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Why isn't LA repaving streets?

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Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#201

Post by jojomodding »

ibejoeb wrote: post #186
scoofy wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can you really blame someone for not sacrificing his position under these circumstances? What? There is a structural deficit problem. The ship is sinking. Complaining about how "we shouldn't have to change anything about the ship" isn't really a reasonable argument. We live on this ship... we have every incentive to make sure it stays above water.

I still don't get it though. Am I right that the proposition is: voluntarily accept a lower quality of life, or we'll either take your property or let it the neighborhood go to pot until you decide to give it up? People are not going to accept that. Look at the fiasco at defunding the fire department. I'll just patch my own sidewalk. I'm not vacating so that the next guy gets a deal. There's plenty of land. Develop t…

The three options you presented are the three available options. There is no fourth. Make a choice.

You might think there is option 4--municipal bankruptcy--but that is just option 2 and 3 combined.

Building buildings somewhere else will not fix your neighborhood.

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#202

Post by scoofy »

Spooky23 wrote: post #196
scoofy wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you are looking at your city budget... you're probably looking at cash-based accounting: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cashaccounting.asp This looks at current costs . The school is a cost every year, so every year that cost shows up on the budget. The problem is that road/water/sewer maintenance often doesn't show up on these budgets because these systems are usually built all at once. Because of this th…

That’s absolutely untrue. The only reason companies track depreciation as they do is because it allows them to defer taxation. Public works projects are not paid out of current cash. Strong Towns makes good arguments about certain things and are critical in a reasonable way of how civil engineering organizations rate the need for more civil engineering works. But the budget discussion makes zero sense. The biggest ex…

Yes, the problem is that our cities are already leveraged up to their eyeballs. At some point, the actual humans buying those bonds start becoming skeptical of the city’s ability to pay them back.

LA currently has about a billion dollars of outstanding general obligation bonds (edit: but that does not include all their future liabilities). They're still rated AA, but I presume that is because the credit writing agencies understand how many untapped revenue streams LA has, but again, those will require unpalatable political change. You can’t keep refinancing forever.

Philadelphia, Miami, and Chicago are getting close to junk bond status, and when that happens, the option to refinance starts evaporating very quickly.

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#203

Post by doug_durham »

duped wrote: post #187
nxm wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the full story. I presume it was some Toyota, which are in high demand. Plenty of small size alternatives are available from other brands with 0 wait time.

This was spread across multiple makes and models. The car I wound up with is larger than I would like, but you're right, it was in stock. Because the dealers stock what people want and lead times (at the time) were atrocious.

I could walk in to any number of dealers and purchase what you are describing tonight. I have an excellent electric SUV that I walked into a dealer an purchased.

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#204

Post by notepad0x90 »

Controversial opinion: City roads shouldn't be for fast driving, they should be cobblestone. Safer for predestrians, easier to maintain, not rough on cars. It encourages pedestrian friendly city planning.

You can somewhat walk in LA but it's damn shame how unfriendly it can be for pedestrians at times. I say shame because of the pristine weather, and people roll around sealed in aluminum boxes instead. trams and bicycles are ideal for it instead of cars. The bus system is ok by US standards too.

Cut the LAPD and the LA sheriff dept's budget, demilitarize them and fund infrastructure with it instead.

https://openbudget.lacity.org/#!/year/2025/operating/0/depar...

Here is their budget chart, there are about 15 countries in the world with lesser budget and GDP. The LASD has a budget of about $4B, more than the budget of 30 countries. Even that comparison aside, look at how they keep increasing their budget. In the LAPD chart above, it is "field forces" (+$200M over 10 years) that keep increasing their budgets, so it isn't "just inflation", and the crime rates don't justify it either. But that said, I get it, LA has bigger problems.

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#205

Post by ndriscoll »

scoofy wrote: post #199
ndriscoll wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capital improvements don't need to be paid all at once; that's what financing is for. And debt service does appear on budgets. In any case, why are we to believe that e.g. $1B in maintenance that's been deferred for decades is "the" problem when the school budget is $500M/year?

You’re making an argument about school budgets being too high. That’s fine. I’m arguing that, our school budgets are set, in large part, by our available resources. Viewing our resources from a long run perspective helps us set our current budgets. If we cut the school budget only when we need to repave roads, we are playing fast and loose with our children’s future. When we set our budgets to be sustainable, we don’…

I'm not even saying school budgets are necessarily too high. I'm just saying that if someone is claiming that what amounts to 5-10% of the budget is why cities go bankrupt, and that's why they need to entirely reshape how they develop to fit some idyllic vision of a pedestrian city, then I'm going to go ahead and doubt their analysis.

Like I'm happy that my (suburban) city requires new developments to connect to a city-wide bike trail network. That's great. I just don't think Strong Towns/Not Just Bikes presents a realistic mental model of the world. They seem to clearly be pushing for a specific vision regardless of facts.

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#206

Post by monero-xmr »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #192
stock_toaster wrote: post #38

Maybe roads would last longer if we weren't all being forced to buy super heavy SUVs just so automakers can skirt emissions and fuel economy requirements. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPm4de6-eTg

The one thing I noticed in NA is that it takes ages to rebuild a road. I have close to zero experience in road construction, but a bit weird to see how they can repave a km stretch of a road here in Tokyo within a week or two, but it took months in other cities i've lived in. Maybe they do a lot of extra work over night over here in Tokyo, and it just goes faster? Or it's a very systematic thing and part of the maint…

Hmmm probably the only thing I’ve consistently noticed around the US is they can pave highways and roads very quickly. That’s the American skill: tons of sprawl and highways. You may have been confusing road repaving with gas or water pipe replacement

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#207

Post by AngryData »

amluto wrote: post #153
scoofy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I say "trivially fix" I mean that, if the City/State wanted to fix the problem, they could. >Re-zoning only works if there are developers who want to redevelop the land. Developers very obviously want to redevelop the vast majority of LA. The marginal cost of a housing unit is vastly higher than the cost of building that unit. To raise long-term tax revenues, LA could not just legalize redevelopment. They could…

> The marginal cost of a housing unit is vastly higher than the cost of building that unit. The cost of building a housing unit is rather out of control in LA right now, due to a number of factors. Some of those factors involve permitting, but some involve complexities of complying with building regulation, and there is also insufficient availability of contractors and insufficient availability of labor.

Plenty of labor and contractors other places in the US that could be brought in if someone was willing to offer stable work and pay. Even with the out-of-town bonus, many midwestern contractors and laborers would come out to near the same cost as locals because they were already making a fraction the wage out in the midwest.

But non-union construction is known to be unstable even outside construction's general boom-bust cycles and nobody is going to travel 1500 miles away without a contract guaranteeing they will have work/pay past the first 2 weeks. Too many workers have gotten burned being given great offers to travel for work only to get screwed over before they can recuperate their costs. Hell our own President is famous for screwing over construction companies and people just accept it as normal for the industry.

Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#208

Post by monero-xmr »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #128
mystraline wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Indiana is now a Northern South state. MAGA governor, doing MAGA things to the state run universities, demolition of decency, acquiescence to federal power when it should fall to the state. And the AG is attacking doctors doing legitimate surgeries (abortion) with criminal harassing charges. Brain drain is also significant around West Lafayette, Marion county, and Bloomington due to anti-immigrant activit…

These are all factual things that Indiana state government has actually done over the past 10-15 years. Not to mention the crippling higher education reforms and the state seizing control over tenure review.

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Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#209

Post by monero-xmr »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #37
atleastoptimal wrote: post #13

US cities over the past decade seem to be in a competition to see who can be the least competently run.

A lot of city governments no longer really focus on the day-to-day living experience in their city. Instead, they focus on property value and the discovery of increasingly palatable ways to limit or justify raising property taxes in order to stay in power.

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Re: Why isn't LA repaving streets?

#210

Post by Spooky23 »

amluto wrote: post #183
scoofy wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The demand is there: https://la.urbanize.city/post/plan-skyline-altering-tower-ab... The point is that the vast majority of budgetary issues in LA could be solved by just legalizing, and streamlining the production of something as simple as three-story row housing like the kind that's normal in San Francisco (which has a surprisingly good long-term outlook despite their current budget woes). It's not rocket science h…

I recently reviewed a bid from a not-particularly-fancy contractor for nearly $1M to build ~1200 sq ft in an empty lot in Los Angeles. This isn’t just a planning permit probem.

Even in cheaper areas without earthquake or hurricane construction codes, minimum $/ft is like $250 (for lowest quality components) and realistically more like $400.

Inflation for materials and labor makes any build incredibly expensive.

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