Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomc1985 | Hacker News Reader

tomc1985·

Cost disease. Other countries have been completing public works projects of similar-or-larger scope for dramatically less than it costs here. How can anyone rationally accept $175 MILLION (pinky finger) for bridge planning?

There are two many people sticking their hands out in American projects.

View on HN

Most other counties don’t attempt to build motorways through cities the way we do in the US. Until moving to San Francisco I’d never seen a 6 lanes each way motorway. Gained a new appreciation for the public transit in U.K. cities outside of London which I’d previously considered shitty.

M25 from J14-J15 (Heathrow Airport), but I think that's the only place. And it's not through a city.

I did a quick survey of Asia and it seems like they are happy to build expressways through downtown. Tokyo has them, Shanghai has them, Taipei has them, Seoul has them.

East Asian expressways often are less disruptive to the city than in the US. There typically aren't as many, they're narrower, and the ramps and interchanges aren't as big or as numerous.

Not always true, but by and large they don't dominate the city core nearly as much as in most of the US. Comparing Detroit's interchanges vs Tokyo's is stark: Tokyo is an order of magnitude larger city, but has fewer of those large cloverleaf interchanges that take up a ton of space and ruin the walkability of the area. Detroit has multiple in the city center.

There were plans for three circular motorways in central London. Thankfully people came to their senses and it was only partially completed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com