[HN Gopher] Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much
___________________________________________________________________
Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much
Author : jseliger
Score : 101 points
Date : 2021-12-08 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| wnevets wrote:
| or its for similar reasons rewriting existing software can take
| so much time and money. It's way easier to build a subway (or
| software) when you don't have to worry about the existing needs
| of the customer or people who live in or around the area.
| candyman wrote:
| Thirty years ago when you needed to install new computers in an
| office I remember it took us weeks to get the cable (Ethernet)
| installed because one contractor had to pull the cable and cut it
| at each workstation, another contractor had to come and put the
| connector on the cable and yet another had to come and plug the
| cable into the machine. Believe me we were tempted to sneak in
| one weekend and do the whole thing ourselves but were severely
| warned about the consequences. So what could have been done in a
| day by one or two guys took over a month because you couldn't
| even schedule the second service until the first was done. I
| imagine this kind of thing is everywhere when it comes to
| building real infrastructure.
| human wrote:
| In real life it's even worse. None of the suppliers actually
| show up, they ramp up the price and deliver a failing product.
| Then they all blame the previous guy.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Once the US had railroad companies that laid rail at a mile per
| day (mostly crap rail, but enough to count), that was when the
| incentives were all aligned, and a huge amount of resources were
| mobilized and ready to deploy.
|
| Once the US pulled of the completely absurd task of putting a man
| on the moon and then returning him safely to earth, in less than
| a decade. All the incentives were aligned, it had public support,
| and a huge amount of resources were mobilized and ready to
| deploy.
|
| We're not deploying huge resources on our infrastructure
| projects, we're piecemealing them. I've got a branch rail line
| going in at the end of my street. [1] The public input/planning
| process went on for years, and only now are they starting to
| relocate utilities, put up fences, etc. There's no one entity in
| charge of all the layers of the project, it's all hired
| contractors and inter-agency cooperation. It will be done, likely
| in 3 years or so. This line is a total of about 9 miles long for
| about $945 Million.
|
| The worst part about it for me is the insidious nature of the
| funding they're using. They're doing "Tax Increment Financing"
| which means that any increase in property tax revenues
| theoretically caused by the "improvement" of my house go to pay
| off the construction bonds.
|
| Let's say there is NO improvement, but inflation doubles taxes in
| the next decade. The town now gets the same dollar amount, but
| half of the funding it used to get, and the rest goes to the bond
| holders. This will strangle our schools which depend on local
| real estate taxes.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Lake_Corridor
|
| PS: Just across the state line is a defunct Country Club, which
| is in close enough to the station to qualify for "TIF"
| improvements, and the husband of the local State Representative
| pushing for the project, _just happens_ to be the a real estate
| developer interested in said property.
| [deleted]
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| And don't you just love that the trains they'll be running will
| consist of end-of-life Metra coaches that they're paying to
| have refurbished?
|
| https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-n...
|
| These are the new Metra coaches, BTW:
|
| https://chi.streetsblog.org/2021/01/13/metra-board-chooses-n...
| caeril wrote:
| > pulled of the completely absurd task of putting a man on the
| moon and then returning him safely to earth, in less than a
| decade
|
| At a congressional allocation level, this was all pork, too.
| The vast majority of this project went to politically-connected
| contractors, subcontractors, etc. Not much has changed, except
| for one critical factor:
|
| We were competent in the 20th century. All of the engineers,
| machinists, metallurgists, and yes, even management of the
| Apollo project had a job to do. Their personal political
| opinions, sexual proclivities, or social media clout had
| nothing at all to do with accomplishing the mission. And so, it
| got done.
|
| We're not that people anymore.
| vdance wrote:
| Strange question, maybe? I'm an expat living in Romania and I
| always appreciate and marvel at the efficiency of Romania to
| have/enable providers to sell an unlimited 4G mobile service
| plan, that (for me) also works in the middle of nowhere here in
| RO for 5 euros per month. Thoughts? BTW, it makes buying a
| service plan in KS, USA that barely works in various areas feel a
| bit like a scam...
| nine_k wrote:
| I'd compare average household incomes.
|
| US mobile carriers just know they can charge more, and people
| will be able to pay.
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| A service plan in the US probably does cover a larger amount of
| total area than on in Romania, though.
| missedthecue wrote:
| One thing the article misses is that construction worker
| productivity has been on the downtrend for decades
|
| https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_...
| Naac wrote:
| Please follow up to the article/source of this graph.
| missedthecue wrote:
| https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/what-happened-to-
| construct...
| m0llusk wrote:
| This article is toxic garbage.
|
| The best example of this is how the NYC Second Avenue subway
| project is cited as an example of costs out of control. This
| project was initially proposed around a hundred years ago and
| over time was repeatedly rejected as being far too expensive to
| ever make sense and then raised again and again for
| consideration. At the time the work started there was a hundred
| years of literature going into detail about the many complexities
| involving other power, water, and sewer infrastructure as well as
| multiple other subway lines and difficult geological constraints.
| Well before any work was done it was extremely well established
| that a Second Avenue subway could only ever be astronomically
| expensive.
|
| Taking a project that was refused for a hundred years because of
| the apparent extreme difficulties and using that as an example of
| how US infrastructure costs too much is blatant manipulation. The
| nearest popular comparison I can think of would be saying that
| American military efforts cost too much because D-Day was
| shockingly expensive. Military conflicts don't work that way and
| neither does infrastructure construction.
| asdff wrote:
| Replace the second avenue subway with any other major passenger
| rail line built in the US in the last ten years, look at the
| costs per mile of track laid, and see that this is not some
| unique geological issue with manhattan but a national issue
| with the ability to cheaply and quickly construct capital
| improvements.
| Shacklz wrote:
| Reading comprehension. They may or may not have picked an
| unfortunate example to make their point, but that by no means
| refutes their initial statement:
|
| > Mile for mile, studies show the U.S. spends more than all but
| five other countries in the world on public transit, and more
| on roads than any other country that discloses spending data.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I still remember when Oregon paid $175M to _plan_ the new I5
| bridge across the Columbia River, only for the entire plan to
| collapse. That is close to 40% of what the nearby Glenn Jackson
| I205 bridge cost _in total_.
|
| $114M of that went to one contractor (and their subs).
| bearjaws wrote:
| I am of the opinion that continuing to build out all these long
| 'runs' of infrastructure to serve a even more spread out populace
| is a dead end. Where I live we spent tens of billions expanding
| highway infrastructure, and it has not improved the lives of
| anyone meaningfully, traffic is as bad as its ever been.
|
| We need to spend more money creating better metropolitan areas
| that people want to live in, rather than using tax payer money to
| support fewer and fewer people.
| criddell wrote:
| > We need to spend more money creating better metropolitan
| areas that people want to live in, rather than using tax payer
| money to support fewer and fewer people.
|
| I suspect the current trend is in the opposite direction. If
| self-driving cars ever become a real thing, it's all over for
| team urbanization.
|
| If there was unlimited money, how would you even start to fix
| cities? A big part of the attraction to living in the 'burbs or
| beyond is cheap space and very little noise pollution.
| wilkommen wrote:
| Nearly all of the noise pollution in cities is due to cars
| and trucks. Reducing the number of cars and trucks on the
| road in cities by developing viable alternatives to driving
| (like walking and biking and light rail), allowing cities to
| build denser, and then restricting non-emergency, non-
| delivery car traffic in those dense areas would pretty much
| fix the affordable housing crisis and traffic and the sprawl
| problem all at the same time. All while keeping the city nice
| and quiet, and cheap.
| munk-a wrote:
| > If self-driving cars ever become a real thing, it's all
| over for team urbanization.
|
| Urbanization is more than just hatred of vehicles - Europe
| has managed to development walkable cities where cars are
| significantly less convenient than other modes of transport -
| even if the cars are automated they're going to continue to
| be suboptimal compared to well planned and zoned cities. At
| the heart of the issue is whether a city is oriented toward
| foot traffic or optimized for car storage - America leans the
| latter way and it's pretty darn weird since, outside of the
| central south (Arizona, Texas and such) - most people would
| prefer a ten minute walk to five minute drive.
| amalcon wrote:
| The _particular_ project highlighted in the article isn 't one
| of those, though. Somerville (one of the cities reached by the
| extension) has the highest population density in the state of
| Massachusetts, and I think it's something like top 20 in the
| United States by that metric. This is not an "even more spread
| out populace", it's linking a reasonably dense bedroom
| community to a regional commercial hub.
| dntrkv wrote:
| I don't see how this is relevant to this discussion. NYC is
| plenty dense yet it has the same issues with cost.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| NYC has much different issues with cost. You're paying for
| bad management that does long term projects as a series of
| short term projects and lets all the contractors go in
| between, for instance. You're paying the union for the right
| to use a tunnel boring machine, and you have an oiler
| watching your cranes because it's still 1910 and that's a
| full-time position. You're paying to move legacy
| infrastructure out of the way. You're paying to mine out
| cavernous underground subway stations through small shafts
| because apparently that's how America and America only
| designs the stations. I could go on.
| dntrkv wrote:
| My point is that OP's comment is not relevant. It's not
| like the costs are high per capita, the costs are high per
| mile. In which case, the population density doesn't matter.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| This is one of the key points. The US isn't just spread-out but
| oriented to solving it's problem by spreading out more. And
| this paradigm has effectively become unsustainable.
|
| However, that's not the only factor at play here. Part of thing
| that makes spreading out the population look like a reasonable
| strategy is the mess involved in building in existing cities. A
| lot here is "soft" corruption - local government treats public
| grants as candy to give out to their friends and particular
| processes described in the article are just _ways_ to do this.
| Kye wrote:
| How northeast Metro Atlanta has developed:
|
| "Wow, I hate the city! Time to move in the direction of Lake
| Lanier."
|
| "I hate driving to the city for everything. Let's build a
| Target and a Publix."
|
| "How about a mall?"
|
| "Wow, I hate the city! Time to move in the direction of Lake
| Lanier."
|
| Some people are pulled into the gravity well of Athens, and
| they're ending up in Braselton and Winder. Others are going
| toward the smaller cities closer to the perimeter now that
| development has essentially bumped up against the border with
| South Carolina. I saw my first Tesla when I went through
| Johns Creek in 2016, so I assume it's a hub of tech worker
| migration in 2021.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| A lot of things appear unsustainable because the income of
| builders is inflated with fed money. I don't think much will
| improve until a normal person can afford to build a house
| again.
| rictic wrote:
| > it has not improved the lives of anyone meaningfully, traffic
| is as bad as its ever been
|
| The latter does not imply the former. If the increased
| infrastructure means that more people can live and work in an
| area, then even if the traffic for each person in that area is
| exactly as bad as it was before, it still helped those people
| who took the option to move there.
|
| We do not build infrastructure that it might stay idle. Compare
| "we upgraded our internet to gigabit but we're seeing a similar
| utilization ratio, therefor the upgrade didn't improve the
| lives of anyone in the home".
| BurningFrog wrote:
| If you double your highways and traffic stays as bad, your
| highway system is delivering twice as much transportation.
|
| That _is_ a clear improvement.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Not really. Doubling your commute length is not an
| improvement. I have noticed places with heavier traffic tend
| to have shorter distances to your destination. So your total
| time is the same regardless.
| rictic wrote:
| Life is more than just commute time. When commuting further
| distances you have more options of where to live and where
| to work.
| trylfthsk wrote:
| Chuck Marohn did my favorite exploration of this issue in "The
| Growth Ponzi Scheme"[0]. I wish this was front and center in
| the Zeitgeist.
|
| [0]https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/
| dantheman wrote:
| Corruption
| Finnucane wrote:
| Which never happens in Europe.
| carabiner wrote:
| How was China able to blanket their entire country in high-speed
| rail in less time than it'll take to a build a single line in
| California? Is it just more manpower?
| danny_codes wrote:
| No, it's entirely politics and policy.
|
| California has an extremely cumbersome legal baggage that drags
| against public projects. Strong public unions, poorly
| implemented environmental protection laws, and a legal code
| that enables rampant NIMBYism are, IMO, the main limiting
| factors for Californian growth.
|
| We could today pass legislation that circumvented all of this
| nonsense, and we would see HSR rapidly built across CA.
|
| I would guess that for these sorts of projects the actual
| building part is relatively cheap and simple: it's the endless
| legal battles, plan changes, and political maneuvering that
| balloons cost.
|
| China doesn't have this problem. If the CCP is unified on some
| policy, no local protectionist politicians can slow them down.
| carabiner wrote:
| Yeah, and I know China + civil rights etc. I wonder what
| specific civil rights abuses occurred in building their HSR?
| Was it similar to the US use of eminent domain to acquire
| land for building the interstate highways? Maybe we should
| bring that back.
|
| I'm seriously in awe of the Chinese government these days. In
| 30 years, they went from a raw labor and manufacturing
| country, to landing rovers on Mars. They built new hospitals
| in days during the pandemic, and will soon be deploying brand
| new nuclear reactors. They'll probably have a dozen by the
| time we approve one. In the US, we're having national debates
| over whether horse dewormer cures COVID. We sound like a
| laughingstock of irrational, argumentative kids. I can't
| believe it.
|
| I see China had a HSR crash that killed 40. That seems
| comparable in governmental fuckups to the FAA oversight with
| the 737 MAX (killed 346).
| pxeboot wrote:
| I have worked on government IT projects. A long standing joke for
| writing quotes was "For local/state government, add a zero. For
| the feds, add two zeros". This wasn't entirely accurate, but
| often close.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| because we are animals stuck on a little dying planet and we
| believe money is what gonna save us
|
| we'll transcend humankind the day we stop trying to profit from
| each other or worry about "how much it'll cost"
|
| capitalism and its market don't want your street to look nice if
| it's not gonna make them generate profit, even if it makes you
| happy
|
| the market doesn't want it!
| zip1234 wrote:
| If you are interested in this topic, a good follow on Twitter is
| Marco Chitti--he compares reasons for high costs of
| infrastructure in US to other countries:
| https://twitter.com/ChittiMarco
|
| One of the things he mentions is lack of use of prefab:
| https://twitter.com/ChittiMarco/status/1460674103464140801
| alkonaut wrote:
| > Dialing back citizens' rights to participate in public projects
| would seem politically unfeasible.
|
| So is having design processes decoupled from project budgets.
|
| Just restrict the participation to budget neutral things. The
| political decision to build something and what it can cost can't
| be followed by another process where it snowballs to 5x the cost?
| sofard wrote:
| I was a management consultant ages ago and worked on large
| capital projects. In my experience (as the article mentions) it
| was a mix of:
|
| 1. Red tape & public "input" 2. Layers of contractors and
| subcontractors, each taking their slice 3. No real incentives for
| governments to be cost sensitive. Usually capital projects last
| well into the next administration. 4. Too many cooks in the
| kitchen and consultations
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I have seen some public transportation work up close in the USA
| -- "me first" and competition between different teams ate up
| quite a bit of the (expensive) time.. lots of very competent,
| skilled people and also quite cynical and profit-seeking
| management. The actions of management were sometimes directly
| contradictory to recommendations by hard-working staff. Worse,
| management that tried to get things done quickly were pushed
| out by others who were better at looking good (or something
| else I dont know about).
|
| The old expression "we have the worst system in the world,
| except for all the others" .. comes to mind
|
| edit- I would like to point to NORESCO in particular as a
| sponge-like entity with a long history of failed, expensive
| projects and a long pipeline of new funding, based on what I
| saw with my own eyes.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _The old expression "we have the worst system in the world,
| except for all the others" .. comes to mind_
|
| That's what (I think) Winston Churchill said about democracy
| (might be true there). But here, I think you can just "we
| have the worst system". Period. The US has a variety of
| sectors (public works, health care, etc) which aren't just
| bad but fated to get worse and worse through both through the
| particular way US ruling interests deal with each other. Each
| solution introduces more pork interests since each solution
| follows the haphazard paradigm.
|
| For example; I think Yimby ("yes in my back yard") proposals
| have aimed to facilitate development in at transit hubs, a
| worthy seeming cause. But since there's no California state
| transit plan, this approach has to define "transit hub"
| haphazardly - "there's currently a bus stop there". This
| allows those aiming to sink a development to do so by
| removing the bus stop. Or oppositely, allows someone to
| facilitate a development by adding an otherwise unneeded bus
| stop. I'm not sure if this approach was implemented but just
| proposal illustrates the inherent problem of trying to solve
| transfic/housing/development problems by tossing random
| legislation at them.
| czzr wrote:
| I think in the case of US infrastructure spend it's more like
| "we have the best system in the world, except for all the
| others".
| ska wrote:
| > "we have the worst system in the world, except for all the
| others" .. comes to mind
|
| Wouldn't that imply the US system has better execution, not
| just higher costs?
| Traster wrote:
| Yeah my first reaction to this was "Oh it's going to be the
| public". Because the US has strong rights and legal system
| basically anyone can come along and considerably screw up a
| project just by claiming some endangered bat is living in the
| path of it, or some economic harm will be done, or some
| community will be damaged, it's far easier to just to just
| stick planning notice on display in the bottom of a locked
| filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the
| door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'
|
| A great example of this is in the UK where the main road going
| east to west from london to cornwall is a single carriage way
| with 2 lanes going past one of the country's most historic
| sites (stone henge). It's a fucking disaster. So the plan is to
| build a _massive_ tunnel under stone henge to help traffic and
| remove the blotch on this area of historic importance. It 's
| expected to cost PS1.7Bn but it's already been completely tied
| up in legal fights, it was proposed over 25 years ago (when it
| was already desparately needed). Essentially plenty of people
| either don't want it built at all (presumably just accepting
| that we'll never ever be able to have economic in england west
| of stonehenge) or they want a tunnel that is several times
| longer than the proposal sending costs and construction time
| _soaring_.
|
| What you _could_ do, if you were Turkey, you could just built a
| 12 lane motorway and shove stonehenge a few miles north. It 'd
| be cheaper.
| davidw wrote:
| These are all things, but they're things in other countries,
| too. France has strong unions and subcontractors and
| bureaucrats and all of that. And yet it costs less there.
| Symmetry wrote:
| French bureaucracy has the expertise in house to do high
| level planning rather than having a subcontractor do it.
| They're also a lot more insulated than US bureaucracies from
| the vagaries of political turnover. And they're more often
| dealing with laws written ahead of time rather than things
| that can't be decided without a court decision.
| teknofobi wrote:
| > 1. Red tape & public "input"
|
| > [...] and bureaucrats and all of that.
|
| On a recent episode of the Ezra Klein show, Jerusalem Demsas
| argued that part of the problem is that the bureaucrats in
| the US are too constrained in their powers, so e.g. when
| weighing an infrastructure project against wildlife
| protection laws, it's not a bureaucratic organisation making
| a final decision on how to proceed with minimal impact, but
| it's private organised interest groups litigating without any
| limits on re-litigation, and a ruling that does not
| necessarily weigh the public interest of having projects
| proceeding towards completion.
| davidw wrote:
| I don't do podcasts, but I read that that was a really good
| one, and everything she writes about housing is fantastic.
|
| https://www.vox.com/authors/jerusalem-demsas
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I think it was this article that's most relevant?
| https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-
| costs...
| ska wrote:
| I think it's a mistake to think of european unions and
| american unions as "the same thing". Relationships with
| unions in the US seem much more adversarial than there, on
| average.
|
| As you say, there are politics, labor relations, etc. in
| europe too - I wonder if they are just better at cooperating
| on this sort of project for some reason?
| earthscienceman wrote:
| What? This could only be so naively said by someone who has
| never lived in a heavily prop labor socialist country like
| France. Les greves are terribly adversarial and a near
| constant aspect of labor negotiations.
|
| The only way they could be considered better, in the way
| you imply, is that the unions are considered something to
| _negotiate_ with instead of something to destroy.
| davidw wrote:
| I think that's what makes it interesting and important to
| figure out on a deeper level. Simplistic answers don't seem
| to explain the problem.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| My broad impression is that in the EU and the US, a given
| project is a "meal" that all the interests involved will take
| a cut out of.
|
| But in the EU or elsewhere, the "cut" the interests will take
| is just financial, the project will be designed for cost-
| efficiency by competent architects and engineers and it's
| just that the different interests will be paid off with money
| to make things happen.
|
| In the US, the spread-out state and administrative structure
| results in a situation where each interest gets it's cut
| through its ability to make some small change or demand some
| particular process. A lot of this involves a lot of
| adversarial relations, some of them intended to stop
| corruption but which actually result inefficiency and
| corruption (complex bidding processes legal repercussions for
| failure to adhere to bid etc. etc.).
|
| California spending $3 billion _planning_ ( "planning") a
| high speed rail system is good example. A lot of that
| involved buying land whose value had inflated.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| I think in-sourcing management expertise to the public agencies
| would save a lot of money. Management consultants are expensive
| and their incentives are in conflict with public projects.
| phenkdo wrote:
| IMO #2 takes the cake (rest is all icing)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| In my experience with construction projects, legal costs and
| liabilities take the cake. Once something is in court, there
| is zero telling how long and how much money it takes to
| resolve.
| jltsiren wrote:
| This is interesting from a foreign perspective. I still
| follow urban planning in Helsinki, Finland. Major public
| projects always face opposition and go to court, but it's
| not a big deal.
|
| Because zoning plans and similar project plans are
| decisions made by public officials, all complaints about
| them go to the administrative court system. Administrative
| courts don't care about the substance of the argument.
| (That's for elected representatives.) They only determine
| if the officials followed all appropriate regulations and
| decisiomaking processes. Going to administrative court is
| cheap enough and fast enough that the costs and delays are
| usually included in the project plan.
|
| Sometime the court overturns the decision, delaying or
| canceling the project. Sometimes their justifications are
| stupid and sometimes there are unintended consequences.
| Regardless, the system more or less works most of the time.
| [deleted]
| jimt1234 wrote:
| I'm leaning towards #3. There just doesn't seem to be any
| real incentive for governments to look for cost savings, like
| it's all Monopoly money.
| Shacklz wrote:
| That's the case for other countries too but they still
| manage to do better
| nicoburns wrote:
| That seems like a political culture issue rather than
| something inherent to governments. If you really care about
| doing good in the world (isn't that the whole point of
| politics?) then you have a huge incentive to save on costs
| as any money saved can be put to good use elsewhere.
| [deleted]
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| My pet theory: because this is not a priority?
|
| The NY ex-governor Cuomo. He's not without dark spots, but a lot
| of infrastructure projects have been running during his time in
| the office: Moynihan hall train, LIRR double-track to Ronkonkoma
| and so on.
|
| Nevertheless, it was decided that moral qualities of the governor
| are more important than his ability to push projects to
| completion.
|
| So nope, Mr. Cuomo, you're not perfect. Get out. _And there is a
| queue of smart, nice, efficient and highly moral people lined up
| outside to become NY governors._
| HanShotFirst wrote:
| Cuomo literally harrased his own highly competent NYC Transit
| director into resigning, for disagreements and stealing the
| spotlight. The LGA airtrain is an expensive boondoggle that is
| thankfully looking like it will be canceled. He was into large
| statement projects he could slap his name on regardless of
| actual need because he was clearly a huge narcissist.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| Why LGA airtrain would be a boondoggle? AFAIR, right now
| there's no way of getting to LGA without risking being stuck
| in the traffic for an hour.
| slymon99 wrote:
| "Moral qualities"? We aren't talking about Cuomo cheating on
| his wife, he used his position of authority to sexually harass
| eleven women.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| Then fine the shit out of him, install a watch to make sure
| it doesn't happen again and let him keep doing things he's
| good at.
| [deleted]
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I don't like the idea of having to hire staff to monitor
| someone 24x7 to ensure he stays on task and doesn't drive
| away coworkers and employees with harassment just because
| "he's good at" part of his job. That doesn't make any
| sense.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| Checks and balances is a staple of any functioning
| system.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/XQQZc
| the-alchemist wrote:
| For those interested in a real deep dive, and I mean, deep, check
| out the blog https://pedestrianobservations.com/construction-
| costs/. And the comments are super informative!
|
| It makes a lot of complex analyses using the best cost
| information available, and compares projects across countries,
| states, geography, politics, etc. I'm impressed by the technical
| engineering analyses. We IT people could learn a thing or two. ;)
|
| Like, "this subway project in NYC cost $N billion USD, which
| cannot be compared to this subway project in France, which cost
| $M billion EUR, because of the diameter of the tunnel used and
| the composition of the dirt under the ground."
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Why aren't contracts to build the projects tightly written to
| avoid cost ballooning?
|
| When a service is to be provided at a certain cost, it should be
| provided at certain cost. Some contingencies should be built in
| (if something gets discovered that was unexpected) but how on
| earth does every municipal project seem to have so much invested
| in budget oversight and contractors overbilling or needing
| overtime to make things happen.
|
| If someone is painting my house, I get a quote for the job and
| the date it will be completed. I don't find myself paying them
| more unless its for something outside of what we specified
| together and they quoted.
|
| Building on government contracts should be solid money but it
| seems like every time the taxpayer gets fleeced and the end
| result is barely functional/impactful.
| vkou wrote:
| > Why aren't contracts to build the projects tightly written to
| avoid cost ballooning?
|
| Because no legitimate construction firm will take on a project
| where they are saddled with 100% liability for overruns.
|
| Not without very generously padding their estimated costs, that
| is.
|
| Which will make them lose the initial bid.
|
| A fly-by-night operator may want to take that project, and when
| things go sour, they'll leave you with a half-built bridge, and
| an empty shell of a corporation that you won't squeeze a dollar
| out of.
| dsr_ wrote:
| One alternative would be to have a public works department
| which does the work itself. It would hire people, plan, write
| specs, buy or lease equipment, buy materials, do the work.
|
| That, however, would be socialism, so it can't be done, even
| though it's done on a smaller scale in every US city for
| issues starting at road repair and going on up.
| cmckn wrote:
| I think there's a real argument for the efficiency of
| outsourcing many aspects of public works projects. But I
| think you make a good point, that doing things in-house is
| sometimes the right move. Obviously this applies to more
| than turnpikes :)
| sjwalter wrote:
| One of the tricks Robert Moses had when he was basically
| building modern NYC was he had on staff a top-notch crew
| capable of the end-to-end implementation of whatever
| project proposal he came up with. Designers, engineers,
| project managers, accountants, even down to the guys
| digging the holes.
|
| Not sure what happened and why cities stopped having all
| these capabilities on staff (seems obvious that e.g. NYC
| will eternally need a huge amount of people like this).
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Moving away from cost-plus contract funding is something that
| is needed but is an enormous fight. Every government contractor
| loves cost-plus. Bid low on cost to get the contract then just
| keep amending the contract with added cost.
|
| I agree that all government contracts should be fixed bid. It
| is wholly the contractor's responsibility to determine if they
| can be profitable on the contract or not. We should not be on
| the hook for added cost.
| nradov wrote:
| It's fine for most infrastructure projects to be firm fixed
| price (with bonus incentives for early completion or higher
| quality). But there are other projects for which cost plus is
| the only viable option. Sometimes there's so much technical
| risk and uncertainty that no sane contractor would even
| submit a fixed price bid.
| PeterisP wrote:
| As the article goes into detail, a big factor of costs
| ballooning is that the municipalities explicitly ask for much
| more stuff than initially planned - as you say "unless its for
| something outside of what we specified together and they
| quoted", which is the exact thing happening in the examples
| provided by the article.
|
| You ask for A, get quoted $X; but if then after the public
| input (which, as the article states, can't be avoided or its
| suggestions refused, because votes and politics) you decide
| that you actually want A+B+C+D+E+F+G (it's not an exaggeration,
| it's common for the "add-ons" to require multiple times more
| work than the initially requested thing) then you're not
| getting that for $X no matter how you write the contract.
|
| If someone is painting your house and halfway through the
| process you discuss with your family that it needs to be a
| different color (redoing the already painted parts) and the
| kids room also needs to be painted, and oh, they should fix the
| porch before painting it, that's going to result in cost
| ballooning far above the quote.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is easy to say, and tough to do.
|
| Big projects have almost unlimited liability. The entities
| involved can get taken to court for pollution concerns,
| environmental concerns, get caught up in local politics. And
| once something is in the courts, the whole timeframe is
| completely up in the air.
|
| One of the places I lived had Walmart wanting to build a
| Walmart Supercenter, and convert their current Walmart into a
| Sams Club. The non Walmart grocery store (which was garbage in
| terms of quality and service) and a Sams Club competitor tied
| up Walmart in court over the status of some endangered garden
| snake.
|
| It was obvious nonsense, but it would have taken so long to
| untangle legally that Walmart said screw it and moved on.
| intrepidhero wrote:
| Firm fixed contracts seem like the way to go, until you try it.
| What happens is you get a bunch of contractors in a bidding war
| trying to undercut each other until the actual bid is below
| cost. That's not sustainable so what happens then? The winner
| will cut every possible corner to try to make a profit margin
| and read the contract in the narrowest way possible so they can
| hit the government with a fat change order. Quality of the
| product takes a nose dive and final cost still isn't
| controlled.
|
| On the other hand, time and materials contracts have exactly
| the problems you would expect.
|
| I honestly don't know how these things should be done so that
| taxpayers get the most value for their dollars. But I do know
| it's more complex than just "fixed price contracts."
| nradov wrote:
| For firm fixed price contracts you can write in requirements
| for passing independent inspections. And incentives for
| quality measures. For example I've seen road paving contracts
| that paid a bonus for achieving a certain level of
| smoothness. Of course writing a good contract requires deep
| technical and legal expertise which some local governments
| simply lack.
| mjevans wrote:
| Maybe have the military operate as a contractor as well and
| any 'profits' they'd make go towards the general federal
| budget? At the least it's then a bid by an open party with
| incentives that should be aligned to public service to
| compare all the other bids against.
| dymk wrote:
| Where's the evidence that contractors will bid below-cost?
| Even if some do, they'll just go out of business, and the
| contractors who know how to do basic math will live another
| day.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Meanwhile you end up with a bridge half-built because the
| cheapest contractor went bust.
|
| (I don't know if contractors bid below cost.)
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Another model is having a government run project, with all
| the employees direct hires of the relevant government
| department. Though that has its own downsides.
|
| One model I haven't heard of, is the government as general
| contractor, hiring and managing the subs directly. I could
| imagine a hybrid mode like this could work.
| lakecresva wrote:
| Those things have legal remedies, the US legal system has
| just decided that the investor class should be absolved of
| any risk or liability. If you intentionally underbid to win a
| contract, you've committed fraud and are supposed to go to
| prison to disincentivize the next guy. If you are a
| contractor and are incapable of giving a good faith estimate
| of your costs, you're supposed to go out of business. If you
| cut a bunch of corners to stay under budget and do not render
| satisfactory performance, you're liable for breach of
| contract (and are supposed to go out of business).
|
| The first two options have been removed from the toolbox of
| American government almost entirely.
| vkk8 wrote:
| This is what I'm also wondering. What is the point of making a
| contract in the first place if the price quoted is not binding?
| If the provider needs more material or manpower or whatever
| than expected, then it should be their fucking problem and not
| the clients. The possibility of unexpected stuff happening
| should, of course, also be taken into account in the initial
| price quote since the provider should be much better at
| estimating the probability of something happening than the
| client.
| g_p wrote:
| The problem when dealing with government or public works is
| that the provider simply isn't better at estimating that
| probability, since they aren't empowered to bulldoze ahead.
|
| The contractor can accurately price in (and insure against)
| technical risks like the risk of accidentally striking a
| cable while digging, and they can mitigate this as well
| (looking at the quality of cable mapping data, using
| detectors etc.)
|
| What the contractor can't factor in is all the (local)
| government politics and bureaucracy. Where things fall on the
| financial year calendar, whether they will have to spend the
| money before or after April, whether they will have to pause
| works because a resident legally challenges the works,
| whether the client has even asked for the right thing, or if
| it will emerge while planning the work that they have made
| major errors etc.
|
| When dealing with a well-specified, fixed-scope piece of
| work, you are right - the provider should eat that. When
| dealing with an uninformed non-expert customer (i.e. most
| public sector or government contracts), nobody in their right
| mind would take on that risk, except some of the big
| government outsourcing contractors, who would all quote
| insane prices based on past "actual costs" after factoring in
| all the nonsense from previous work.
| 7952 wrote:
| And there will be bias. The contractor will be optimistic
| about their own abilities and excited about the project.
| The client will become emotionally attached to the end
| goal. And everyone will underestimate the overhead of
| communication. Human factors apply and cannot be engineered
| away.
| Finnucane wrote:
| At least the GLX is a little further along now. The location in
| the photo at the top of the article is near my house, and the new
| trackbed there is complete.
| ihsw wrote:
| Infrastructure funding is a jobs creation program with an
| occasional side-effect of providing infrastructure to the public.
| igammarays wrote:
| Because the US has an unlimited supply of the world's reserve
| currency, so there is no incentive to be economical.
| sofard wrote:
| I respectfully disagree. A lot of the capital projects
| mentioned in this article (like NYC subway station) are
| municipal or state projects, which don't have the ability to
| print money like the feds.
| panick21_ wrote:
| How even smart people have started to buy this 'Modern Monetary
| Theory' nonsense wholesale. The same old terrible idea resold
| in a new package for 1000s of years. Everytime a government
| runs out of money the charlatans come out and start claiming
| you can just magically print money without any issue.
| buildsjets wrote:
| What the US does not have though, is an unlimited supply of
| time, and these increased program costs also drive longer
| project schedules. I've been watching Seattle's light rail
| system as it has been under development for 2 decades now - the
| construction itself is really quite fast! But a 20 year delay
| between voter approval/funding and breaking ground on the new
| construction is untenable. Example: South Kirkland extension
| breaks ground for construction in 2035, it was approved by
| voters in 2016.
|
| https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/s...
| notJim wrote:
| US infrastructure spending is heavily cost-constrained though.
| Your argument would hold up if we were building loads of new
| infrastructure at enormous cost, but instead we are not
| building enough because the costs are too high.
| distribot wrote:
| But the local governments executing these projects have very
| fixed budgets. They can't just fire up the money printer.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Local government officials have no real incentive to get the
| most for their money. They "get the job done", but I really
| doubt they are anywhere close to efficient
| vkou wrote:
| They would, if our democracy worked better. People care
| deeply about where municipal tax money is going.
|
| Unfortunately, most of the time, municipal governments are
| entirely controlled by an unholy alliance between local
| real estate moguls, and the town's chamber of commerce, so
| 'what their constituents want' is rarely a priority for
| them.
| distribot wrote:
| I think the mayor of NYC has a strong incentive to get
| credit for improving their subway system.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Perhaps surprisingly, the NYC subway is run by the MTA,
| over which the mayor has no control; it's run by the
| state government up in Albany.
| [deleted]
| rp1 wrote:
| Both of my parents are in civil engineering and construction in
| NYC. As an outside observer, what I see is that the management of
| projects is not set up in a sustainable way and is just bad. The
| heads of important departments are political appointees. Most of
| the time, appointments go to political friends, not to competent
| managers with extensive knowledge of the field. Also, the
| assignments are constantly changing as elected officials change.
| ivankirigin wrote:
| NEPA
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Having worked on software to track the mountain of paperwork
| for NEPA compliance of road projects I agree. But, I would
| expand it to just say bureaucracy or over-regulation. We can't
| build a damn thing without getting approval or licenses from
| multiple agencies after satisfying their every whim. Every
| regulation doesn't just make the project cost more. We are also
| paying for the administration and enforcement of those
| regulations. We pay on both sides when it is a State DOT doing
| the project. Residents of the State pay for staff to make sure
| they are satisfying all the NEPA requirements and Federal staff
| to make sure that the State DOT is in compliance.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| ?
| ivankirigin wrote:
| Regulations slow the pace of building.
|
| Good article here: https://medium.com/cgo-benchmark/why-are-
| we-so-slow-today-c3...
|
| Good recent discussion here, including other incentives:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzMTlBddJ-E
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| National Environmental Protection Act
|
| In other words, every infrastructure project is required to
| prove that they are not harming habitats or disturbing native
| cultural sites or any of the myriad other types of sites that
| are protected.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Every time any land is going to be developed where I live
| (Denver/Boulder/etc.), there is always a thread on Nextdoor
| advocating for people to stop it by raising environmental
| concerns and putting in a ton of comments. If 1/10 projects get
| canceled due to individual objections that means a lot of time
| and money gets wasted. Another 4/10 projects might eventually get
| built but only after long drawn out discussions and after many
| iterations to address individual concerns making the project less
| standardized and more expensive.
|
| The remaining projects that built aren't really infrastructure
| projects rather they are statement pieces. Instead of building a
| $200M subway station we build a $1B community gathering area that
| includes a subway station. The optimistic hope is that these
| larger projects will encourage public adoption and support for
| more of these types of projects but in reality their costs spiral
| out of control and construction takes far too long at which point
| the public is just tired.
| davidw wrote:
| The article hints at this NIMBYism. Many of the other things
| that factor in are not unique to the US. Government waste,
| bureaucracy, etc... are all things in other wealthy countries
| too, but NIMBYism and 'public input' seems to carry more weight
| in the US.
| spoonjim wrote:
| It all comes down to the ease of suing people in the US. Because
| of that, everyone gets insurance, the insurance companies mandate
| all kinds of inspections, all vendors need to be certified and
| bonded, and go through a 4000 hour licensing process, etc.
|
| Probably 500 fewer people die a year of workplace accidents and
| similar because of all these rules, but hundreds of thousands die
| of air pollution and economic distress due to the low return on
| the dollar.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Doesn't help that people have short memories. Remember the big
| dig? Textbook pork filled boondoggle in every way.
|
| Yet here we are 10yr later and there's no shortage of people with
| goldfish memories trying to defend it because "well the greenway
| is kind of cool".
|
| Government isn't idiots. They know that you'll forget. So they
| spend money without a care in the world and then give non answers
| when asked. Time works its magic and they get off scott free
| never being held accountable for wasting public resources.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| It's dysfunctional on purpose. Media is busy with identity
| politics and trumpism, no checks and balances with efficiency of
| the government. Doesn't bring in the clicks. Local media is
| extinct so local municipalities get a free pass.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Big picture answer - because the U.S has very little constituency
| for economical, timely, and competent construction of actual
| working infrastructure. Vs. political posturing, profiteering,
| NIMBYism, etc. - all of _those_ have large, savvy, and highly
| motivated constituencies.
| InTheArena wrote:
| This misses a fundamental point - the goal of this is not to fund
| infrastructure - it's to fund people who vote for people who vote
| for infrastructure. There is zero incentive to run on time and
| on-budget, and every incentive to milk more government cash, so
| that people in power can get election contributions, that stay in
| power.
|
| If you also deny money to people who didn't vote for you, then
| all the better as well. See the union restrictions on EV money in
| this bill. Why help GM, when you can help GM and hurt Tesla, all
| in one!
|
| Doesn't matter if it's (R) or (D), or union versus non-union.
| It's profit-seeking across the board.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I've seen these cynical rants many times, but can you back any
| of the claims up with anything substantive? For example, that
| there is no difference between parties? It's important, because
| it disarms us; if we don't differentiate between the more and
| less corrupt, we can't improve the situation.
|
| There is greed and corruption in the world, but that's not all
| there is. There are plenty of people who want to do a good job,
| who want to achieve things for society. More precisely,
| everyone has a little bit of all those things, and we have the
| free choice of what we pursue, the greed or the good.
|
| The US ranks pretty well on the scale of corruption. It's a
| good way to get voted out of office (recent phenomena not
| withstanding), or go to jail.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Maybe unrelated but there was a report about the construction
| related corruption in Quebec. I read it back in the year 2015
| and there was a lot of interesting information.
|
| For example, many construction projects are given to favored
| parties and government engineers who take care of those
| projects will make sure that outsiders do not get the tender
| offer. Occasionally someone from outside of the circle makes
| a competent bid so there are multiple stages to persuade such
| party to withdraw the bid: 1) The engineer in charge phones
| the party, 2) Shady characters riding on motorcycles throw
| garbage at the door of the said party, 3) I forgot what the
| 3rd stage is.
|
| Here is the document if anyone is interested:
|
| https://www.apigq.qc.ca/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/04/rapport_f...
| smnrchrds wrote:
| There is a lot of mob involvement in Quebec's construction
| industry. Are you saying the reason infrastructure is
| expensive in the US is mobs?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Yes, here in my city, construction is a racket. they get
| unfair contracts, make them shitty, then when they break
| they get another one.
| Eelongate wrote:
| I doubt it's organized in any large-scale sense, but
| nevertheless it's very corrupt.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| There is only one political party, you can see it in effect
| of their governance. Locally they might do things
| differently, the "land/city" way regardless of their party.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| You can't see the difference between the current Democratic
| Party and GOP? I heard that argument for years, but now
| it's like saying there's no difference between day and
| night.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| What changed?
|
| Locally you can see Democrats who would be considered
| Republicans or Republicans who act like Democrats. Bob
| Dole did many "democratic" things:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/us/politics/bob-dole-
| dead... and Clinton was a copy of a republican.
|
| > Russell Republicans approached Mr. Dole in 1950 to run
| for the Kansas State Legislature -- they saw the hometown
| war hero as an easy sell. But he had not yet picked a
| party, though his parents were New Deal Democrats. He
| said later that he had signed on with the Republicans
| after he was told that that's what most Kansas voters
| were.
|
| >He opposed many of the Great Society programs of
| President Lyndon B. Johnson, but he supported the Civil
| Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
|
| > He was most proud of helping to rescue Social Security
| in 1983, of pushing the landmark Americans With
| Disabilities Act of 1990 and of mustering a majority of
| reluctant Republicans to support Mr. Clinton's unpopular
| plan to send American troops to Bosnia in 1995. (Mr. Dole
| was not wild about the deployment either, but he long
| believed that a president, of either party, should be
| supported once he decided something as important as
| committing troops abroad.)
| temp8964 wrote:
| Apparently you don't see (don't want to see) the point of
| the discussion. The context here is not about their
| ideology or superficial talking points. It's about the
| mechanism of the power structure. No matter which party
| gets in control, it will always want to increase national
| debt, always go for more money and more concentration of
| power. This is the same mechanism applies to everybody,
| anybody who doesn't want to play the game would have been
| excluded from the game long time ago. Anybody who doesn't
| want to play with the established power structure will be
| easily destroyed.
| [deleted]
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This seems needlessly cynical. While I don't doubt there is
| some actual corruption and plenty of rent-seeking from
| political donors, the cited factors of poor project management
| and little expertise also play big roles, as you can observe
| the exact same thing in private construction projects that are
| self-funded by bad builders. I'm in a neighborhood that has
| been sort of the last Dallas neighborhood near downtown still
| "up and coming" and have seen this ever since moving here, from
| my own builder and also from effectively everyone else. They
| seem to have no relationships with tradesmen or subs, no
| ability to schedule or budget. Everything is late. Work happens
| in fits and starts, sometimes with nothing at all happening for
| months. Projects frequently outright fail and the project sits
| idle waiting for some other builder to come along and purchase
| it.
|
| It's totally different in exurbs where they throw up new cities
| seemingly overnight. Working in pre-existing cities is an
| entirely different animal. There seem to be a lot reasons, but
| at minimum:
|
| - Skilled tradesmen don't exist in large enough numbers to meet
| demand
|
| - Subcontractors willing to do urban work are less skilled and
| scrupulous
|
| - Onerous compliance at many overlapping levels of government
| that all have jurisdiction over the same land
|
| - It takes forever to run new utility lines through a city
| because of how disruptive digging is
|
| - Neighboring property owners fight you every step of the way
|
| - Historical preservation and community culture councils come
| out of the woodworks with new requirements and restrictions on
| what you're allowed to build
|
| That's just to build on existing empty lots you already
| purchased and have a permit for. For something like this
| infrastructure bill, now we're talking new roads and rail and
| you need to worry about clearing whatever is already there plus
| getting those permits. And work stoppages can happen for
| ridiculous reasons even in the middle of nowhere. It makes me
| remember being in the Army, when we trained at the National
| Training Center out in the Mojave desert, we had to constantly
| be on the lookout and stop if we saw an endangered desert
| tortoise we weren't allowed to touch, and basically just wait
| for it to get out of the way.
| [deleted]
| gremloni wrote:
| Same old both sides argument. It's getting old when the
| republicans are authoritarian snakes and are efficiently
| gutting this country and filling their pockets. The modern
| democrats are ineffectual and that's their only crime.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Another word for it is "pork-barrel".
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _This misses a fundamental point - the goal of this is not to
| fund infrastructure - it 's to fund people who vote for people
| who vote for infrastructure._
|
| You say this like wanting to repair/replace infrastructure is a
| bad thing. Are collapsing bridges a good thing?
|
| * https://fox23maine.com/news/i-team/ask-the-i-team-cars-
| still...
|
| *
| https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/2021/07/28/i-40-...
|
| * https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/sep/08/county-
| sets-...
|
| Or perhaps locks on the Mississippi so that goods can be
| transported:
|
| * https://wnax.com/news/180081-grassley-wants-corps-to-
| priorit...
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| They usually take longer than 2-4 years
| DennisP wrote:
| From the article, Istanbul gets things built a lot cheaper,
| partly because:
|
| > Whereas Boston might only build one new transit line every
| few decades, Istanbul builds dozens.
|
| Seems like building dozens of times as much would even more
| effectively "fund people who vote for people who vote for
| infrastructure." So why aren't we like Istanbul?
| munk-a wrote:
| The more regular an activity is the more likely you're going
| to have people specialized in it - you'll have much more
| accurate estimates around costs and time to deliver since
| people will have more recent experience getting it done and
| you'll have infrastructure around building infrastructure.
| When these projects are rarer it becomes infeasible for a
| company to dedicate itself to the labour so you end up with
| residential construction firms digging tunnels and laying
| road foundations - and needing to learn a lot as they go or
| bring in consultants.
|
| The more you build - especially the more you commit to build
| in the future - the cheaper it will be. If everything is
| billed as a one-off then the specialized labour doesn't
| settle in the local market and you end up paying large costs
| over and over.
| [deleted]
| bshoemaker wrote:
| This is stupid af because there are plenty of other countries
| with similar incentives & similar levels of corruption who
| don't have this problem. This sort of low-effort "lol
| everything bad" adds nothing to the discourse.
| notJim wrote:
| It's not just vote-buying, it's also buying support for the
| project. They cite an example where some transit stations
| started simple and became more and more complex. I've seen this
| happen with local transit projects where basically some NIMBY
| or supposed "community group" shows up and places all kinds of
| demands that wildly increase the costs of the project. There is
| either a lack of appetite or a lack of authority to tell these
| groups to fuck off, which results in enormous cost overruns.
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