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Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

bloomberg.com

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Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#241

Post by sleepysysadmin »

>If history is a guide, President Joe Biden’s $1.3 trillion investment may not fund nearly as much transportation as it would in much of the rest of the world.

The article and comments seem to align in that it's portrayed as 'inefficient' but missing that the bill doesn't have much infrastructure in it.

It does have $10 billion for a civilian climate corp: https://www.npr.org/2021/05/11/993976948/reaching-back-to-th...

$20 Billion to Advance Racial Equity and Environmental Justice, for which i don't know what that means but that's not infrastructure.

$175 Billion in Subsidies for Electric Vehicles but only if they are built by unionized workers. Tesla/Musk pretty upset.

$213 Billion to Build/Retrofit 2 Million buildings. Not exactly infrastructure and guess who is earmarked for that...

$25 Billion for Government Childcare Programs again not infrastructure. These might be good ideas but it's not infrastructure.

Infrastructure costs so much because it's not being bought. The money is going to lots of other things.

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#242

Post by dr_dshiv »

hoseja wrote: post #228
dr_dshiv wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions get a bad rap. They don’t have to be bad. Everyone should have an incentive for efficiency.

I feel like unions in the US are like everything else in the US: socially engineered up the wazoo, with nary a hint of any stable foundation.

Where are you from?

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#243

Post by criddell »

_dain_ wrote: post #229
criddell wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even if the cars are automated they're going to continue to be suboptimal That’s kind of irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what you can convince taxpayers to fund. If self-driving cars become a thing, people will move further and further out of the city. Who cares if they have a 90 minute commute to work if they can eat or sleep or work or play games during that time. Taxpayers will continue to fund big ro…

>Who cares if they have a 90 minute commute to work if they can eat or sleep or work or play games during that time. You can do all that on public transport yet people still prefer shorter commutes.

That's because public transportation, as it's run today, is generally a pretty awful experience. In my own vehicle I'm going point-to-point, I can reroute for coffee or food, I can play the music I want, set the temperature to what I want, etc... Also, a big factor these days, using public transportation puts you in contact with a lot of people and your chances of picking up COVID are higher. Although, maybe by living in a high density area you have to accept greater risk during this and future pandemics.

Self-driving vehicles could change a lot of that. Every bus system could morph into something closer to a shared fleet model.

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#244

Post by MattGaiser »

SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #238
drak0n1c wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, my partner was a conference planner and whenever they had one in NYC in the Time offices their team wasn't allowed to adjust tables by themselves, everything had to be done by formal work order tickets and only union hands could touch anything, even equipment they owned and brought in themselves. Coincidentally, this new infrastructure bill has union requirements for any EV work.

Non American here, can someone explain to me what is unique about USA society that creates this situations? I mean, most of the world has unions, most countries to a much greater extant than USA, and yet we don't see those horror stories of loss of work efficiency from anywhere else. What is unique about USA unions that drive those?

Maybe it is just normal in those countries? Each country has things which seem absurd in other countries but are so normal in others as to rarely be discussed.

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#245

Post by throwawaygh »

amalcon wrote: post #177
throwawaygh wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Maybe I've been using that terminology wrong; I'd meant something along the lines of "primarily residential annex of a city". I didn't mean to imply that it's a long distance or low density (in fact, I specifically emphasized Somerville's relatively high density), or that it doesn't have its own identity -- it definitely does. Somerville (and to a lesser extent Medford/Charlestown/Watertown/Quincy) is just where you…

I see. "Bedroom Community" typically means something more like Worcester or Lynn, at least from my understanding. A distinct hub beyond the suburbs from which people commute into the city.

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#246

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

chrisseaton wrote: post #152
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?

It's a trust/cartel thing. Unions sometimes set up such schemes for the same basic reasons that companies sometimes do.

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#247

Post by slowhand09 »

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…

30 years ago, I asked to see how the cable was made. In a hour I was making cable drops and running the cable. Using 25 conductor cable, configuring pins 2,3,7 it was nothing to cable 4 PCs in each of 2 offices in a day. Nevermind the cable ran across florescent lighting, etc. Later that week I learned to check the runs were less than a certain length from the computer room. But primarily I wrote software.

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#248

Post by lakecresva »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #151
lakecresva wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

An investigation, and the legal system. Corporations exist because they make a deal with the state. In exchange for limited liability, they're required to respect the corporate form which entails things like meeting minutes, preservation of certain business records and communications, conducting audits, imposing oversight, etc. If they don't abide by these rules, plaintiffs can sue the company and bypass the limitation of liability to recover from individuals in their personal capacity.

This system of incentives and disincentives does work, and the US had a better handle on it in the past.

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#249

Post by namelessoracle »

dymk wrote: post #191
notreallyserio wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile you end up with a bridge half-built because the cheapest contractor went bust. (I don't know if contractors bid below cost.)

Which seems like an improvement, given the current failure mode is projects get cancelled after a billion dollars are spent on them anyways. At least it was partially finished.

No?

How often in software do we see a half finished product or product not designed to scale and we have to start over from the beginning to get it where it needs to go?

You think this doesnt happen in construction projects too? Half building a bridge that you then need to tear down is awful and should not happen. You are just assuming its possible to finish the rest of the bridge later and that critial parts will be available later and that it being in a half finished state for a period of time doesnt cause major issues to the whole thing.

Re: Why U.S. Infrastructure Costs So Much

#250

Post by truculent »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #237
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #16

Every time any land is going to be developed where I live (Denver/Boulder/etc.), there is always a thread on Nextdoor advocating for people to stop it by raising environmental concerns and putting in a ton of comments. If 1/10 projects get canceled due to individual objections that means a lot of time and money gets wasted. Another 4/10 projects might eventually get built but only after long drawn out discussions and…

It's things like this that make me yearn for the government of yore that just fucking did it , no questions asked i.e. the federal government laying out the interstate highway system. They didn't care it tore apart neighborhoods, they did it because if they didn't, the evil Soviets would eventually build a better highway system and the US couldn't have that embarrassment. A shitty motivator? Sure, but it was a motiva…

But isn’t a lot of the bad infrastructure and urban sprawl a consequence of those very decisions? Perhaps a more considered approach would have worked better in the long term. For instance, in Amsterdam, local people fought back against plans to put highways through the city which has resulted in a much more pleasant urban environment.
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