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Comment by dima55 | Hacker News Reader

Building roads is also a money losing operation. Complain about something else. There's plenty here.

Reconstructing an existing road is even worse. Want to repair a failing street? OK, but only if you make every aspect of the supporting infrastructure ADA compliant with the most current laws. We are legislating ourselves out of modern infrastructure.

Or, just maybe, it’s good to make infrastructure accessible?

He's got an unpopular opinion (and calling out the ADA specifically is probably the worst of the examples that can be chosen) but its worth a thought. When the choice is forced to be "perfect, or none at all", a possible outcome is none at all.

On the balance, I find most of these rules to be acceptable most of the time, but it should always be considered that it can be taken too far.

Regulation is a commitment that we prefer "none at all" to the status quo. No more, no less. We talk about regulation creating desirable outcomes, but that's an oversimplification - the ADA does not hire or conscript anyone into the business of creating accessible infrastructure. It threatens that if they won't make their infrastructure accessible, they can't have any. The threat of "none at all" is the whole mechanism.

Which is just fine so long as we remember that none at all is inaccessible to everyone.

Is opposing accessibility the hill you want to die on?

Do you have a ballpark for the financial and human cost of making our basic infrastructure not-accessible?

A larger percentage of people who pay taxes use roads than the percentage that pay for trains and don't use them.

Only place trains win are very specific regions and for cargo

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