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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

#311

Post by tonyedgecombe »

arethuza wrote: post #62
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Count your blessings. Construction can be much harder in other countries for reasons beyond engineering and safety. Italy, for example, is a real estate developers nightmare. Every rock or patch of dirt has a decent chance of sitting atop an Ancient Greek or Roman ruin, and the process to ensure that construction won't damage any heretofore unknown ruins is agonizingly slow. It boils down to political power and cultu…

But that problem applies to a lot of places in Europe - a lot of projects in the UK need to have teams of archaeologists in place and stuff seems to get built here at a reasonable rate (OK mostly - around Edinburgh we've had one dubious tram project and a successful major bridge and railways being re-opened). The Crossrail project in London had over 100 archaeologists working on it: http://www.crossrail.co.uk/sustain…

Crossrail appears to have been a quite successful project from the outside, I'm not sure if that's because of good PR or if it really has been.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#312

Post by afuchs »

rrggrr wrote: post #94
jicks wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't fit. Railway systems in Japan and France (taken as example in the article) are high quality and last long as well. Yet construction railway is way less expensive there.

Rail is a special case because land issues and near zero indigenous maglev tech in the US. Think roads, airports, train stations, bridges, dams, etc. And, as importantly, the US doesn't export subsidize infrastructure companies and projects as does France or Japan. The exception is energy infrastructure.

I'm confused?

What do you mean by land use issues?

Japan isn't using maglev for commercial high-speed service yet. Japanese high-speed trains have steel wheels that make contact with a steel track, just like regular trains. Their maglev trains are limited to experimental research and development [1], or low-speed urban transit [2] (which was built as a showcase for a World's Fair).

France's and Japan's high speed trains are based on the same technology as their lower speed counterparts, including American freight rail. How does a differing level of experience maglev technology cause a difference between different countries' quality of infrastructure, when that technology isn't being used?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L0_Series

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linimo

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#313

Post by Kenji »

dang wrote: post #164
Kenji wrote: post #41

The solution is shrinking the state to the bare minimum and making as many transactions as possible voluntary.

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. Those lead to black holes of sameness which we're keen to steer clear of here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14453781 and marked it off-topic.

I love how you never do this with comments broadly advocating universal basic income, of which I have seen many. The bias is real. Look, I know, you're moderating for the site, but I also hope you're aware of what you're doing here. Dissenting opinion is an "ideological tangent", "black hole" and "not constructive".

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#314

Post by prewett »

mistermann wrote: post #169
briandear wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dictionary defines benevolent as "well meaning and kindly." And here are some counterexamples to the claim that the CCP is "well meaning and kindly" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1... http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/blog/chinese-gov... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/political-prisoners-chin... http://www.news.com.au/world/asia/extreme-torture-inside-chi... http://t…

There's no doubt they rule with an iron fist. I think an argument can be made that they have benevolent long term intentions, but rightfully or wrongfully have decided that to achieve their long term vision it is prudent to crush anything that gets in their way, if necessary. Ask yourself this: do you think things are getting better or worse as time goes on for the typical Chinese citizen, and to what degree? (And as…

Things have gotten better for the typical Chinese citizen, but the bettering also corresponds to less government (in my admittedly foreign view). The death of Mao removed the problems of Mao's ineptness (famines, Cultural Revolution). The reforms of Deng Xiaoping led to foreign investment, which allowed knowledge transfer to Chinese firms. The transition to a market economy from State-controlled economy created factory jobs for the peasants (and mega-billionaires). People can now own (well, lease for 70 years) property. The loosening of travel restrictions caused allowed the now-wealthier citizens to experience the world.

The Chinese government has managed the country reasonably well, for a authoritarian government. However, I think the evidence shows that the less of the Chinese government authoritarianism there is, the better off the people are.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#315

Post by iamatworknow »

wavefunction wrote: post #259
tannhauser23 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. political system is remarkably vulnerable to pressure from interest groups because power is so fragmented. We have three branches of government at the federal level, with a bicameral legislature, and 50 individual states, each with three branches of government and plethora of local governments. And you need them all on board to do anything big. Imagine that you are the Sierra Club and you want to block const…

I don't believe the Hoover Dam should be replicated. It's a marvel of engineering but I'm opposed to damming any rivers. Damming our rivers like that has had such terrible and unforeseen environmental and economic consequences that I can only hope we un-dam wherever possible.

There's a trade off. I'll take a dam that disrupts a local river ecosystem to coal fired power plants that throw millions of tons of CO2 and other hazardous material into the air impacting a much larger area. In the case of the Hoover Dam it's roughly 4 coal plants to produce the same power generation capacity.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#316

Post by droidist2 »

rcconf wrote: post #292
wutbrodo wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

In Canada, renting a car when you're under 25 years old is pretty annoying. It's usually an extra $25 a day and that's what turned me off to renting. Some rental companies won't even let you get a car if you're under 25. It's actually a function of age, so I'm currently 24 and in theory, it should be cheaper now.. so let's do some blanket math to entertain your idea. - I drive my car only on weekends, so Friday - Sun…

What about something like Zipcar?

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#317

Post by dang »

Kenji wrote: post #313
dang wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. Those lead to black holes of sameness which we're keen to steer clear of here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14453781 and marked it off-topic.

I love how you never do this with comments broadly advocating universal basic income, of which I have seen many. The bias is real. Look, I know, you're moderating for the site, but I also hope you're aware of what you're doing here. Dissenting opinion is an "ideological tangent", "black hole" and "not constructive".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110004

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#318

Post by ShannonAlther »

Mz wrote: post #287
puranjay wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have two sons. At the time that we chose to go carless, we were living in an apartment complex with endless speed bumps. Driving over the speed bumps into and out of the complex daily was about 3 minutes of torture that we were completely thrilled to give up. Humorously, we have had occasion to put me on a bus for some reason while they walked to the destination in question. I would get ahead of them, then the bus…

> Unless you are driving quite a long distance and/or on the open highway, car travel is not as much faster than foot travel as some people seem to believe.

The average speed limit on municipal roads in Ontario is 50 km/h, which means that anywhere within 5km will take 6 minutes and, within 10km, 12 minutes.

Running 5km takes me 18 minutes, and running 10km takes me closer to 40 minutes. Humans walk at about 5km/h, which means that 5km would take about 1 hour, and 10km would be 2 hours or more, since exhaustion starts to factor in.

Car travel is unimaginably faster than walking. I don't know anybody who wants to spend 2 hours on a round-trip to a grocery store 5km away when they could do it in 10 minutes in a car.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#319

Post by wavefunction »

wavefunction wrote: post #259
tannhauser23 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. political system is remarkably vulnerable to pressure from interest groups because power is so fragmented. We have three branches of government at the federal level, with a bicameral legislature, and 50 individual states, each with three branches of government and plethora of local governments. And you need them all on board to do anything big. Imagine that you are the Sierra Club and you want to block const…

I don't believe the Hoover Dam should be replicated. It's a marvel of engineering but I'm opposed to damming any rivers. Damming our rivers like that has had such terrible and unforeseen environmental and economic consequences that I can only hope we un-dam wherever possible.

@iamatworknow

Sure but there are better alternatives to either coal or hydro-electric.

I think even a modern natural gas plant would be better until we can build a smart grid that can store during off-demand and handle peak-demand loads.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#320

Post by maxerickson »

deanCommie wrote: post #298
anovikov wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mu…

Have a source for any of that? Sounds like a completely made-up justification after the fact. Surely someone would have raised the point that the soviet union could just launch it's missiles in the middle of the work day. Also, Moscow is tremendously sprawled out.

To me the simpler theory is that the US has been quite wealthy since World War 2 and has lots and lots of space.

Which doesn't mean that building sprawling subdivisions is a great idea, but space is a pretty easy thing to sell.

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