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Why We Can’t Figure Out Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive

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Re: Why We Can’t Figure Out Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive

#91

Post by seanmcdirmid »

BurningFrog wrote: post #80
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That simply isn’t true at all. There are plenty of unused or underused highways and bridges in China that made a few red families lots of money. It’s fascinating to me that some people think corruption in China is lower than the USA. Not even the Chinese would make such a claim.

I did not at all claim there is no corruption. But look at your own quote: > There are plenty of [...] highways and bridges in China I think we agree that the infrastructure does get built!

Much of it with the main purpose of enriching people.

Re: Why We Can’t Figure Out Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive

#92

Post by [deleted] »

svachalek wrote: post #67
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That simply isn’t true at all. There are plenty of unused or underused highways and bridges in China that made a few red families lots of money. It’s fascinating to me that some people think corruption in China is lower than the USA. Not even the Chinese would make such a claim.

It's absolutely corrupt, but in a way that still gets projects done. Many, many projects, on a scale we can't even conceive of here. It's hard to believe our corruption is worse, but Occam's Razor says otherwise.

[deleted]

Re: Why We Can’t Figure Out Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive

#93

Post by keerthiko »

granshaw wrote: post #50
keerthiko wrote: post #45

A hard-to-capture cost factor is keeping highly used services operational or replaced while doing work on it. A super-fancy new subway with lots of stations in Shenzhen where people weren't already taking trains and expecting to use stations for their daily commute will be much cheaper than disrupting a line service to open a new station in London or New York City. Replacement bus bridge services, network-wide servic…

> A hard-to-capture cost factor is keeping highly used services operational or replaced while doing work on it. Anyone who does any kindof "building" (whether it be software engineers making schema changes, or a general contractor adding to an existing house vs building from scratch) knows this intimately, so really it shouldn't be any kind of surprise at all

Exactly. It's super evident to anyone who works on maintaining SaaS that is in production with at least a hundred users at any given time using it in real-time when you are trying to push features or fixes that even going down for a minute will result in serious service reputation damage. We engineer a lot of reusable scaffolding and reporting tools to modify our services in-situ with minimal/no disruption because it is a huge priority. Operating on public infrastructure is the closest real-world parallel.

But to most people who work jobs where their choices don't directly influence customer service uptime (including a construction worker or a surveyor of construction for the same public works, as opposed to the project coordinator/planner/senior architect/engineer), this is an opaque cost.

Re: Why We Can’t Figure Out Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive

#94

Post by mcphage »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #88

I think the answer is in the first few lines actually. >Here are the instructions Congress gave last March: Not later than 9 months after the enactment of this act, the GAO shall report to the House and Senate >Sixteen months later, the GAO has produced its report and it doesn’t actually perform the cost comparisons as instructed. Bureaucracy at its finest. Over promise, under deliver, and make sure its late too, jus…

> I think the answer is in the first few lines actually.

Not really, given that the main focus of the rest of the article was about how what was asked of them is difficult to determine, and not even well defined.

Re: Why We Can’t Figure Out Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive

#95

Post by sureste »

aldoushuxley001 wrote: post #81
tomohawk wrote: post #36

A family member in the DOT told me this as but one of many tales of woe. Several hundred miles of an interstate were going to be rehabbed. There was a proven technique to redo the joints between the concrete slabs, which were in good shape. A contractor was hired to do a small number of miles as a test, but they had a learning curve. The first few joints that they redid were not done well, but they rapidly improved a…

Almost certainly they switched contractors because of corruption. Here in Montreal, it's well known that the mob runs the construction industry and quite frankly you're not allowed to even bid on contracts without their say so, otherwise you'll get visited for a very frank chat. So I can't speak for why infrastructure is expensive elsewhere, but atleast here in Quebec (& likely RoC) it's simply because of corruption.…

The Guardian had a so-called Concrete Week[1] earlier this year when they published articles related to the concrete industry and its impact.

One of the articles [2] touched briefly on the corruption related to the building and concrete industry.

I assure you, these mafias exist in a lot of places. Odebrecht has entangled governments of Peru and Brazil with corruption here in South America. I would be interested where else has this happened.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/series/guardian-concrete-...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/25/concrete-the-...

Re: Why We Can’t Figure Out Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive

#96

Post by mcphage »

ambicapter wrote: post #65
lemoncucumber wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t fully buy that we can’t work this out. The author gives examples of how it’s difficult to compare, but what those examples show is that yes, to compare properly you need to go very deep on some parts to find out why design decisions were made the way they were. This may be more time consuming and cost more but it’s doable. That's exactly what the author is advocating for, so I'm not sure what your point is.…

Sounded like the author was advocating another mega-project, which comes off a bit weird considering the article they just wrote.

> Sounded like the author was advocating another mega-project

No, they were suggesting that in order to find out why these projects are so expensive, it would be best to hire people experienced with mega-projects and pay them for their time to get answers to these questions.

Re: Why We Can’t Figure Out Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive

#97

Post by lutorm »

rayiner wrote: post #77

There is a saying: it’s good to work on your weaknesses, but don’t dwell on them because otherwise you’ll spend all your time doing things you’re bad at. If we’re bad at centrally planned public infrastructure, we should just do less of it, and focus more on the things we’re good at doing.

Except that just because you're bad at taking care of your health, it does not follow you should spend less time on it. You'll still die early.

What you're saying only makes sense if you're talking about things that are optional, not if they're required.

Re: Why We Can’t Figure Out Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive

#98

Post by athenot »

rafiki6 wrote: post #76
legitster wrote: post #53

Let alone cost, one thing that boggles my mind is how slow infrastructure building is in the US. In our area, a multi-billion dollar freeway or subway line will often be constructed with 5 days of a single 8-hour shift. I get that certain work needs to be done at night, but surely the work sites shouldn't sit empty for 16 hours a day! Just think about the cost of equipment being rented, the overhead that is on salary…

Same principle applies here as with any software development effort. There are some natural bottlenecks that can't be avoided/parallelized (for e.g. waiting for a layer of asphalt to dry). Further, more people doing a thing doesn't mean it will get done faster. You have to contend with overhead of planning, context-switching and handover overhead between workers leaving/starting shifts etc. etc.

True but those constraints can result in more creative engineering.

Look at this timelapse of a bridge getting replaced in 43 hours. They had the new bridge built next to the orignal and "just" moved it into place—I'm using quotes because of course that is an impressive operation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz_j_BEkVCQ

Re: Why We Can’t Figure Out Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive

#99

Post by WanderPanda »

keerthiko wrote: post #45

A hard-to-capture cost factor is keeping highly used services operational or replaced while doing work on it. A super-fancy new subway with lots of stations in Shenzhen where people weren't already taking trains and expecting to use stations for their daily commute will be much cheaper than disrupting a line service to open a new station in London or New York City. Replacement bus bridge services, network-wide servic…

> Significantly more arbitrary middlemen making their way into the process because of "let the market figure it out" does, in fact, create some process inefficiencies in supply chains and contract pipelines. Few countries are as aggressively market-based for things meant for public good as the US.

"let the market figure it out" is high variance, low bias => good in the long run (probably the only stable choice) "let bureaucrats figure it out" is low variance, high bias => more reliable in the short run but escalates in the long run

It turns out most people who influence this decision (politicians etc.) have short-term interests and no long-term responsibility so countries with a weaker constitution (like here in Europe) tend to rather go with the latter one...

Re: Why We Can’t Figure Out Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive

#100

Post by avanderveen »

My gut instinct is that the mob might be a (potentially significant) factor here. I could be wrong, but this is their bread an butter after all: bribe politician to get large-scale infrastructure project and then artificially inflate costs (false purchase orders, buying materials from companies they operate in amounts that are far in excess or what's required and not actually shipping them, etc.) so that they can siphon away tax dollars.
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