And yet our infrastructure is literally crumbling - and repairs often take longer than it originally took to build the thing being repaired.
Is there truth in the idea that repairs take longer? Sure. Sometimes it's due to incompetence and lack of funding. Other times it's for the same reason that software takes a lot more effort to maintain/refactor than it took to write in the first place. There's a lot of momentum you have to undo if you want to make an old thing new again.
I dont know... Japan, Korea and Taiwan can build roads and public transit far better than they do it at home in Boston... And for a fraction of the cost.
> Is there truth in the idea that repairs take longer? Sure. Sometimes it's due to incompetence and lack of funding...
...of course, being able to explain why we are entering a new "Dark Age" would not negate the fact that we are.
I don't really see your point. It is easy to point to something that is crumbling in e.g. California because many of the investments were made in past decades. In Northern Europe e.g. overhead power lines are increasingly rare in urban settings. It isn't really investment in maintenance, but in upgrades.
Science has progressed rapidly in the last couple of decades. These days we are to a large extent limited by other factors, like organizing. For instance if you had a barrier separated self-driving lane on certain highways you could already have self-driving. Of course self-driving already exists in things like trains, there just isn't a lot of incentive to implement that. Having self-driving train carriages departing every minute is entirely possible with today's technology.
So to address the top comment I do think people are wasting their time, even those working on more qualified problems. Because without the larger support and investments it is like trying to bake a cake without eggs.
(I guess trying to bake cakes without eggs on a large scale could actually have a lot of merit, but you get the idea).
In the years 2011-2013, China used more concrete than the US did in the entire 20th century.
The creation of the modern internet is also a modern infrastructure marvel.
And you’d be surprised how rickety it is (a bit by design... a bit because there are still plenty of SPF... a bit because nobody bothers or is able to coordinate maintenance of core infra such as BGP)
Even the Allmighty Germans had a look at their, and were a bit horrified at what they found. (To their credit, it seems they immediately planned a wad of money for extraordinary refurbs)