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Comment by brohoolio | Hacker News Reader

“Construct a new 2-lane undivided road — about $2 million to $3 million per mile in rural areas, about $3 million to $5 million in urban areas. Construct a new 4-lane highway — $4 million to $6 million per mile in rural and suburban areas, $8 million to $10 million per mile in urban areas.”

$40k isn’t cheap but it’s a fraction of the cost of the roads. I can see the value of experimentation.

Just imagine if it reduced crime. A charge that puts someone in jail for a year costs society well over $40k. Heat definitely can lead to anger, riots etc.

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I wonder why countries like Taiwan and Korea are so good at building things like roads, metro railways, etc, while around Boston a lot of it is basically atrocious crap that comes at multiples, to orders of magnitude, the cost.

Edit: also in Hokkaido, I never saw a single road as bad as around Boston.

Are they dealing with the same climate issues? The extreme hot/cold cycles really tear up Boston’s roads.

Korea has even more extreme hot/cold cycles. Even Taiwan, in the mountains, gets cold/snowy in the Winter, and what I saw there was that there were zero roads as bad as in, and around, Boston.

Also, in Hokkaido I never saw such bad roads, either.

Korea definitely experiences temperature swings. For example, the average highs for Seoul[0] are very similar to the average highs of Boston[1].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seoul#Climate

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston#Climate

Parts of Japan's climate are in many ways like New England's climate, though Japan has more subtropical regions obviously, and also more mountains.

Both get plenty of snow and get humid in summers.

Taiwanese and Korean voters (and voters in a lot of other parts of Asia and Europe) believe that providing high-quality infrastructure and public transit is a basic duty of government. If the transit situation got bad there, the politicians would be worried about losing the next election, so they don't let things get bad.

American voters just have lower standards. This is true in a lot of other areas, especially education. If American politicians believed they would lose re-election because of bad infrastructure, the money and commitment necessary to fix the problem would suddenly, magically appear.

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