Choke Point of a Nation: The High Cost of an Aging River Lock | Hacker News Reader

Choke Point of a Nation: The High Cost of an Aging River Lock

nytimes.com

67 pointsjseliger56 comments

It seems to me that the US struggles not with spending levels on infrastructure, but with correct allocation. There's not enough focus on high throughput, high value trunks, because we throw far too much money at the environmental and cultural scourge that is the many-laned, unlimited access 45 mph roads frequently punctuated with stop lights.

It's true that there's that ASCE report from a few years back that decries how woefully underfunded our infrastructure is. But it also shows absurd things, like that we need to spend an extra 4.3 trillion on surface roads to save 3 trillion in potentially lost GDP over the next 25 years. The next most troublesome category of infrastructure from a funding gap perspective seems to be wastewater (~75% unfunded, but far smaller), which also stems from our failure to keep people in sufficiently dense development patterns.

Going back to the issue at hand, with the inland waterway: the same report puts the economic cost of underfunding waterways at half that of underfunding surface roads. But the underfunding for waterways is 2 orders of magnitude lower than that for surface roads... American infrastructure policy is akin to a dog perishing in a house fire because it's too busy chasing its own tail to step out the open front door.

I highly encourage people to think about page 5 of this ASCE report (http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/2...) and ponder the disparities.

ASCE is hardly a disinterested party here. More infrastructure projects means more money and influence for ASCE.

To some extent I'm sure that's true, but I'm guessing that this report relies less on that, and more on mindless calculations of "could this be improved/built up/repaired?" while failing to step back and realize we're chasing an impossible end. It's what happens when people apply their codes and manuals, thinking that those things are purely factual, as if such a thing could ever be free of value judgments that need to be periodically reevaluated (in this case, the values are probably vehicle speed and throughout.)

"Meanwhile, the old locks and dams are costing the country $640 million a year in delays and closures, according to the Army corps....Even with a tax credit, though, companies building roads or locks would want a return on their investment — most likely in the form of toll collection, said Mike Toohey, president of the Waterways Council, an advocacy group for the river shipping industry. His industry is “not in favor of a toll,” he said. Still, he is optimistic that spending on inland waterways will increase under a new administration."

What baffles me is the total dismissal of a private infratructure project which charges tolls. This would seem to be a perfect project for user-pays funding: the project offers a service with a specific, discrete in time and place, easily calculated value which is extremely large to the user who are supposedly suffering severely under the status quo. My only guess is that the lobbyist affiliation here is the whole story: the industries think they can get full taxpayer subsidies for the costs without having to pay much or any of it, and it's worth waiting for a government solution.

I suspect that if there are multiple river shipping companies but one monopoly lock operator, all of the economic surplus in the river transport industry will be captured by that monopoly operator.

Perhaps the solution is for the river shipping industry to form a co-op to build, own and operate the necessary infrastructure.

Good idea! The more people we get to buy into the cooperative the better it will be! If we get everybody to participate we can just call it "government".

People would complain less if the costs involved were clearly spelled out, as well as who was paying the costs.

Except that government is universal, whereas a river cooperative would only affect the parties directly involved. Thus you could scale things up without getting to government-scale.

Anyone and everyone gets nervous when people talk about tolls on infrastructure bottlenecks. This isn't a car bridge. There is no alternative route, at any price. Those using the lock would have no option but to pay. Such a monopoly in private hands will never be popular.

Tolls on interstate infrastructure have also traditionally been looked down upon. Charging people to move themselves or goods across state lines, even where arguably constitutional, rubs Americans the wrong way. Easing interstate commerce is a large part of why the federal government exists.

You should read Cadillac Dessert. Lots of water projects aren't profitable on their own (generally irrigation projects) and rely on hydroelectric revenues to appear financially viable.

This book probably is the best for understanding how this infrastructure was built in the first place. Isn't ever river dammed west of the Mississippi? That was a crazy amount of work that two rival govt. agencies did very much in competition until they ran out of rivers to build dams for.

So it is no surprise that this infrastructure - built in very different political circumstances to today - is not going to be maintained. When you look at all of it - infrastructure, America - none of it is going to be maintained when the oil runs out. Suburbia with those nice big highways wasn't ever going to be viable post oil. Hopefully Tesla can make U.S. suburbia viable.

I don't get why the US is so bad at infrastructure.

All other first-world countries have entrenched bureaucracies, and pork-barrel spending, and environmental reviews, and zoning, and NIMBY lawsuits, just like the US does. However, those other countries manage to get infrastructure built and maintained anyway. So, given that they face the same challenges the US does, why does the US do so much worse, even though the US has so much more money? Where is the distinction?

Extreme polarization and obstructionism that turns infrastructure spending into wedge issues (especially around trains)

A combination of:

1. US military spending is 1/6 of the federal budget.

2. US population density is low (less than a quarter of that of China, less than a third of that of the EU; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territor...), giving it more mountains, rivers and longer roads.

3. On the scale between "taxation is theft" and "I'm a happy tax-payer", the US population tends more to the first than at least some other countries. US citizens prefer having the money to buy a SUV over having the government build roads.

4. Rich countries have higher wages for everybody, making infrastructure work more expensive relative to the equivalent work in poorer countries (its hard to outsource road works)

5. A bit of imperial overstretch, where new infrastructure gets built without considering the cost of maintaining it (looking at the water situation, is it really a good idea to build out Vegas and Phoenix? Shouldn't Miami be slowly abandoned?) This may be a side-effect of more direct democracy; long-term considerations are trumped by "if I want to keep my job, I can't see 'I'm sorry, we cannot afford that'".

Sparsity, size, diversity, the state/federal dichotomy. All of these affect the way politics play out and are distinctions (to varying degrees) between the US and other first world countries.

To compare capacity, this is only about 22 freight trains per day. (assuming 100 cars per train)

Why are we doing this again? Trains are way more versatile. We can switch trains onto tracks that go all over the place, not just where we have rivers.

Trains can't cross the ocean, but barges don't either. Trains do however carry containerized freight, which is easily loaded into container ships. This is another win for trains.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/us/19dam.html

30% less fuel usage than trains.

I missed where the article mentions the efficiency figure. Can you point me to it? I read it and looked for "30", "rail", "train", "fuel", "efficiency", etc.

Companies that use this infrastructure should be paying the costs of maintaining it. If this system were privately owned, not maintaining it would mean lost revenue. With the government doing it, there isn't such a clear and direct incentive to spend the money.

Well, I don't think the river is going to be privatized any time soon, so government should change how it obtains revenues for this maintenance. It should be charging fees sufficient to do the required maintenance.

In fact, it should be charging fees that raise the most revenue. That also means keeping fees low enough to keep the traffic it has.

It seems like this is too much to expect from legislative bodies to fine tune. Perhaps the states involved should create an entity that they own to manage these issues, just as New York and New Jersey have down with the Port Authority. Each state would own a percentage based on how much of the Ohio River runs through their state and other relevant considerations. And get a corresponding share of proceeds, if any.

The problem is that any 'fee' is subject to political economy. The government may begin by charging the monopoly rent, but will soon grant exceptions to favored groups. After that, the government will raise fees on disfavored groups, and redirect revenue to 'where it is most urgently needed'. The locks will then fall into disrepair, users will find other alternatives, and by the time the government goes on another infrastructure-repairing frenzy, it will be much too late.

Yes, its still going to be government.

I'd rather resources be managed privately but I just don't river traffic being managed privately in this country. Even if a private company managed it by contract, there would be the inevitable kickbacks to the pols making the decision.

Which is why I also advocate reducing the concentration of power our system has created. Specifically, I'd like to see proportional representation replace winner-take-all elections, even in the executive branch.

The issue with proportional representation is that it may reduce the concentration of power amongst the parties, but it will make political parties more important than individual representatives, and promote a hyper-partisan attitude. When turning out 'your side' is more important than convincing the median voter, the parties will focus on their bases, and the candidates will be dependent on the party, which means there will be less room for compromise. This is not so important in multi-party parliamentary democracies such as Italy which have a history of 'minority governments', but will make the executive branch of the USA even more partisan.

> The issue with proportional representation is that it may reduce the concentration of power amongst the parties, but it will make political parties more important than individual representatives, and promote a hyper-partisan attitude.

What you say is arguably a valid concern for one particular method of achieving proportional representation (the Party List Proportional method), but there is no clear reason it would be for other methods of promoting proportionality (such as multimember districts with candidate-centered elections using Single Transferrable Vote.)

> When turning out 'your side' is more important than convincing the median voter, the parties will focus on their bases,

That's already exactly the case with the US system, where elections are won more by turnout and less by conversions. The duopoly naturally produced by FPTP makes efforts to depress turnout of the other sides likely voters (whether by targeted propaganda or actual suppression) a strong tactic.

Hmm, I don't suppose you've ever actually used any of the facilities provided by the PANYNJ?

You mean like the World Trade Center?

Can someone ELI5 please how can infrastructure project exceed budget 4x and plan by 20 years? Was the plan a deliberate fraud or are the estimation methods in terestrial engineering even more imature than in software engineering?

They used an experimental technique, for one thing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/us/19dam.html

http://www.circleofblue.org/2014/world/despite-delays-billio...

I wonder if this was one of those "shovel ready" projects.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/obama-lesson-s...

The replacements locks, Olmsted Locks and Dam, began construction in December 1995. They're due to come online in 2018.

http://www.lrl.usace.army.mil/Missions/Civil-Works/Navigatio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olmsted_Locks_and_Dam

At $3B and 20 years in the making, maybe they're just a little more complex than a shovel.

And it seems a little difficult to blame Obama for the slow progress of a project that began about the same time he was filing papers for his candidacy as an Illinois senator.

Hasn't stopped people in the past so I guess why stop now.

Any idea why it would take 20+ years to build? The largest lock in the world was built in 5 years.

"The corps, an agency within the federal government, decided to build Olmsted with an experimental “in the wet” construction method: Hollow sections of the dam are built on the bank, skidded down to the river, towed into position and lowered into the water, where they are filled with concrete. Traditionally, a project like this would have used a coffer dam — a small temporary dam that keeps water out of the site while construction goes on in the dry.

The “in the wet” method was supposed to save time and money and minimize delays, but it did the opposite. By the time the corps realized its folly, it was too late to alter course. The novel construction process and inadequate congressional funding, among other things, have dragged the project past the quarter-century mark."

Wacky and yet, so typically American. I wish we had a lot less "innovation" in this country's infrastructure.

You can't fight the Corps, or the Bureau of Reclamation. The pork is too appealing to congressional representatives.

Yes, the project was already under way. There was $768B allocated for shovel ready projects and this was 'only' $3B. If was merely a matter of money, it seems like this lock should be done now. Or, given the $768B, replaced with a different design and the failed one cast aside.

People living in the East Bay (SF Bay area) might be interested to know that the 4th bore of the Caldecott Tunnel (completed 2013) was the largest recipient of Federal stimulus funds for infrastructure in the US ([1] via [2]).

My own recollection is that the project was nearing the final planning stages in 2008, but the recession wiped out much of the state and local funding that had been earmarked for the project. The project was about to be cancelled, but Federal stimulus funding came to the rescue.

[1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Work-begins-on-Caldeco...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldecott_Tunnel#Fourth_bore

(Edit: in an earlier version, I claimed that the project was "shovel-ready" in 2008, but since construction didn't start until 2010, I was obviously not correct).

Is my interpretation correct that the main problem in US public infrastructure is that politicians can just move around the funding of already running projects? Or is it bad incentives when doing estimates such that it can't be planned properly?

I'm asking because in Switzerland we have just completed two huge infrastructure projects, one for 10B and one for 2B, with hardly any budget problems. Cost of 1km of rail tunnel is at a reasonable 140M (for two ways, one bore each). So we know it's possible, I'm just wondering what's the difference.

That's just ridiculously less expensive.

Railway bores are gonna be larger (6.2m vs 4.7m) and then you have two bores. They're about the same length too. Bore 4 of the Caldecott is 1033 m.

Yep. It's not exactly easy task either. I'm talking about [1], the new largest train tunnel at the base of the alps, a very difficult terrain to tunnel through, and [2], a new train line, including a new underground train station, right through the fully developed center of Zurich. In a country with among the highest salaries in the world. I'm just still trying to wrap my head around what the hell the US is doing with infrastructure projects. Too many cooks? Constantly changing administration? Corrupt building industry and regulatory bodies? It doesn't seem just a federal problem either, at least in the big US cities there's news left and right about billions wasted in what I'd call small to moderate extensions of public transit infrastructure.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinberg_Tunnel

>> Too many cooks? Constantly changing administration? Corrupt building industry and regulatory bodies?

I'd say not too many cooks, but too many head chefs. From my contact with federal projects there always seems to be too many bosses. Dozens of people/groups think they are the final word on the project. None work with each other. Instead of all sitting in a room to hash things out, project plans are emailed/mailed around. Each then sits on the project for weeks, or months if they feel they need public participation/input. By the time each stakeholder agency does their thing a year has past. Any change then restarts the email chain. European governments seem better at agreeing general concepts and then appointing educated individuals to act as reps. Meetings then move far more quickly.

I'm guessing these administrations are the result of laws and/or regulations, right?

And the US probably has way more regulation, simply because there is a bigger pot to pay politicians and lobbyists from, and they all need something to do/to promise their voters?

Here's an idea: What if every new piece of law and regulation came with a mandatory expiration date - say 10 years. After that date it must pass the legislator again, at which point a new date is set based on an exponential backoff algorithm. At each new vote I'd expect there to be some evaluation of the effects of that piece of legislation.

Now obviously, you still have the problem of strictly partisan politicians, but if you could even just have 5% of legislators not being corrupted by that it would be enough to swing the majority to one side or the other, based on facts.

It's not the amount of regulation on the books. Europe has more. It's a cultural thing. Americans don't trust their governments in the same way Europeans do. Even the most liberal-minded democrats still want government to be constantly checked. That makes those laws that are there very difficult to work with. Everyone sees is as his or her duty to watch what the government is doing. I don't mean just citizens. The American system of divided government often sees state lawmakers at odds with their federal government, doubly so when the project cross state lines. Everyone on the project tiptoes around slowly thinking any misstep will result in legal troubles. Europeans are far more trusting of democracy, taking such matters to the ballot box rather than the lawyer's office.

An example: There is a regulation stating that federal projects must notify and consult affected native tribes. Fine. That's sounds reasonable. But in practice "affected tribes" has become all tribes. Rather than risk getting it wrong, some feel they must officially inform and consult every tribe in the nation. There is a few weeks delay.

Here is the handbook for that reg. Note that this is not the regulation but a guideline on how to obey it. The reg itself is very simple (It's actually a body of several regs, but they all do basically the same thing). What makes it complicated is all the stuff over and above the wording, the stuff you do more out of fear than legal requirement. That stuff gets published in a *.gov PDF and the next thing you know everyone thinks they have to obey every letter of the PDF. The PDF is now a defacto reg and the cycle begins again.

http://www.achp.gov/pdfs/consultation-with-indian-tribes-han...

Maybe it's just a different local optimum. When the Swiss Republic was instated in 1848, the founders drew upon the old tradition of direct democracy, now on a national level. Swiss people are typically very weary of big organisations, which is why we aren't in the EU for one - the federal Republic had to overcome this problem by basically installing checks-and-balances on crack (no one person having executive power alone, two chambers, everything can be overruled by people's votes on every level of the administration). So it basically started with a profound mistrust, but I think through these instruments people over the generations have come to trust the system quite a lot - at least so much that the government has been allowed to do quite a few relatively progressive projects even when challenged by the people's vote.

s/weary/wary/ I think.

Thanks, I never noticed that difference.

> What if every new piece of law and regulation came with a mandatory expiration date - say 10 years. After that date it must pass the legislator again

The Patriot Act extensions show that the "re-evaluation" step will get skipped. Instead everything gets boiled down to talking points that can be used to attack your political opponents in the next election (so-and-so hates cute puppies! he didn't renew the save-the-cute-puppies act!)

Yes, that's what I meant with the past paragraph. But I'd also say the patriot act is (or hopefully should be) a rather special case as it's such an emotionally loaded piece of legislation, closely attached to 9-11.

I used to work for a native American nation. One of the anecdotes from the guy you could consider to be the CEO was that although he could get a grant for $50k from the federal government for road improvements, it cost him about $35k to jump through all the hoops (filing for the grant, documenting that the appropriate oversight was exercised, etc.). It was still a net win, but he would then add that even $50k wasn't really spit when it came to what he was spending overall.

I don't think you can compare projects at this level of detail. My understanding of the Swiss tunnels (congratulations!) is that they were through hard rock which provides predictable support for the tunnel. Tunnels in softer or less consistent materials have much less predictable costs, as do projects involving water.

Tunneling through the alps isn't exactly easy, it's actually harder than through a normal sediment. Well, maybe cost wise a weak sediment may be more expensive (but not by a factor of 20x, more like 1.5-2x), but vertical rock formations bring all kinds of surprises, which leads to accidents including deaths, which leads to insurance premiums.

To illustrate, here's a normal sediment:

-----------------

20y

-----------------

100y

----------------

....

here are the alps:

| 10M years | 10.1M years | 12M years | ....

Edit: You can also compare to the other link I posted in a sister comment, about a new tunnel through one of Zurich's hills. That project was actually less expensive per km than the Gotthard base tunnel, so I don't think the rock is the problem.

Upvoted for adding to the discussion. Downvotes are not for disagreeing.

Heads up: you're being downvoted yourself, because on HN, downvotes are (also) for disagreeing, according to pg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

And, in what I believe is called "shooting the messenger", you too are being down voted.

I think any comment that contains the words d...vote get d...voted.

It looks like I mis-remembered the Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I do still think that the comment added to the discussion, but I won't talk about d...votes in future.

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