Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much • Hacker News Board

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#151

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 11:13 PM UTC

lakecresva wrote: post #111

intrepidhero wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firm fixed contracts seem like the way to go, until you try it. What happens is you get a bunch of contractors in a bidding war trying to undercut each other until the actual bid is below cost. That's not sustainable so what happens then? The winner will cut every possible corner to try to make a profit margin and read the contract in the narrowest way possible so they can hit the government with a fat change order.…

Those things have legal remedies, the US legal system has just decided that the investor class should be absolved of any risk or liability. If you intentionally underbid to win a contract, you've committed fraud and are supposed to go to prison to disincentivize the next guy. If you are a contractor and are incapable of giving a good faith estimate of your costs, you're supposed to go out of business. If you cut a bu…

>If you intentionally underbid to win a contract, you've committed fraud and are supposed to go to prison to disincentivize the next guy.

How would you measure and enforce this?

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#152

Post by chrisseaton » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 11:15 PM UTC

candyman wrote: post #37

Thirty years ago when you needed to install new computers in an office I remember it took us weeks to get the cable (Ethernet) installed because one contractor had to pull the cable and cut it at each workstation, another contractor had to come and put the connector on the cable and yet another had to come and plug the cable into the machine. Believe me we were tempted to sneak in one weekend and do the whole thing o…

> another contractor had to come and put the connector on the cable ... severely warned about the consequences

This kind of job moating and threats is a union thing isn't it?

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#153

Post by throwawaygh » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 11:16 PM UTC

amalcon wrote: post #65

bearjaws wrote: post #45

I am of the opinion that continuing to build out all these long 'runs' of infrastructure to serve a even more spread out populace is a dead end. Where I live we spent tens of billions expanding highway infrastructure, and it has not improved the lives of anyone meaningfully, traffic is as bad as its ever been. We need to spend more money creating better metropolitan areas that people want to live in, rather than usin…

The particular project highlighted in the article isn't one of those, though. Somerville (one of the cities reached by the extension) has the highest population density in the state of Massachusetts, and I think it's something like top 20 in the United States by that metric. This is not an "even more spread out populace", it's linking a reasonably dense bedroom community to a regional commercial hub.

Somerville is not a bedroom community. It's not even really a suburb. It's more analogous to a city neighborhood that happens to be under different jurisdiction for historical reasons. You can walk from Somerville to fidelity's headquarters, Harvard, MIT, all the FAANG offices, Amgen/Biogen/AstriskGen, etc.

There's definitely stuff more far flung and less dense within the city limits of Boston and/or on the Orange and Red lines.

The suburbs kind of start somewhere in Watertown/Newton.

The closest bedroom community to Boston, moving west, is probably Worcester.

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#154

Post by chlee » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 11:16 PM UTC

GhettoComputers wrote: post #115

wolverine876 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't see the difference between the current Democratic Party and GOP? I heard that argument for years, but now it's like saying there's no difference between day and night.

What changed? Locally you can see Democrats who would be considered Republicans or Republicans who act like Democrats. Bob Dole did many “democratic” things: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/us/politics/bob-dole-dead... and Clinton was a copy of a republican. > Russell Republicans approached Mr. Dole in 1950 to run for the Kansas State Legislature — they saw the hometown war hero as an easy sell. But he had not yet…

Politics has become increasingly hyper-partisan since the 90s [0]. It has become been more about your team vs my team + purity testes and less about politician's policies. As a result, conservative democrats and moderate/progressive republicans of the yesteryear are becoming increasingly rare nowadays.

For example, 13 house republicans voted for the infrastructure bill b'c their constituents will benefit from the bill. Shortly after, Trump and the ultra-right wing members of the house republicans publicly called them traitor, RINOs, and even democrats [1]. Additionally, they've received angry messages and death threats from their constituents b'c one of the house ultra-right wing republican shared their phone numbers on her twitter account.

0. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-po...

1. https://www.businessinsider.com/republicans-criticize-13-col...

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/10/us/politics/republicans-b...

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#155

Post by DennisP » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #99

DennisP wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article, Istanbul gets things built a lot cheaper, partly because: > Whereas Boston might only build one new transit line every few decades, Istanbul builds dozens. Seems like building dozens of times as much would even more effectively "fund people who vote for people who vote for infrastructure." So why aren't we like Istanbul?

The more regular an activity is the more likely you're going to have people specialized in it - you'll have much more accurate estimates around costs and time to deliver since people will have more recent experience getting it done and you'll have infrastructure around building infrastructure. When these projects are rarer it becomes infeasible for a company to dedicate itself to the labour so you end up with residen…

Yes, that's why doing so many projects helps Istanbul do them cheaper. But my point to GP is that doing so many projects would fund the politically-powerful infrastructure contractors even more effectively. Yet we aren't doing it, which seems to imply that maybe GP's explanation doesn't actually explain our situation.

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#156

Post by handrous » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #90

mistrial9 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen some public transportation work up close in the USA -- "me first" and competition between different teams ate up quite a bit of the (expensive) time.. lots of very competent, skilled people and also quite cynical and profit-seeking management. The actions of management were sometimes directly contradictory to recommendations by hard-working staff. Worse, management that tried to get things done quickly we…

The old expression "we have the worst system in the world, except for all the others" .. comes to mind That's what (I think) Winston Churchill said about democracy (might be true there). But here, I think you can just say "we have the worst system". Period. The US has a variety of sectors (public works, health care, etc) which aren't just bad but fated to get worse and worse through both through the particular way US…

> That's what (I think) Winston Churchill said about democracy (might be true there).

As E.M. Forster put it (from memory, so I'm sure less well-worded than the original):

"So, two cheers for democracy—there's no occasion for three, two is quite enough."

> But here, I think you can just "we have the worst system". Period.

Yeah, our system's about as bad as it could possibly be and have held together this long, true. And our country's too disunited to ever fix that without breaking apart to do it.

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#157

Post by throwaway0a5e » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 11:19 PM UTC

howinteresting wrote: post #146

temp8964 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently you don't see (don't want to see) the point of the discussion. The context here is not about their ideology or superficial talking points. It's about the mechanism of the power structure. No matter which party gets in control, it will always want to increase national debt, always go for more money and more concentration of power. This is the same mechanism applies to everybody, anybody who doesn't want to…

Only one party is remotely supportive of trans rights.

Broad brush social issues like "trans rights" or "traditional christian values" have approximately zero effect on how politicians from each party deal with city and state level economic issues like transit.

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#158

Post by rowathay » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

Shadonototra wrote: post #124

because we are animals stuck on a little dying planet and we believe money is what gonna save us we'll transcend humankind the day we stop trying to profit from each other or worry about "how much it'll cost" capitalism and its market don't want your street to look nice if it's not gonna make them generate profit, even if it makes you happy the market doesn't want it!

Clearly you’ve rejected Capitalism because you don’t properly capitalize anything.

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#159

Post by darkwizard42 » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

intrepidhero wrote: post #34

darkwizard42 wrote: post #12

Why aren't contracts to build the projects tightly written to avoid cost ballooning? When a service is to be provided at a certain cost, it should be provided at certain cost. Some contingencies should be built in (if something gets discovered that was unexpected) but how on earth does every municipal project seem to have so much invested in budget oversight and contractors overbilling or needing overtime to make thi…

Firm fixed contracts seem like the way to go, until you try it. What happens is you get a bunch of contractors in a bidding war trying to undercut each other until the actual bid is below cost. That's not sustainable so what happens then? The winner will cut every possible corner to try to make a profit margin and read the contract in the narrowest way possible so they can hit the government with a fat change order.…

The contract should be ironclad on acceptable quality, consider including a term for longevity of the product in its acceptable state (bridge can't collapse in 10 years or something)

The US has one of the most well-funded legal industries and we are worried that we can't write a complicated and thorough legal contract to do work? Doesn't really make sense.

If the winner cuts the corners and doesn't deliver, they get sued in US's extremely thorough courts. I also think the bar for applying for these contracts should be higher. Firms with liquidity, track record, etc. get the best jobs.

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#160

Post by PoignardAzur » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

ska wrote: post #43

davidw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are all things, but they're things in other countries, too. France has strong unions and subcontractors and bureaucrats and all of that. And yet it costs less there.

I think it's a mistake to think of european unions and american unions as "the same thing". Relationships with unions in the US seem much more adversarial than there, on average. As you say, there are politics, labor relations, etc. in europe too - I wonder if they are just better at cooperating on this sort of project for some reason?

> Relationships with unions in the US seem much more adversarial than there, on average.

Depends. You have "red" unions, which tend to be more aggressive, have revolutionary ideologies, and see bosses as enemies to perpetually keep at bay.

Then "yellow" unions tend to be more centrist, conciliatory and, arguably, somewhat toothless.

Which kind of union is more present varies from sector to sector.

But in any case, if you've ever seen a CGT propaganda poster, you'll never be under any impression that these guys are feeling "cooperative" with management / the government.