Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?
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Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?
#2Because they don't have the people of Palo Alto who refuse to acknowledge that the train tracks preceded their town, and think they have the right to prevent new rail development through it.
Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?
#3California is terrible at managing infrastructure projects.
Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?
#4California is terrible at managing infrastructure projects.
The question is why? Why are some government entities better at managing large infrastructure projects than other?
Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?
#5The fact that taiwan is much poorer also means that the labor cost for construction is much lower
Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?
#6California is terrible at managing infrastructure projects.
Genuine question: do any of the US state governments serve as a better model?
Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?
#7California is terrible at managing infrastructure projects.
It's not just California, it's every state and every city in the US. People have an aversion to public works projects often crying about taxes or how the service is useless or not good enough. We have a political system where one major party (out of two) decries any public spending that might help people who aren't millionaires/billionaires/corporations.
Is it any wonder when you have evil groups of people spending hundreds of millions of dollars to tell people that they should vote against their interests?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-pub...
Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?
#8California is terrible at managing infrastructure projects.
The question is why? Why are some government entities better at managing large infrastructure projects than other?
I'd say in the US at least it's hard for a politician to devote money toward a multi-year program that their constituents won't see the benefit of for quite some time (or in the case of upkeep and maintenance, at all).
The politician isn't looking to do what's right, they're looking to get reelected.
Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?
#9Answer: cars and highways. It's really hard to spend a lot of money replacing something that already works, even if it works really, really badly. High speed rail will only happen with a federal mandate.
Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?
#10[deleted]