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The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

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Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#241

Post by puranjay »

Mz wrote: post #173
deanCommie wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, having moved to Western Europe, I get the sense that this is the major factor as well. If I walk down the street and there is a group of workers excavating a road, there's a lot more of a relaxed attitude about fencing, walking underneath construction equipment, etc. After all - use your common sense - don't fall into the hole. If you do, isn't it kind of your own fault? Nobody's going to sue anybody. Ad…

And America's love affair with the automobile is a well-known abusive relationship that America will never have the courage to leave. From what I have read, Millenials are putting noteworthy pressure on this aspect of American culture. Also, I gave up my car years ago. With the magic of the internet, I work online. I mostly walk everywhere and occasionally take public transit. I think we can change this substantially…

I woke up to a flat tire about two months ago. Don't know why, but that was the breaking point for me.

Since then, I haven't driven a single day. I walk, take the metro or get an Uber.

I haven't been happier. Driving was easily the worst part of my day.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#242

Post by Mz »

mason240 wrote: post #233
Mz wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people are genuinely trapped. Just because I have been able to pull this off does not mean other people are simply free to choose. Urban cores are often insanely expensive and not necessarily where someone wants to live just because they don't want a car. I am wholly unimpressed with your hypocritical comments here that boil down to "Don't tread on ME or interfere with my right to own a car and drive all over th…

You're replying to a comment where I made clear that I want you to be able to make your own lifestyle preferences.

They have right to choose to limit their standard of living, as you have done, and move to an urban core and be completely dependent on transit for transportation.

This is dismissive, insulting of my preference to live without a car and rather hostile. If you were intending to say that you support my right to choose, you failed to communicate that. It came across as contemptuous and is in no way sympathetic to the fact that walkable neighborhoods and public transit are not hostile to drivers the way the current car centric American landscape is hostile to pedestrians.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#243

Post by 1_2__3 »

deanCommie wrote: post #126
imgabe wrote: post #80

I don't know the answers, but as someone who works in the industry (on the design side). I think a big unmentioned factor is probably liability and the prospect of litigation. If you look at old blueprints for projects in the past, they are a LOT less detailed. They had to be, because it was physically more difficult to produce them since they had to be drawn by hand. A lot was left to the contractor to figure out in…

Anecdotally, having moved to Western Europe, I get the sense that this is the major factor as well. If I walk down the street and there is a group of workers excavating a road, there's a lot more of a relaxed attitude about fencing, walking underneath construction equipment, etc. After all - use your common sense - don't fall into the hole. If you do, isn't it kind of your own fault? Nobody's going to sue anybody. Ad…

I know you couldn't resist injecting an anti-car barb in there but it makes no sense - the problem in the US isn't our "abusive relationship" with cars, it's insufficient infrastructure. Your magical public-transportation future will be ever bit as bad or worse than cars today if the government similarly underfunds it. Which they will.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#244

Post by TulliusCicero »

alistairSH wrote: post #133
fivestar wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you don't understand the real incentives at work? In the US, it is jobs, jobs, jobs. Long, drawn out projects keep hardhats working for years. It's not about outcomes, which is a big part of the problem.

Possibly true, but the parent to my comment suggested the problem was safety/environmental regulation, which is unlikely to be the main contributor to the problem.

Sort of. That other developed countries do it cheaper suggests that having sufficient safety/environmental regulation is not the problem, but our particular implementation of such could still be the problem (if it was particularly redundant or cumbersome).

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#245

Post by Jach »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #204
lghh wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And America's love affair with the automobile is a well-known abusive relationship that America will never have the courage to leave. It's pretty much impossible to leave this relationship unless you live in one of the larger US cities. If you live in a suburb, rural area, or city that's not in the top 10-15 in terms of size there's literally no other option that exists or that could easily exist.

That's a self-inflicted problem though. Nobody put a gun to America's head and forced us to make our cities sprawl out. We collectively decided to do it that way because we thought it was better. And for a few things it IS better. But there are a whole lotta costs, too, with the top 3 being being actual financial cost, grinding on the faces of the poor, and making us fat.

It's probably not even a decision so much as a probable consequence of having a much smaller population and opening of new frontiers to settle over the course of the country's history, ending up today with about half the population spread across about the same total area, and not uniformly. What has been our decision is to respect individual and local preferences (NIMBYism) and to ignore certain infrastructure improvements.

Given that sprawl is not a new phenomenon but obesity is I don't see how you can claim this is responsible for making us fat.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#246

Post by saint_fiasco »

Xeoncross wrote: post #213
vinay427 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an extremely simplistic view of the situation. In reality, many of the largest cities are almost entirely unusable without a car while many small cities (in the extreme case, most college towns) have excellent walkability and public transit because of their dense layout. I have personally experienced these. This is not a problem of urbanization to large cities, but of overall urban design.

You assume those that live in small cities work there as well. A large number of people living rural areas or small cities drive to big cities to work. There are very few "small" cities on the coasts (<10,000 people) so perhaps that is what you are referring to by small cities for which this works.

If a large number of people all have to go in the same direction at a similar time, isn't that what public transit is for?

Cars are more useful when people need to go to random places at indeterminate times.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#248

Post by elevensies »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #222
tannerc wrote: post #100

Related to what we might label "modern" infrastructure, I just got back from a trip visiting the outskirts of Illinois. The towns there are small, but full of people hungry for opportunities and good work. Yet everywhere you go there is no work to be done. Businesses—even big box stores like Walmart or Target—are closed down. Homes lay vacant despite their reasonably cheap (at least for someone living in Silicon Vall…

I think what's really interesting is that the US seems to have so many of these economically broken places, and yet GDP per capita in the US is the highest of any large country (and higher than all but a handful of small countries). I'm not saying you're wrong, I just think it's interesting that we can have these obvious large problems and still be economically successful in spite of that.

One of the reasons capitalism is so efficient is because of how quickly it deallocates from failure. Abandoning failed areas allows resources and people to be redirected to more profitable areas. Keep in mind the places we are talking about were quite possibly wilderness 200 years ago, and 200 years from now they could be again.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#249

Post by rjeli »

karmelapple wrote: post #167
deanCommie wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, having moved to Western Europe, I get the sense that this is the major factor as well. If I walk down the street and there is a group of workers excavating a road, there's a lot more of a relaxed attitude about fencing, walking underneath construction equipment, etc. After all - use your common sense - don't fall into the hole. If you do, isn't it kind of your own fault? Nobody's going to sue anybody. Ad…

The abusive relationship love-affair is the best explanation I've ever heard of cars in the USA. Just like a an abusive relationship, the car love affair still produces some good things. It's not all dark and dreary. "I hate that he comes home drunk and hits me, but he's so loving and apologetic the next morning." "I hate that I get so stressed from my daily commute, but being able to drive to the countryside on the…

you can apply this analogy to literally anything with benefits and drawbacks.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#250

Post by mark-r »

bluGill wrote: post #156
resf wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious next question being, _are_ PEX pipes safe? Perhaps California is just ahead of the curve banning it.

As far as we can tell. Pex is just polyethylene or (C2h4)n - there is nothing about that chemical formula to be particularly concerned about. It doesn't leach anything - when pure water is desired it the most common pipe to specify as it is cheap and works well (glass is better but that is mostly because glass does not allow air to through to dissolve in your water - and obviously more expensive) The alternative is c…

I've noticed that Pex has taken over new construction in my area. I built my house 17 years ago and copper water pipes were still standard. I just assumed cost was the big driver since copper has gone up about 200% in that time.

You say that copper will eventually corrode, but how does that compare to the lifetime of Pex?

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