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Note that the 4.5 years cited for the NEPA process is just the average time to reach an initial decision. It doesn’t include the years of litigation challenging that decision that inevitably follows for any significant project.

My kid’s school tried to convert a declining golf course in a residential area into athletic fields. We’re not talking about a Texas high school football stadium—its some ball fields and tennis courts for an artsy school where sports doesn’t exactly attract big crowds. They were tied up in litigation for the better part of a decade. They spent half as much on the litigation as in purchasing the property.

Coincidentally I've been supporting trying to keep around a local golf course over letting a local private school expand athletic fields on it in my area. In my eyes the golf course is better for the community. People from all ages from the local area come there to play cheap golf or tennis and get reasonably priced lessons. Meanwhile if this plan were to go through, suddenly that area is private and reserved for rich people who can afford tuition at this private school, and all those opportunities for local people to get some activity outdoors vanish for good. Plus that school in question already has athletic facilities, these would just look more collegiate looking I guess...

So you're exactly who the article is talking about: what methods or rationale are you using to try to prevent the new construction?

I've just been trying to reach out to my local representatives and express support for preservation of the course. There are already a number of grassroots campaigns that have been keeping me current on developments. I can only hope it all works out though and this space remains for the public; the bad guys seem to win more often than not and the sitting councilman whose district this course falls into certainly has an amicable relationship with the school.

That was 6 years of planning mostly what to do, presumably.

Another problem with the US legal environment is that all this "planning" effort we do now goes into the whether, not the what. That means despite 1000s of pages, final designs are often lousy and ad-hoc, rather than a plank in a longer term integrated vision.

Public transit makes the problem especially clear, as the benefits for integration vs random flashy projects to hype up the Andrew Cuomo du jour is extremely stark.

When I think about American infrastructure projects in the 70s I think about all the minority neighborhoods they ploughed through and all the roads they closed during the entire construction livetime.

I don’t know how accurate that historical perception is, but if it is that is not how things are done today (thankfully). E.g. I’ve been observing the planning of ST3 in Seattle, and they indeed compromise on design all the time in order to displace as few people and businesses as possible, and they often end up with a much more expensive and much longer building times in order to allow traffic to flow (mostly) unhindered during construction. Without those constraints I bet building would be far quicker. (that being said neither of those are excuses for why it has taken over 2 years to fix the West Seattle bridge).

Interestingly those two constraints clash in the new International District/Chinatown station. One of the alternatives would displace and disrupt more minority owned businesses on the 5th Ave. while the other would disrupt traffic flow for 5-6 years on the 4th Ave. Curiously this is one of really few portions of the ST3 plan where they don’t have a preferred alternative.

Yes, it was definitely a thing.

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-of-...

In Los Angeles the two closest lessons I took were the 210 Freeway in Pasadena (which literally cut through poorer, Blacker neighborhoods) and the 710 Freeway which was supposed to connect to it.

The last part of the 710 Freeway was meant to go through a richer, whiter neighborhood. Some houses were purchased, but the connector was held up in lawsuits from at least the 1970s, and remains unfinished to this day.

For the ID station, I think the idea to bring Union Station back to life and use existing infrastructure to connect the multiple rail options at the same level is by far the best solution. It will pay dividends long-term.

https://www.theurbanist.org/2018/04/16/better-transit-hub-pe...

Believe it or not, New Hampshire does pretty well with building bridges, I saw them build a large bridge within 6 months and it seems roads are kept in a decent shape. In a nearby state where I am, I think it can outdo what you see in your state. Took 10 years to replace a very small bridge across some railroad tracks. That road was closed for 10+ years.

Over rivers ? Where I am, I suggest before you cross, open all your vehicle windows and wear a life preserver, I am serious.

I’ve wondered about state level differences too. Most of the east coast has terrible roads. That’s especially true in NYC where I live. But I did a trip down to Delaware and was on freeways like I’d never seen in the US. Just really nice. Are some states just run much better?

It varies county by county too. “Conscientious Republican” counties—like in Northern VA when I was growing up in the 1990s, or California from the 60s to the 80s—are the most well run. I live in a traditionally red county in Maryland (went Romney 2012, split evenly in 2016) and everything is super well run.

Democrats and Republicans each have things they do well and things they do bad. Roads are generally a Republican thing, and roads are visible.

Not just roads. Northern VA’s excellent educational system was built under republicans, with a few conservative democrat governors. Building and permits are much easier. Even just efficiency of government offices. Getting a copy of my kid’s birth certificate in my county took like 10 minutes. In bored strokes, at state and local level, republicans tend to focus on serving the majority, while democrats are focused on equity and redistribution for minorities.

I grew up in a super-red county in California. Things were horribly run. The area has been under Democratic leadership for the past twenty years and it is a world change in terms of how much nicer, better, and more efficient everything is. The roads are better, the schools are better, the neighborhoods and people are better.

It turns out than when you have people believe that government should exist, and that government can do a good job, you get people who do good work. And when your government consists of people who think it shouldn't exist...you get morass.

Contrast blue counties with red counties in most states and you'll notice a huge difference in how much nicer things are in the blue counties. There's a reason so many Republicans retire to LA and NY: after they've made their money railing "against the libs" they just want a nice place to live out their golden years.

Did your county see a change in significant improvement in socioeconomic status during that time period? Because that’s not a fair comparison. Note I said I was talking about places Northern VA in the 1990s, or Silicon Valley in the 1970s. I’ve never seen these places get better under Democrats.

Also, virtually no republicans “retire to LA and NY” lol. Maybe billionaires who can insulate themselves from the dysfunction of those cities. For middle class people, the major internal migration trend in the country is people leaving those places for Texas, the Carolinas, etc.

Yes, as soon as the Republicans were kicked out of office, the Democrats that replaced them made the area nice, and within a few years the socioeconomic status of the area improved.

Notably, this always happened after the Republicans were kicked out.

Generally, "competent" and "Republican" are diametrically opposed terms. Republicans like Mitt Romney are the exception to the rule.

In fact, every area that has been taken over by Republicans has seen a marked decrease in socioeconomic status following Republican takeover: see, for example, Ohio and Florida, which were once blue states that are now red.

The change of guard is most important from what I can tell. Both parties have their own corruption. Change often and each will stop the other's bad practices before they get too bad.

It isn't perfect, but it is the only thing that seems to have any long term success .

Alternate take: most places where people actually live are governed by Democrats, because Democrats dominate urban areas, and most people live in urban areas. Places with single-party dominance tend to be poorly governed (for instance: the Illinois Democratic party, the Kansas Republican party). When Republicans survive in Democratic areas (for instance: Massachusetts Republican governors) they tend to do well; presumably, Democrats managing in red states do well too, but we don't hear so much about them, because people tend not to live in red counties (they tend to be rural, not urban).

It's mostly party machines that are the problem, not the particular parties.

It's not just state level, the same thing happens at the municipal level. There's a trip I take a few times a year, and I always notice the transition from one town to another by the sudden deterioration of the road.

It's less "how well states are run" and more that some states just get way more money. Delaware gets approximately 50x as much money as California or New York does from the federal government on a per-mile basis.

Why does Delaware get more money per mile?

Biden ?

he is from there and has been a leader in Gov for decades.

Delaware is in large part a drive through state as people go from NYC/Philadelphia/New England to DC. So the roads there tend to be used more by out of staters. Look at the person I'm responding to. That makes it easier for other senators to want to contribute cash. Plus, Delaware doesn't have nearly as many roads, so the total number is still fairly reasonable.

There may be some fixed costs per state. I don't know.

There is a risk that if Delaware got too little money, they could forgo it, lower their drinking age to 18, and have state liquor store sell to everyone under 21 in the surrounding states.

Winter and salt are both hard on roads with lots of freeze thaw cycles putting cracks in the road. So Delaware is an apples and oranges comparison. Delaware is going to have a lot less winter wear on their roads.

New Hampshire doesn't divert gas tax money away from road maintenance. [0]

[0] https://reason.org/policy-brief/how-much-gas-tax-money-state...

One thing they do now is get a half of a plan in place without any idea of how to fund the rest, so that ends up drawing things out.

"Hard to argue that promises were not kept, but something has to be done with an already started project. In that light, one thinks of former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown’s principle, “In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.” "

https://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/story/opinion/2019/02/13/w...

I presume this is Portland OR to Vancouver WA?

It could just as easily be Cincinnati, OH. That’s how bad our infrastructure has gotten.

The I-5 Columbia river replacement bridge just recently got a ton of funding from the WA state legislator, so maybe things are finally moving forward. However I guess delaying the project has been bickering on what to actually put on the bridge. E.g. they want to more then double the car lane count, then they also want light rail on there, and potentially even high speed rail. This feels like a classic case of overdesign.

I do not see how incorporating mass transit is over design for something expected to last 100+ years. Especially for a region that has been adding tens of thousands of people per year for 10+ years, at an increasing pace.

Neither do I, however WSDOT has not released any details on the project but their renderings indicate they want to widen the freeway to some 10+ lane monstrosity[1]. Meanwhile Cascadia High Speed Rail has ideas about replacing the existing BNSF/Amtrak bridge with a double deck four track + four care lane bridge in addition to the I-5 bridge[2]. This combined makes a ridiculous amount of car lanes and railway tracks, plus a redundant bridge. There must be a better—and cheaper—way to cross this river.

1: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/02/18/dont-widen-highways-i...

2: https://cascadiahighspeedrail.com/portland-to-seattle/

Building and planning are two very different things, you can't lump them together.