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Comment by burlesona | Hacker News Reader

What you're quoting is the money that was allocated to maintenance (the budget), not the actual amount required to maintain quality and level of service comparable to when things were originally built. But also, Seattle is a bad example, as the city of Seattle is largely pre-war and has an exceptionally valuable Downtown, and Seattle is booming off the charts compared to the rest of the US.

If you go look at older suburbs, especially the less wealthy ones, you see a lot of supporting evidence for the Strong Towns argument. Try traveling around metro Chicago, for example. Or go to a place like Memphis, TN and take a hard look at their maintenance costs versus income. Unfortunately, Seattle's economy isn't the norm.

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Seattle does not seem to be skimping on maintenance of its infrastructure. City roads do not have potholes and are generally of good quality.

Anywhere I look, municipalities don't spend too much on road maintenance. If the argument is that it's below what's actually necessary to spend to maintain it, and in near future it will come and bite us, clearly some places must already be ahead of the curve and already have significant pains due to falling behind with maintenance and having no budget to pay for it. Where are those places?

> If you go look at older suburbs, especially the less wealthy ones, you see a lot of supporting evidence for the Strong Towns argument. Try traveling around metro Chicago, for example. Or go to a place like Memphis, TN and take a hard look at their maintenance costs versus income.

Can you name one of those places around Chicago so that we can look at its budget? Memphis budgets around 10% of its revenues for infrastructure. Is it significant? Yes. Will it bankrupt the city? No.

What about the west Seattle bridge, a huge chuck of Seattle just got cut off for many years due to failing infrastructure. That’s probably the first of many infrastructure debts coming due

I live near Seattle. The bridge you're talking about is actually a modern replacement that has failed well before reasonable expectations. I don't recall hearing a root cause, but I don't believe anyone was expecting this or that it's a results of lack of maintenance.

From what I understand, the West Seattle bridge is not failing due to lack of maintenance, but rather due to constructions defects. No amount of maintenance could have prevent the current problems.

> That’s probably the first of many infrastructure debts coming due

The problem isn't related to infrastructure alone. US debt is already above $24 trillion [1]. The Federal Reserve just put $6 trillion on its balance sheet [2] that is unlikely to ever be unwound. We've already spent far into the future. It's important to allocate capital intelligently in the near term to ensure disaster is averted when defaults occur en masse decades from now. I'd rather fix all of our existing infrastructure that gets a D+ rating [3] and then default on that debt in the future; we still get to keep what has already been built. The debt is "funny money".

A better title, with more weight towards the financial situation, would've been "We've Built A Civilization We Can't Afford." We have to stop kicking the can, but you need leaders with the fortitude to tackle these painful issues, and an electorate that will support them. Is that likely? I wouldn't bet my own money on that.

[1] https://www.thebalance.com/national-debt-by-year-compared-to...

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL

[3] https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/

> just got cut off for many years due to failing infrastructure

But not because Seattle hasn't paid its dues, but due to an engineering fault / design problem. The bridge was expected to last another 40 years and was being regularly inspected (which is how the issue was found). The bridge was built in '84 and inspected multiple times a year.

Seattle also has very, very mild weather. go look at the Midwest. Chicago, Minneapolis, Cleveland, etc. places that have hard freezes, frost heaves, and road salt. when I lived in WI, they had crews to fill potholes with 'hot patch' and after a few years, it's more patch' than concrete

Ok. So does that mean suburbs with mild weather are fine, but those without are screwed? Are suburbs sustainable in California but not Cleveland? This doesn't appear to be the message of Strongtowns.

All else being equal, I would bet on people migrating from places with less desirable weather to more desirable weather. More importantly, people with disposal income who can afford to migrate will migrate.

Seattle is a boom town like most of the towns out west. It booms and then the busts are especially hard. My dad remembered the “will the last person leaving Seattle please turn off the lights” sign after working for Boeing in the late sixties. Much of the Seattle suburbs is post war, heck, it’s even post 90s from what I remember growing up.

The answer is always “it depends”. Infrastructure in declining industrial suburbs is declining because... they are in decline and wealth has been shipped off.

Strong towns gives a single answer to all problems with a smarty pants tone. They have a point worth hearing, but it gets old the 59th time you read it.

You also have to account for federal funding. NYC in particular depends on it for infrastructure maintenance, and important maintenance goes neglected without that funding (cf. Hudson Gateway).

NYC sends a heck of a lot more to the Federal Treasury than it gets back.

but even then they provide enough worth to the states to merit the federal costs

Even in Detroit where we have notoriously crippling roads and no public transportation we have constant large strips of highway shut down for replacement. At our lowest point the poor infrastructure cause wear on vehicles, that can probably be curbed with public transportation.

Detroit has a lot of suburbs that are doing very well. The problem with Detroit was basically white flight away from the city and into the suburbs: those people didn’t leave and take their money to California or Texas. The result was a very lopsided tax base in the region.

As someone who lives in a suburb of Detroit, this is an oft-repeated fact that, while true, doesn't capture much of what's wrong with the Detroit Metro area

This argument is it, but it says something different than you realize. The bigger problem is that as cities become less financially and culturally relevant/desirable their revenues decline at faster clip than their investment and spending. Its not infrastructure or anything in particular it's just a problem of congruency.

Infrastructure is a fixed cost. On paper. But of course quality can be always traded off for cost. And that's what happens usually if revenue dries up.

Potholes, cracked asphalt, insufficient storm drainage, and so eventually a lot of damage to property (floods, cars, etc.).

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