we aren't going to be able to have complete funding for
| everything in the future.
|
| It's either that, or have a world with well funded profitable
| amazing things, next to crumbling basic things.
| Arrath wrote:
| > There are already. There's more work than people right now.
| All that work you describe is so expensive we can only do a
| small portion of it.
|
| I'm well aware. I'm a lead engineer on a critical
| infrastructure project in the hundreds of millions range,
| that probably costs double what it actually should thanks to
| any number of issues with the process.
|
| > What's really needed is more trade school so we can get
| more people in those positions (and yes, this increase in
| supply will lower wages).
|
| Agreed 100%. There is a crisis in the loss of institutional
| knowledge, bringing new blood in, training and mentoring them
| up. Workers and engineers are direly needed at all levels.
|
| > It actually seems there's more work than money in every
| single field. We need to figure out how to make a world that
| doesn't take so much work to keep running. Demographics being
| what they are, we aren't going to be able to have complete
| funding for everything in the future.
|
| > It's either that, or have a world with well funded
| profitable amazing things, next to crumbling basic things.
|
| Either less work to keep running, or less money to do the
| work required.
| [deleted]
| andrew_ wrote:
| MDOT has been in shambles since I was born in Michigan in the
| 70s. Infrastructure is a very state-to-state thing as well. FDOT
| (Florida) appears at least, to be more competent and aware.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Save for _their_ collapsing pedestrian bridges.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| That collapsing bridge was supposed to be 174 feet long and
| was going to cost around $13 million. $75k per linear foot.
| And it was insanely ugly. The replacement bridge has a
| beautiful design but is expected to cost $15 million - $87k
| per linear foot!
|
| At the same time as the Miami pedestrian bridge collapse,
| CDOT (Chicago...) was building this gorgeous 620 foot long
| pedestrian bridge [1] with a final cost of $26 million. $42k
| per linear foot. And they didn't interrupt 6 active rail
| lines or a 6-lane "boulevard" during construction.
|
| So clearly, we _can_ build nice things at reasonable prices.
| But how do we make it standard, rather than something where
| we get lucky every once in a while? I have no idea...
|
| [1] https://www.exp.com/project/35th-street-pedestrian-
| bridge/
| notacoward wrote:
| The only thing saving FDOT is that they don't have snow and ice
| (especially ice below the surface) to deal with. They can build
| and maintain roads in an entirely different way because of
| that.
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