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Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

> If we made the assembly of steel, concrete, and asphalt cheaper, do you think suburban mayors would stop demanding we build them big box interchanges?

I generally agree with many of Strong Towns' arguments, but this really seems to miss the mark. The reason why major infrastructure projects like regional/urban rail systems, tunnels, etc are so expensive vs other developed countries isn't due to the cost of commodities like concrete or steel.

It's due to the lack of sufficient domestic expertise in designing, managing, and building such large scale works.

Because we don't build that scale of project frequently in the US, when we do it, we don't do it as efficiently. A recent example would be the use of the incorrect grade of steel in San Francisco's new Chinatown subway line.

OTOH, we have huge amounts of experience building big box stores, parking lots, and freeways, which are the sort of infrastructure that the Strong Towns perspective says (correctly IMO) that we don't need so much of.

We need to build infrastructure with higher utilization, which therefore doesn't need to rely on what Strong Towns describes as the Growth Ponzi Scheme, but unfortunately that's exactly the sort of infrastructure that we are not very good at building.

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Two things this makes me think of.

1. The US has a large NIH attitude and is unwilling to adopt overseas experience or standards.

2. Somehow we have to move away from building infrastructure as stepwise huge mega projects. And start building infrastructure as an ongoing incremental and reliable program into perpetuity. E.g. instead of CAHSR designed largely as a dedicated rail system with huge up front capital costs the benefits of which can’t be felt until it is all spent, set up a state rail agency to consolidate and consistently fund incremental improvements to the rail system, with incremental ROW purchases and improvements that over time reach the really big HSR goals. Imagine for example CAHSRs capital budget of $80 billion but instead going to fund an agency for 30 years that can then hire engineers and project managers and allocate it to its projects that have the best ROI over 30 years.

That last one seems to primarily be a political challenge though. Nobody likes state run agencies and everyone loves defunding them.

“The US has a large NIH attitude and is unwilling to adopt overseas experience or standards.”

This indeed seems to be a problem. The US always wants to lead and if something works better somewhere else there is always the excuse “we are too big/spread out/not socialists” or something else. Or it just gets ignored. See healthcare or internet availability.

> internet availability

Remind me again, which nation has produced companies with a realistic chance of delivering satellite internet to every one?

There are plenty of countries that have cheaper and better internet right now.

Most of them are much smaller, meaning there is significantly less distance to cover. Of course you can get fiber to the home every where when you have a small nation. Let's look at larger nations:

Canada has worse broadband but better mobile [0][1]. I'd attribute this to population density: most of their population is fairly close to our border because the rest is a frozen wasteland.

Russia has worse speeds by far, and the certain things simply are not accessible due to being blocked.

No, we're not South Korea, but S. Korea is small with most people living in a very concentrated area. Again, no other nation has companies with excellent chances of setting up satellite network infrastructure, which is a good solution for a nation as big and spread-out as America.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinmurnane/2016/09/15/compari...

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

I live in LA which as far as I can tell is pretty densely populated. I have one provider to choose from (Spectrum) at $70 for 100mbps. That's it. Why is there no competition in this area?

The feds make ISPs spend money on rural areas which aren't really profitable; that's likely a part of it. But there's no competition because there are a limited number of lines available; they can't tear up the street for every one that wants to.

The US has about the same number of broadband subscriptions per household as Sweden. US wired broadband speeds are also in the top 10 in Akamai’s ranking.

And the cost in Sweden is around half of the US.

It looks like Bahnhhof is $43/month for gigabit, compared to $70-80 in the US for Verizon or AT&T. But income is 50% higher in the US, so in terms of affordability the difference isn’t as big. (Remember, fiber service isn’t a product mass-manufactured in China. Everyone from the guy laying fiber to the guy doing tech support is getting paid much higher US salaries, not lower Swedish salaries.)

Sweden median income is 37000 per person ca 45000 in the US. But let’s close this. I am sure you will find a justification for US health care costs too.

Roundabouts seem to bypass American NIH and get straight to our native anti-intellectualism. Probably the most common comment I hear from people encountering them for the first time is that they are too hard to figure out. To be fair, signage can be very poor, but still.

We just got one in my area. It's obviously the first time many people have seen one. And as you said, they are too hard for some people to figure out on the first time. I've seen people stopping in the traffic circle in places that don't even make sense to stop, under any circumstances. There is too much signage, if anything, and the left lane sign indicates it is for a left turn (not a sickle shaped, 270 degree left turn). Thankfully I haven't seen anyone making a left.

One problem with traffic circles is they require a wider carve out in what would be the corners of a 4-way stop. This involves eminent domain or prior government ownership; either making retrofitting difficult.

Compared with most European countries, the bar for being granted a driver's licence in the US is extremely low. It makes sense that it would be this way, given how difficult life is without a car in most places here, but I am often shocked at the standard of driving. In particular, the level of disregard for users of the road who are not in cars. But then, that also makes sense, since many people do not have much experience with using the road without a car.

Not exactly. In America, distances are too long for bikes to effectively cover in most places that are not the east and west coasts. However, this also means that when inconsiderate bicyclists max out at 20-25mph on a 55mph road, they slow every one else down too (even those in cars). When you fail to drive the speed of traffic and slow every one else down, you have no business on the road and are a hazard. Bicyclists ought to stay off roads faster than they can ride.

I personally find incompetent drivers to be far more hazardous than cyclists. Your point in defence of drivers here doesn't seem to address my issue of the ease with which drivers get licenced to drive but calls to question a matter of lack of infrastructure for cyclists. That would be great. It would also be great to improve everyone's driving.

You know we have fast roads and long rural stretches of road between cities in Europe also? Yet there are cyclists on those too here, including on 70mph dual carriageways. Sure, people sometimes complain about the inconvenience of being briefly stuck behind a cyclist, but people still mostly drive courteously around them and try not to kill them. Indeed, nearly all roads have a higher speed limit than most cyclists are capable of - though with the new e-bikes/s-pedelecs that's beginning to shift.

The fundamental problem is that in order for infrastructure to be built, people need to first start cycling. If there are enough cyclists on those roads for it to become a traffic problem, eventually politicians and urban planners will build cycle paths, then hopefully more people will use them, etc.

However I think in the US you have more than anything a cultural affinity toward the car. In the UK and much of western Europe, the roads (besides motorways) predate cars. Cars have to share that space with cyclists, horses, pedestrians. And generally speaking, the more vulnerable and untrained road users have the legal priority and the drivers of the fast metal boxes owe them a duty of care.

The disregard is universal. Those people who disregard bicyclists and pedestrians are also disregarding drivers. A lot of it is ignorance and incompetence. And it works both ways. Pedestrians and bicyclists (most of whom are also drivers) equally have disregard for others. It’s just that usually they’re only going to hurt themselves or inconvenience someone.

Just in the past two days I’ve seen:

A driver turn make an unprotected left through traffic going straight in the other direction and through pedestrians in the crosswalk.

A bicyclist skip a stop sign and turn left in front my car. (It’s rare I see a bicyclist stop for stop signs at all.)

A pedestrian standing on the corner pointed at an angle towards the intersection giving no indication to any of the traffic if he was intending to cross and in what direction.

A driver run a red light full seconds after it was red.

A driver stop in the middle of the road for no apparent reason. (Uber/Lyft drivers frequently do this even when they could pull out and in easily.)

A driver pass someone in the turning lane while skipping a stop sign and then doing about 2x the speed limit.

A bicyclist give a driver the finger when the driver was making a legal right on green and the bicyclist was trying to pass on the right.

In your final example, the cyclist is justified because drivers are supposed to wait for cyclists when they make a right turn, just as they are supposed to wait for pedestrians.

Most of your examples are of drivers making mistakes and, when drivers make mistakes, the odds are higher that a large mass of steel will hit people at high momentum. This is not the case when pedestrians or cyclists make mistakes. We should focus on why we have so many cars on the road and why they are driven by people who are not responsible.

Actually, no. Drivers here are required to yield to a bicyclist already in the bike lane and then enter the bike lane and turn from the curb. He did. The cyclist showed up later and tried to pass on the right, in the legal sense.

The heavy focus on “cars suck” isn’t realistic here. The reasons why are well known. The cities and especially the suburbs were built around cars. You won’t catch me arguing against much more difficult to acquire licenses or more bike lanes or better crosswalks. You won’t even catch me arguing against fewer cars. But it’s going to be a long time before there’s significantly fewer cars.

The idea that drivers are the only ones out there responsible for safety is reflected in the dangerous and inconsiderate behavior of bicyclists and pedestrians. The reality is all three groups need education. But culturally the bicyclists don’t care and the pedestrians are lead to believe drivers are always at fault, causing them to do things like step into a crosswalk unexpectedly after a car is already halfway through the intersection.

> causing them to do things like step into a crosswalk unexpectedly after a car is already halfway through the intersection.

Every place I’ve lived in the US, the pedestrian’s right of way is maintained as long as they enter the crosswalk before the car does, and the status of the adjoining intersection is immaterial. In California law, there’s legally a crosswalk at every intersection with sidewalks, even if there aren’t any markings on the road. A green signal doesn’t absolve a driver of these responsibilities; just like with a blind corner, drivers must slow down to a speed where they can react appropriately to pedestrians.

Pedestrians are so rare, however, that cars don’t know how to deal with them. I’ve never seen a driver in the US stop for someone who is waiting to enter a crosswalk, only ones that have actually started to cross.

Pedestrians aren't rare in my area. Also, there's legally a crosswalk at every intersection, not just intersections with sidewalks.

The part most pedestrians seem to miss is that they also have a duty of care. That means, even if the driver should yield right-of-way, you can't just step out in front of them. If you do, you'll probably be found partially responsible, which will reduce the amount you can win in court.

> I’ve never seen a driver in the US stop for someone who is waiting to enter a crosswalk, only ones that have actually started to cross.

I do this all the time and see it fairly regularly. About 5% of the time, the person isn't even trying to cross. (Waiting for an Uber maybe?)

Pedestrians need to make their intentions known. It's actually really easy. I do it all the time. Stick your hand out in the direction you're trying to cross and try to make eye contact.

Lets talk about “roundabouts”. Near my home town they built one in the middle of nowhere because why not. Then they had to rebuild it because they hadn’t made it big enough for semis to get around. You can probably count on one hand how often each week two vehicles end up there at the same time.

Near me now there are several “roundabouts”. One is a curb in the middle of what is otherwise a normal intersection. One direction has no signs. The other has stop signs.

Another is three sawhorses with an arrow sign and a circle painted on the road around them. The arrow signs might as well just say “good luck”!

No one uses them the way they are supposed to be used because no one trusts other people to use them the way they are supposed to be used. And with the ones near me they can’t possibly even function that way.

All of these roundabouts only exist because people hear how great roundabouts are and demand them. And I’m sure they are great, but you need educated drivers, proper signage, enough space, and consistency. And they need to be used in spaces they’ll be effective. We get none of that anywhere in the states I’ve ever seen.

You serious, Clark? :)

Counteranecdata - Our new roundabout in suburban Houston is great.

But it meets your criteria so you have a good assessment of what's needed.

> Nobody likes state run agencies and everyone loves defunding them.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Ever since Saint Reagan said, "Government isn't the solution to our problem; government is the problem," people believe that any sort of dedicated government oversight is "bad." But the reality is, unless you carve out an agency/committee/trust to manage long-term projects, the oversight for it falls to the whims of whoever happens to be in office at the time.

I think you need to understand this from the perspective of those of us who lean fiscally conservative. Large government projects like The Big Dig and Second Avenue Subway have a history in this country of being horribly mismanaged and wasting enormous amounts of money. And you're basically arguing that this augurs that we should be funding these projects more not less.

Analogously imagine you have a relative who gets sloppy drunk and wreaks havoc every time he's around alcohol. Then he makes the argument that it's because he doesn't have enough alcohol. That maybe if he had a constant secure supply he wouldn't feel the need to binge every time he gets his hand on a bottle of vodka.

I'm not saying that your argument is wrong. But poorly run government projects prima facie justify less government spending not more. If you want to make the case that it's the opposite, there's a pretty high burden of proof.

No, the idea is that you actually need to properly fund and train the people overseeing the projects. Fiscal conservatives have been understaffing executive offices for years and then point at them when they fail. The DMV wouldn't suck if they just gave a bit more money and hired more people, but it will suck forever because everyone thinks it just sucks because Lol government sucks.

Exactly. Underfunding agencies and programs, then blaming them when they inevitably fail and using that failure as an argument to push for privatization has been the Republican modus operandi for several decades now.

The US spends more per unit of service almost every public sector program than European countries. Overall, our non-military government spending per person is actually slightly more than Canada’s. At the local level, it costs NYC twice as much per passenger mile to operate almost an identical subway system to London’s.

Moreover, by your logic, infrastructure would be better in liberal cities and states. But it’s not. Baltimore hasn’t had a republican mayor since 1967. The city council hasn’t had a republican since 1942. Where can I find a republican to blame for the fact that it’s infrastructure is a disaster? San Francisco hasn’t had a republican mayor since 1964, has just a single republican in city-wide elected office, and the entire Bay Area currently has no republican representatives in either the state legislature or the Congress. DC has never had a republican mayor. These places should have great public services, right? If not transit (where Democrats sometimes have to share power with republicans at the state level) but schools, local public services, etc., should be fantastic and well funded, right?

>Moreover, by your logic, infrastructure would be better in liberal cities and states. But it’s not.

What metric are you using to make this claim? I don’t even know of any non liberal cities. And whatever their faults may be, liberal cities and states are more desirable to live in or near, based on price data.

Rich people tend to congregate in blue cities and states, but on the whole they suffer from massive domestic out-migration (more residents leaving for other states than residents of other states coming there). New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Illinois are all losing large numbers of residents to other states: https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5a57cab528eecc1d008b4....

> I don’t even know of any non liberal cities.

Phoenix, Arizona, the fastest growing large city in the U.S. As to states, the 10 most popular governors currently are all republicans, while 7 of the 10 least popular are democrats: https://freebeacon.com/politics/10-most-popular-governors-in....

This is not really a broad political point, but a very narrow response to the idea that infrastructure and public services suck in the U.S. "because republicans." When you live in a city like New York, DC, or SF, where 80% of people vote for the democratic candidate year-after-year, you can't really blame Reagan for the fact that the schools suck, the transit is falling apart, etc.

Sure you can, they need federal aid and aren't getting it. A city can't be by itself like some type of city state, a modern city needs huge federal investments. Which brings back the argument "because Republicans". Try again.

Why do cities need federal aid to pay for purely local services like schools, subways, buses, water/sewer, etc? Maybe you can blame republicans for the lack of high speed rail between New York and DC, but how do you blame them for the terrible schools in those cities, the awful experience of dealing with government agencies, etc?

Also, it’s not clear to me that transit projects in other countries receive dramatically more national funding. The French National government is paying for only 20% of Paris’s new regional transit extension: https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2011/05/27/paris-region-.... That’s consistent with what similar projects in the US receive. (For example, the next phase of the Second Avenue subway is eligible for up to $2 billion from federal sources of a $6 billion total cost. And the federal government is paying $900 million of the $6 billion purple line in Maryland.) More important, it’s a small enough percentage of the overall budget that federal republicans withholding federal support shouldn’t make or break projects.

> At the local level, it costs NYC twice as much per passenger mile to operate almost an identical subway system to London’s. > Moreover, by your logic, infrastructure would be better in liberal cities and states. But it’s not.

NYC and London, both liberal cities, the latter arguably more liberal as regards public transit funding, yet NYC costs twice as much per passenger mile of subway. Seems like being a liberal city doesn't really explain the difference.

What makes you think London is more liberal? Most of Europe is more conservative in many respects than the U.S. in terms of transit funding. For example, for the most part trains in the U.K. and continental Europe are operated by private companies that are expected to cover their operational costs. (Though the government often covers capital costs.) By contrast, transit in the U.S. universally runs at a significant operating loss. Both London and New York, for example, cover capital costs for their subway. But the Tube runs at a slight operating profit, while the NYC Subway only recovers about half of its operating costs. (Tube fare, for example, starts at higher than the NYC subway fare, and for longer distances is almost three times as much.)

> What makes you think London is more liberal? Most of Europe is more conservative in many respects than the U.S. in terms of transit funding.

Are you using the political meaning of "liberal" or the financial meaning, "not very worried about overspending"?

I mean liberal in the political sense of government being ultimately responsible for the execution and success of infrastructure projects. Such a scenario could be financially conservative in the sense of providing transit service on budget, which London appears to do. Or it could be inefficient (or financially "liberal") like the examples we've discussed.

I think the real difference is that in places like London, well off people take transit more than is typical in the United States (due to a history of class and race coding around transit in the US), so there is more political incentive in London to ensure that the government agencies that build efficient, comprehensive, and effective transit.

Similar cultural priorities and even better transit systems can be found in Germany and other parts of Europe.

Or to put it simply, in London, bankers take the Tube. The same kind of people in the US usually drive cars, because the mass transit option is underinvested and hence slower, less maintained, and used mostly by poorer people. This is the case for many municipal bus agencies in the US.

I’m using the political/economic meaning of “conservative.” Requiring the subway to run at an operating profit (London) is a more politically conservative model than treating it as a public service that is heavily-subsidized to keep ticket prices low (New York). Other models typical in Europe are even more conservative. Stockholm’s subway system is operated and maintained by private companies, including MTR (the Hong Kong transit operator). France is trying to privatize the Paris airport and SNCF, the French rail operator. Deutsche Bahn, the German rail operator, is owned by the German government, but operated as a for-profit corporation rather than a government agency. It has operations in numerous other countries, and its CEO is paid over 1.5 million euro per year (4x as much as Amtrak’s CEO).

Indeed, the EU had a directive encouraging deregulation of rail: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_European_Railway_Dire.... It encourages separating the infrastructure from the operating companies, and opening the operations to international competition. If we had that in the US, a private company in Omaha could bid to operate commuter rail service in New York or Chicago. That’s a very politically conservative (neoliberal) approach.

> Requiring the subway to run at an operating profit (London) is a more politically conservative model than treating it as a public service that is heavily-subsidized to keep ticket prices low (New York).

Agreed, but raising ticket prices to ensure that a transit system runs a profit requires that the alternatives (driving, taxi, uber) are sufficiently expensive by pricing in their externalities.

It also requires that your average transit rider have enough income, and that the transit system be clean and comprehensive, which requires investment.

You can't build a great transit system by starving it of revenue.

> It also requires that your average transit rider have enough income,

London incomes are substantially lower than New York incomes, while transit fares in London are substantially higher.

> and that the transit system be clean and comprehensive, which requires investment.

London’s and New York’s subways have almost identical track mileage in cities that are similar in population and density. London’s system is expanding more now, but again that’s due to more liberal policies in New York. The US has some of the strongest public sector unions in the world, which drives up capital costs. It also has stringent environmental review and public participation laws for transit projects, which again drives up capital costs. These are all “liberal” policies.

As to cleanliness, cleaning is an operating cost, and that’s an example of something that the US does in a “liberal” way (cleaning staff typically are government employees), while Europe often does in a “conservative” way. In the case of London, cleaning is an operating cost Transport for London is required to pay for through ticket revenue, while in New York the government covers half the cost. And in Stockholm, cleaning, along with most other operations, is done by private companies.

> You can't build a great transit system by starving it of revenue.

New York spends twice as much per passenger mile as London in operating costs, and several times as much for equivalent new infrastructure. In no way is New York’s system starved of revenue. Same for DC, Chicago, Boston, etc. None of these systems are “starved for revenue.”

> London incomes are substantially lower than New York incomes, while transit fares in London are substantially higher.

Right, which is why I agree NYC subway fares should be higher, and shouldn't be a flat-rate no matter where you are going, which is what they are today IIUC.

But lower incomes than NYC that also means the London underground's labor costs are lower. Londoners make do with the higher fares despite their lower incomes because driving is even more expensive.

> London’s and New York’s subways have almost identical track mileage in cities that are similar in population and density. London’s system is expanding more now, but again that’s due to more liberal policies in New York. The US has some of the strongest public sector unions in the world, which drives up capital costs. It also has stringent environmental review and public participation laws for transit projects, which again drives up capital costs.

Without a citation (I'm genuinely interested) for a comparative strength of transit unions for NYC and London and the resulting effect on capital costs, there is nothing backing this statement besides what appears to be your general anti-union ideology.

London Underground workers are part of a national union [1], and have organized a number of strikes, as recently as 2017 [2]. Regarding environmental reviews TfL has to do those also [3]. Please provide some references to support the assertion that their reviews are sufficiently less onerous than NYC's.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_of_Rail,_Mariti... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_strikes [3] https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/enviro...

Ultimately, Londoners pay a higher price for a higher quality of public transit service. Setting up the system to work that way that way isn't the result of a religious adherence to "liberal" or "conservative" policies, it's a decision to make public transit a priority and establishing whatever structures and incentives are needed to achieve that.

You're arguing that Americans are fundamentally incompetent and unable to govern themselves.

Americans are fundamentally incompetent and unable to govern themselves. People keep blaming “Reagan” but it’s blue cities and states where infrastructure projects fail spectacularly. The Second Avenue subway was built in New York not Montana. The California HSR was in California not Texas. These projects are not underfunded. They’re funded more heavily than comparable projects in Europe. They’re also not undertaken by small organizations on shoestring budgets. The NY MTA has a surplus of highly competent career administrators and engineers.

> The NY MTA has a surplus of highly competent career administrators and engineers.

Does it? Or are the competent administrators (and engineers, but particularly the administrators - managing big projects is hard!) all getting paid bank at the most lucrative private companies?

If you want transparency and cost effectiveness and speed you need some really fucking good management.

I wouldn’t argue that. Other countries have similar issues, but either are politically inclined to ignore them Like many west African nations, or simply power through the issue via the strength of their economy like the European powers.

And before anyone says that the big dig was a success because it made traffic suck less and the waterfront got rich...

Anything they did would have made traffic suck less. With the influx of rich people back into the cities in the late 90s the waterfront was gonna get rich no matter what they did.

With the benefit of hindsight it seems clear that the original 1950s/60s plans (themselves adaptation of 1940s plans) for expanding the highway and subway systems should have been followed (in no particular order so long as it all got done) and they should have tossed in a beltway line (so that literally everyone who needs to get across the city doesn't need to go downtown to do it) of some sort. They had a plan and they didn't follow it. They basically assembled 80% of the puzzle and then left it. That's why none of the major road/rail arteries in Boston link up in a sensible manner. IMO had Boston and the state not shot itself in the foot by repeatedly neutering its transit plans throughout the 20th century (killing I695, not pursuing the North/South station connector, making the silver line a bus line instead of a proper subway, the list goes on) it could have been as economically developed as the DMV area or the NYC/NJ area.

Don't get me wrong, it's nice that the highway is below ground but it has its costs. Literally an entire generation of people grew up not knowing what regular infrastructure maintenance and upgrades looked like because the state was pouring all that money into a bunch of holes under Boston. It was not worth the cost. Given the choice of two ugly highways in downtown Boston bundled with any one of the planned subway developments (maybe the North/South station connector) or what we have today the choice is obvious.

Any large infrastructure project isn't going to be done by a single private organization. It is way too big of a gamble, it has to be funded and overseen by the United States government. The only reason a transcontinental railway was built in the U.S was because of government subsidies. These subsidies were competed over by Union Pacific and Central Pacific, whoever built the most rail first got the most land grants and cash. You could argue that the quality was low because of the initiative but it was iterated on and improved over time.

Private organizations build the infrastructure behind the internet, but that’s because it is simpler than other infrastructural systems.

Ultimately people have finite time, and the people responsible for oversight should be those who benefit the most from the project coming under budget and on time.

So I also lean fiscally conservative, but as I read the argument, it's not that more money should be thrown after bad projects, it's that "if you're going to do something, do it right". Hire people who know what they're doing, pay them well, and give them time horizons long enough to actually complete the projects instead of thrashing about as a new politician comes into office.

I'd actually agree with that - I think the government should do fewer things, but do them better. Infrastructure is one of those things where there's a good economic reason why the government needs to do it (privately-funded infrastructure tends to run into tragedy-of-the-commons and diffused responsibility problems), so if responsibility for infrastructure is going to rest with the government, they might as well get it right.

Right on! Was just driving Oakland to Sacramento last week and lamenting the fact there isn’t a semi-high speed train tracking the freeways all the way out there. So much of our exurban sprawl puts people on 2 hour commutes along that route, seems like a perfect candidate for an incremental rail system.

There's already the ACE commuter train running Stockton to Santa Clara / SJ, but the hours are terrible.

It does seem like a good idea. Happily, this already exists.

https://www.capitolcorridor.org

Yeah, Capitol Corridor is great! I wonder what it would take to convert a bunch of those folks who jam up 80 and 680 every day into riders ... I suppose it’s more complicated than just moving the right-of-way and stations into the more populated areas.

Well, why didn’t you ride it?

The central problem in traffic congestion is all those other drivers ;)

Off peak travel time, and my destination was waaaay past Sacramento. For journeys like that, a two lane highway would be totally adequate. But the massive crush of traffic at commute time is another story...

The observation was really about freeways being built on valuable land taken under eminent domain by the state while passenger rail is mostly relegated to being a second class citizen on freight routes laid out 150 years ago.

Yet there's no shortage of foreign talent. A friend works for a major engineering firm in the US. At one point his office had thirty engineers and technicians. They came from thirty different countries and none were American. The dysfunction seems to be at a higher level.

> The dysfunction seems to be at a higher level.

There was a recent thread, about a paid talk at blackhat, by a scam company, and the audience's pushback. It included a thought, something like, that there are communities of professionalism, and communities of "bs", and they are intertwined interestingly in companies and society.

I fuzzily recall reading years ago, a comparison of subway construction management and cost in various countries. One city that worked well, had the professional expertise to manage the project within the government, able and willing to discipline contractors, and a city culture that this was an area for professionalism, not a playpen for political graft and grandstanding.

Cultures have norms of "this you just don't do". A recurring example is espionage during the cold war. You might kill someone. You can certainly seduce their wife. But you don't otherwise mess with their kids.

I've seen some pretty intense loathing of political subculture, from people in scientific subculture, based on conflicts in such norms (around climate change, and "this is useless research" stories).

Boeing's root failure is said to have been an engineering-centered culture being displaced by another.

So I'd like to see work on how subcultures negotiate and accept boundaries of influence. We frequently discuss examples: the sales team that sells software that doesn't exist, and looks to engineering to magically manifest it. And we name local phenomena, like moral hazard. But I've not seen a vocabulary and theory for discussing such at a larger scale, as instances of larger patterns. Which makes it harder to explore what boundaries might enable less dysfunctional execution of large projects.

Perhaps that's one way to explore "dysfunction [...] at a higher level"?

Do you remember which talk that was?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666060

I think this makes a lot of sense in large organizations, particularly because these different units you speak of are not incentivized to work together, but to compete with each other. They fight each other for the budget so their leaders can advance their careers instead of working together to make the company more efficient overall.

>Nobody likes state run agencies and everyone loves defunding them.

I think there is a general sense of american exceptionalism when it comes to bureaucratic incompetence. It is hard for citizens to point to any well managed government agency.

Sometimes this is a self fulfilling prophecy due to defunding, but more often I suspect it is due to lack of accountability and negligence.

Take the CA DMV for example. No one is accountable for the horror show that is our backlogged paper based system .

For #1 there were mayors literally obstructing the HSR project unless the agency chose a contractor from their town. Going back to your constituents and saying "I brought you the jobs I promised" guarantees reelection. The french offered to build the entire california hsr for a remarkably reasonable price but were turned down because local politicians wanted to score easy political points with their myopic base rather than provide infrastructure.

Reading this reminded me of US stop signs, which are just terrible for traffic and fuel efficiency. I recently went to Europe, and round abouts started feeling "right" so fast I was amazed.

Do civil engineers not learn these things in schools in the US? Is efficiency not considered? So many questions.

Roundabouts are making a comeback.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10-03/rounda...

Roundabouts are occasionally used in the US, but they are not a panacea. They require much more space than conventional intersections, and can't easily be converted to traffic lights. It's also difficult for visually impaired people to navigate roundabouts, so it can be hard to be ADA-compliant.

The Department of Transportation published a study about 20 years ago about roundabouts [1]; I'm sure most American Civil Engineers doing road design are familiar with it.

[1] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/00068/

> It's also difficult for visually impaired people to navigate roundabouts, so it can be hard to be ADA-compliant.

So how do the they deal with this aspect in the EU countries?

Detectable warning surfaces, pedestrian signals, bigger pedestrian refuges are options. There's also a familiarity problem; a guide dog in the US might have never seen a roundabout before and get confused, which is less likely in a country with many roundabouts.

By not having the ADA.

They don't have the equivalent of the ADA?

Sort of. The EU ratified the UN's officiously-titled Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2010, but actual disability access comes down to local laws. Only some EU members implement the standards, and they usually apply only to new buildings. In practice, disability access in Europe is terrible: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/traveling-wi... I'm not disabled, but even my cursory observation noticed how bad it is. There are millions of wide gaps, high curbs, and narrow staircases with no other accessibility options. Last time I visited the British Museum, several of the few lifts they did have were broken with no workaround. And that's one of the more accessible places. Problems with roundabouts barely even make the list.

UK has decent disability law that I’m sure is comparable to the US’s, where both have exceptions for difficult to adapt buildings. Whether that be the protected and iconic British Museum or the hundred year old Tube stations.

The problem is that a much, much higher percentage of the UK fits under protected, iconic, or difficult to adapt.

So does a large part of older US infrastructure. Imagine trying to navigate the NYC subways in a wheelchair.

They have some accessibility laws, especially more recently, but the ADA is an extreme outlier in the western world in terms of how demanding accessibility requirements are.

They are fairly common in Massachusetts where they are called rotaries, which to me is much better than roundabout.

Some more recent signage uses the incredibly sterile and clunky "traffic circle," and I guess I would take roundabout over that if I had to.

All the same thing, just different names. I don't see them often outside the northeast though.

Traffic circles have different design specs than rotaries. It isn't an arbitrary naming difference.

Within traffic engineering there is a distinction between a "rotary" and a "roundabout" [1]. In Massachusetts, every circle-like configuration is called a "rotary" because...

A. Most of them actually are rotaries.

B. The average person is not aware of the distinction.

[1] http://calmstreetsboston.blogspot.com/2012/04/rotaries-vs-ro...

There are not different names for different kinds of roundabout in Britain (except for really small mini roundabouts)

Fascinating! I stand by my point about language aesthetics though.

You're missing two things:

1. The parking lots, freeways, and such that the US builds so much of, at such large scale, is still very expensive.

2. From the article, Chuck's point is almost the same as yours. We have plenty of expertise -- but our experts have been conditioned by the enormous wealth for almost two generations after WW2 to develop systems that are good at all sorts of metrics, but affordability is not one of them.

Whereas your point is that other countries have more experience building things and having to worry about the budget.

I think the reason that these things get talked about mostly regarding transit etc. is that projects that are uncommon in the US naturally attract more attention / skepticism.

As an anecdote, years ago I remember driving in the Austin area listening to local radio and hearing two segments back to back, which went something like this...

Segment 1: "The local light rail plan is a boondoggle, you know they spent $80 million on that thing and hardly anyone rides it! Just imagine how many new schools we could have built for that money!"

Segment 2: "The DOT is considering a highway expansion to help deal with traffic in Bee Cave... this project is estimated to cost $400M, which sounds like a lot, but it's actually pretty reasonable as a percentage of the state's overall budget..."

For context the light rail line was built, it was the first rail project in the Austin area and spanned some 32 miles but has very few stops, is slow, and has very little capacity (because, surprise, they built it as cheaply as they could).[1]

The freeway expansion project is a plan for just a few miles, really to deal with one funky intersection where US290 stops being a freeway. It hasn't happened yet, and maybe won't.[2]

The point of this anecdote is that the entire conversation around infrastructure projects is pretty strange. We spend huge sums of money on "routine" mega freeway projects all the time, and we just think that's normal. Even "simple" residential streets cost a lot more than people realize, and in most cases a lot more than the taxable value of the homes would justify. But we've been so wealthy for so long that we got away with all that without anyone questioning it.

Now that our wealth is fading, we've got a lot of difficult questions facing us.

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

[2]: https://www.oakhillparkway.com/about/

The subway rail problem for SF doesn't seem to me to have a root cause of American governments lack expertise (which they do, to be certain) but rather simply that Americans are dishonest. Tutor-Perini thought they could chisel off a couple dollars by using inadequate rails because they didn't think SFMTA's supervising engineers would notice. They were right: it was a third-party audit that discovered the problem.

As a country we basically venerate fraud. This has consequences which could easily have been predicted.

Don't be so hard on your fellow countrymen. Fraud is quite popular thing to do in other countries as well.

I disagree with the statement in general that Americans are dishonest, but I do agree that Tutor-Perini is one of the most dishonest construction companies in the world.

They've literally never had a project come in on-time or under budget. They're not even all that politically well connected anymore, but keep getting projects because they're one of the few US companies with the experience in massive infrastructure projects.

We also have "Build America" policies that penalize us from bringing in foreign companies with expertise. We have to make a decision, is infrastructure a jobs program for today or an economic investment for tomorrow?

> It's due to the lack of sufficient domestic expertise in designing, managing, and building such large scale works.

> Because we don't build that scale of project frequently in the US, when we do it, we don't do it as efficiently. A recent example would be the use of the incorrect grade of steel in San Francisco's new Chinatown subway line.

No, it's because the government doesn't do it often, because the government is slow and inefficient. Private companies can do it fine; let them do it rather than sending the work to corrupt union shops owned by some one's brother-in-law.

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