Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 564 posts

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#261

Post by pavel_lishin »

wutbrodo wrote: post #256
karmelapple wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "I hate that I get so stressed from my daily commute, but being able to drive to the countryside on the weekend is so nice." I have truly never understood this line of thinking. These two are not tied together. I grew up in a car-centric city, but moved away in my teens. I've never personally owned a car and haven't had one in the household since I was 17. I hear this supposed "upside" of cars from my friends who a…

> What prevents you from renting a car when you want to drive out to the countryside?

Nothing, but it is a barrier. When you own a car, you just get in, make sure you've got gas, and go. When you don't, you need to go out and find a rental place, get there, find a car you want/like, etc.

It's a small barrier, and mostly psychological, but it's there and it affects decisions.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#262

Post by TulliusCicero »

strictnein wrote: post #223
TulliusCicero wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. America's forced dominance of the automobile is pretty grossly unethical. Freedom means the ability to make meaningful choices, and if biking is incredibly dangerous, transit is slow and infrequent, and nothing is within walking distance, then those are hardly meaningful options, are they? Building to support multiple modes of transportation is the freedom-loving thing to do. Want to walk? Go for it! Transit?…

"Freedom" doesn't mean living wherever you want and having every option available to you. It means choosing to live in places that offer the amenities you desire. Want walkable, bikeable, mass transit, etc? Live downtown. Want bigger homes, yards, quite, etc? Live in the suburbs.

> "Freedom" doesn't mean living wherever you want and having every option available to you.

Obviously there's a limit to how reasonable multimodal transportation is. Nobody's expecting decent transit among rural farmland. But we could do better than we're doing now -- MUCH better.

> Want bigger homes, yards, quite, etc? Live in the suburbs.

The biggest problem with this is that in the US you usually have to choose between one of two extremes which dovetail with your examples. You're either in a big ugly apartment block downtown (or in a downtown-ish area) or you're in a super low density suburb where Cars Are Law.

Plenty of countries manage to have more of a gradient, where you can have, say, suburbs of middling density, where driving is easy, but so is walking, biking, and taking the train to the city. I live in Munich at the moment and the suburbs nearby fit this mold perfectly, but in the US such towns are extremely rare.

There are still plenty of cars in Munich proper, for that matter. There are just lots of other options too.

* Also in most American cities even the downtown still isn't very walkable, definitely isn't bikable, and has crappy transit. There really are only a handful of cities in the US where these things all work reasonably well.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#263

Post by atemerev »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #246
Xeoncross wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't even understand the need of physically being at the same place, for information workers at least (until remote surgery and hairdressing catch up). Working remotely is good for the environment!

I like cars, but I'd never want to use one for commuting. Random places at indiscriminate times — this is what cars are for indeed.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#264

Post by hawaiianed »

There is some poor analysis in the article with regards to Davis Bacon Act, they approached it and then missed what it was telling them.

Here in Hawaii, Laborer Prevailing Wage is $50+ an hour, toss on our mandatory insurances worker's comp and taxes and it costs almost $80 an hour to pay that worker before profit and other overhead.

Laborer rates vary by locality, but no construction worker who gets more than 3-months of Davis Bacon pay is averaging $35,000 a year it's going to be closer to $50,000.

Whenever we do any State, or Federal work there is a huge stack of submissions that have to be made, I kill trees like it was my job, shoveling paperwork out the door for these projects.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#265

Post by wutbrodo »

chc wrote: post #226
karmelapple wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can we try to get through one thread on HN without frothing at the mouth about how much we hate cars? Message received, you happen to be in a situation where you don't need a car — I am genuinely happy for you, as well as envious. But it is not necessary or helpful for someone to bang on about it in every single thread that has anything to do with building stuff. It doesn't help anything, and it just annoys people wh…

You know that this is a post about _infrastructure_, right? How does it not occur to you that talking about the culture around cars (and its effect on politics/policy) might perhaps be relevant?

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#266

Post by TheCoelacanth »

mason240 wrote: post #199
Mz wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that in any way suggests what you are saying. There are a lot of people who currently feel forced into long commutes who hate them. There are a lot of people who are trapped in the situation of they need a car to get to work, they need a job to afford a car because a car is often the second biggest household expense after housing itself. I am talking about opening up options, not putting a gun to anyo…

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. Only one of us wants to "change this substantially."

They don't have that freedom now because of zoning that restricts the development of urban-core-like development and because of subsidies that favor sparsely populated suburbs over the urban core.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#267

Post by anovikov »

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 was done for a very rational reason: making country more immune to a nuclear attack, especially the retaliation to its own nuclear attack (i.e. a nuclear attack that is coming in convenient time of day and week because you chose the time). It works perfectly to that purpose: it is whole lot better to keep all relevant population in separate houses with basements, with little combustible material around, than in multimillion cities with no way out of them.

If U.S. launched its missiles while all these people just came home from jobs say at 11pm ET/8pm PT, and people in the Soviet Union were on the way or at their factory jobs during Moscow morning on Siberia mid-day, it would be a slaughter for the Soviet Union and an easy win for the U.S.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#268

Post by TulliusCicero »

karmelapple wrote: post #207
TulliusCicero wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How can we better quantify the costs? That's where, I think, many people have a blind spot.

Don't have an authoritative answer for you, but I thought this chart was pretty great; it shows the profit/loss for the local government (so, taxes vs spending) for different neighborhoods for a city in Lousiana: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#269

Post by gozur88 »

CodeCube wrote: post #253
chc wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we try to get through one thread on HN without frothing at the mouth about how much we hate cars? Message received, you happen to be in a situation where you don't need a car — I am genuinely happy for you, as well as envious. But it is not necessary or helpful for someone to bang on about it in every single thread that has anything to do with building stuff. It doesn't help anything, and it just annoys people wh…

If people don't bang on about it, nothing will ever change ... seriously, everyone will simply move on and build the next urban sprawl center, and the next shitty road, out to the next desolate subdivision because that's what's easy. No one wants to be agitated. Well, too bad, we _should_ be agitated. Those without the good fortune _should_ raise hell to the city planners, and attend city council meetings, and vote i…

>If people don't bang on about it, nothing will ever change ...

It's not going to change anyway. The car haters on HN are in the minority of Americans.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#270

Post by beat »

wcummings wrote: post #224
goodcanadian wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland might be a good example ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Switzerland ): Healthcare in Switzerland is universal and is regulated by the Swiss Federal Law on Health Insurance. There are no free state-provided health services, but private health insurance is compulsory for all persons residing in Switzerland (within three months of taking up residence or being born in the country).

How does this compare to the ACA, which also features a mandate?

It's complicated. But I think it's important to note here that, pre-ACA, the American system had two major flaws - high cost, and incomplete coverage. The ACA chose to address coverage first, rather than cost. The CDC reported the results here:

"More recently, the percentage of uninsured adults aged 18 to 64 decreased, from 22.3% in 2010 to 11.9% in the first 3 months of 2016. During this 6-year period, corresponding increases were seen in both public and private coverage among adults aged 18 to 64."

Post reply on HN