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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

#411

Post by wott »

taurath wrote: post #331
deanCommie wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think people in Europe live in suburban or rural areas? The difference is networks of buses and trains that the countries and cities invested in over decades. America went in another direction, and looks no closer to changing it's mind.

Most of Europe doesn't live in what Americans would call suburbs, but villages. They're dense where people live and have train and bus service conveniently, because in postwar Europe there were a lot fewer cars. They also zone such that there's a dense living area surrounded by farmland - when that farmland becomes all housing thenyoull have American style suburbs, but few in Europe want that because it's harder to g…

You'd better update your knowledge.

Suburbs now spread for miles around towns and even former villages, for ten or twenty miles around major cities.

And small towns and villages lost their railways and stations 40 to 80 years ago.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#412

Post by analog31 »

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…

Litigation can be covered with insurance. So, unless the actual injury rate is higher, litigation shouldn't make projects cost any more.

Now it could be that litigation pays for medical costs, whereas other countries pay medical costs separately from project costs.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#413

Post by leesalminen »

jacquesm wrote: post #401
rcconf wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It tends to break down every 3 months, at around $1000 a repair each time That's really not good. Even BMW's are not that expensive to maintain, something is really wrong with your vehicle. Unless it's a classic and you're using it as a daily driver.

Former E46 3 series owner here, roughly 10 years into the life of the car. It was expensive.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#414

Post by serhei »

WithHighProb wrote: post #68
WithHighProb wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the real estate bubble in China now, I guess it'll be 100 times faster

btw at 0.1-0.01 cost, because land is state-owned it's possible you could get the bid for the land at a very low price.

If you did a detailed audit, you could also price adjust for things like land and end up with a comparison that reflects how each project is being managed.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#415

Post by serhei »

kodablah wrote: post #279
vmarsy wrote: post #79

> Yet France’s trains cost much less. Decades of expertise might be a reason here, France has the longest amount of (high speed rail miles / country area), and the non high-speed network is also huge. It's also possible that the monopoly of having only one, state-owned, railroad company (SNCF) let that company negotiate/choose better prices much more aggressively than if there was many companies. I don't think it was…

Yet Dallas is still home to the longest light rail system in the world. The trains are not an issue, it's how decentralized the people are. The value is simply not there to justify the project in most people's eyes (and won't benefit most people).

Longest?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DART_Light_Rail -> System Length 93 mi (150 km) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Melbourne -> System Length 160 miles (250 kilometres)

However, your point that the decentralization plays a difference is very valid. The Melbourne network is a dense grid which serves a much more compact area whereas the Dallas system consists of a small number of lines that stretch very far out into the low-density suburbs. Hence, far fewer people are near a DART station.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#416

Post by Aloha »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #273
Jach wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 improv…

Sprawl IS a new phenomenon, though. We didn't see the kind of suburban sprawl that we see today until after WW2, when cars became THE way to get around. It became more and more dominant and entrenched as the interstate highway system developed. Remember, we're talking about relative density within a metro area, not how close each metro area is to the others. If you look at cities that were more or less fully develope…

The patterns of the LA basins development was set by the Pacific Electric Railway, in the 20's and 30's - the freeways if you look almost all parallel former PE lines.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#417

Post by howard941 »

hawaiianed wrote: post #404
howard941 wrote: post #377

Is excessive profit taking eating up the productivity?

Not here labor is almost always our largest cost by far and away. Labor costs are typically 4 or more multiples of profit for most of our work.

It labor's like 80% of marginal costs 1/4 of it would be tremendous profit margins matched by exceptions like google and pharma. You can see why I'm probing. Can you disclose the typical industry margin?

Are your costs Hawaii costs as the username suggests?

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#418

Post by anubisresources »

jandrese wrote: post #36
anubisresources wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peter Thiel and Tyler Cowen have a lot to say about this subject. The argument boils down to regulatory and cultural pressures have caused innovation to slow down drastically since the 1970s in all areas but ICT. I strongly suggest you read "The Complacent Class" if this is a subject that interests you

You mean right after the Copyright Term Extension act was passed?

There are a number of different causes for the slowdown. I'd argue the slowdown was caused in large part as a reaction to the chaos and violence of the 1960s. Desire for safety -> more regulations & less investment in new things. I don't know that any specific law or rule can be attributed to the slowdown or its start.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#419

Post by [deleted] »

jandrese wrote: post #36
anubisresources wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peter Thiel and Tyler Cowen have a lot to say about this subject. The argument boils down to regulatory and cultural pressures have caused innovation to slow down drastically since the 1970s in all areas but ICT. I strongly suggest you read "The Complacent Class" if this is a subject that interests you

You mean right after the Copyright Term Extension act was passed?

[deleted]

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#420

Post by serhei »

afuchs wrote: post #312
rrggrr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tra…

Incidentally, Japan's maglev project (unlike their ordinary trains) is being done at ridiculous costs and ridiculous timeframes ($80 billion USD spent over 31 years -- 2014-2045 see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen). Seems like the technology is very tricky and 90% of it will have to be built in tunnel.

They can support this because their ordinary transit infrastructure is built out already, the Tokaido high-speed line is at capacity (trains every 5 minutes at peak hours)! Effectively, they have the money and they've run out of more reasonably scaled infrastructure projects to build.

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