There would be plenty of well paid union and trades jobs to be had if we could pony up the funds to rehab, repair, and replace the crumbling bridges, roads, pipelines, sewers, etc across the country.
The federal government can borrow at extremely low interest and literally create currency if needed. If the infrastructure expands the productivity of the economy as a whole that currency creation does not contribute to inflation.
At a macro level bridges enable more efficient commerce, so issuing currency to pay for them can be the most optimal way forward for the society. If the bridge saves 1,000 farmers $150,000 in fuel/transportation cost over the course of its life, that bridge created $150,000,000 of new value in the economy.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-YRSqaPtMg
Edit: I am getting down voted lol. Maybe our infrastructure is not producing as much Energy as US but I am mostly talking about Grid. I guess I should have cleared that.
In the U.S. we expect to be able to drink the water that comes from the tap, cutting off entire parts of a city for a day or more from the water supply is largely unheard of; same for electricity. We expect actual storm drains and sewage works as opposed to streets just flooding every time there's rain. etc.
I'm not trying to be "down" on India but - having lived with both systems - the U.S. experience is objectively better from every point of view other than price.
I never lived in Bengaluru but I have lived all over Maharashtra and power cuts use to be norm almost over a decade ago but it has changed over last decade.
The population of Flint might disagree, although technically that water kept running while poisoning its population.
On the other hand, the fact Puri, in Odisha, got safe drinking water from the tap was a major news story last year - since it was the first city in India to have that, and even just general availability of piped water at all is uncertain for many in India - many, many people get water delivered by road on tankers.
Now the US has some very remote regions that don't have good power. When it is miles between humans there isn't enough demand to put up wires, but the only people living in those areas like being self sufficient and wouldn't want utility power if they could get it.
The US funds infrastructure handsomely. In fact we probably even over-fund it.
Unfortunately we get very little back for all that funding. If you compare costs for rail and airports and bridges in the US to Europe or Asia, we pay for one bridge what other similar countries pay for three, four, or five bridges.
To some extent the more rules and oversight you put in, the more you chase out any "honest participants". I've seen it personally in federal contracting, the only participants who can get through the bidding process are the exact companies (like the big 5) who you don't want doing your project. The oversight and complexity of the bidding process chases out anyone who is not willing to spend half their time on meetings and contract overhead if that's what the customer is willing to pay for. It's the dead-sea effect but for contracting, if you chase out the good participants and then tighten the noose, you will just end up with worse and worse participant quality on average every time you repeat the process.
There's no easy answer.
Beyond that, we have a history of not making good on things like road warranties -- the state called in the warranty on I-275 back in the 90's and that caused the construction company to literally go bankrupt, so now there's a general reluctance to call in major warranty work. For instance, they haven't replaced the chunk of I-94 near the Indiana border that feels like you're in a paint mixer because the steamroller that did those few miles had a bad bearing, but everyone over there knows about it. It's getting replaced nearly a decade later in the next 6~18 months because that section just needs repaving in general now.
Seems like a fairly easy one, MDOT opens a few job reqs for road marking painting, buys some trucks, and paints lines on our roads. Private contractors makes a lot of sense in some situations, but this doesn't seem like one. MDOT knows how many roads need to be marked, how often, etc, why pay a private company to do so?
Not long ago I was listening to someone at one of those "big 5" companies complain about how new state rules were radically increasing the time it takes to pave a road while increasing costs, too. All with no quality difference in the end. As a tax payer, they were frustrated by it.
He's also expressed the inverse to me, that a lot of times they are trying to get the contractors to do things a specific way and the contractors just wanna rush through as fast as they can and get to the next contract. Sometimes, like in most engineering, there are reasons things need to be done a specific way, but building a road isn't really a collaborative thing, they just need to build it the way it was ordered.
I will add a fresh anecdote however. I was recently involved in bidding a project for a municipality, it was a FEMA mandated sewer improvement project. There was one respondent to the RFP (ours), that was substantially higher than the Engineer's Estimate. Aspects of the bid are still under review by state offices and FEMA, thus the bid was rejected, and the project will circle back for another round.
Was the bid high? Was the Engineer's Estimate low? Both? Why did no other contractors bid on the job?
There only being one respondent can certainly have pushed the price higher. I know for a fact that my portion of the work was estimated responsibly, but it was nonetheless expensive due to a tight schedule required by the city, and restrictions placed upon the work by proximity to residences and historic structures of concern.
Can the schedule be opened up to allow for less pressure? Can the specifications or restrictions be relaxed? What will entice other parties to bid? Can the review process by outside agencies be sped up to allow for the project to proceed? In my experience, such reviews always eat away at the project lead-up time, without respective time added to the schedule to allow the work to be performed. It's a lose-lose.
And I kinda lost what I was even going for here. Anyway, you can see any number of stumbling blocks that can be addressed, for one small sewer project. Expand this to public works across the country and imagine it.
A few years back a small single-story structure (~5000 sqft) was built near me. Every workday a plethora of workers would show up and make noise 8-5. Somehow took them the better part of a year to finish it. Really beggars belief.
Most people who complain about people standing around have no idea what is going on. Half of the time someone is moving materials they are completely empty handed going back to the pile for more materials. In some operations there is downtime where nothing can be done, but the need to do more work will happen soon enough that you can't send anyone to a different job (concrete work has a lot of this)
Maybe for a production-builder built tract house, although I bet a lot of those are built in parallel and not sequentially in order to maximize throughput.
But for a custom 5000sqft house, 150 days is a very tight timeline if you're not using pre-manufactured modular framing components like SIPs.
Even if you did build with modular framing, consider the amount of interior detailing required on such a massive living space (probably many bathrooms and a huge kitchen). That takes a lot of time.
Usually, these people are not permitted by the crane owner actually to perform any work on the crane at all.
By the way, salary for a master mechanic in NYC is around $150,000 p/a.
https://secondavenuesagas.com/2018/01/01/inside-times-deep-d...
It's almost like skimping on common human decency social services isn't actually saving anyone any money and just serves to perpetuate a gigantic industry of health insurers and pharmaceutical companies.
In software, you talk about a project you headed or a new feature you developed when you're looking at promotions. In a political career, a new bridge or a new project has more advantages than simply upkeeping an old one for basically the same reason - it can be associated with you specifically in a stronger way, you can talk about it as an accomplishment to more people. "I funded repairs so this bridge didn't fall" is a lot more of a non event, at least until the bridge actually falls and someone has to be blamed.
Exactly. The classic ground-breaking or ribbon cutting ceremonies attract a lot more acclaim than "We're going to shut down one lane of the road a a time for 3 months to re-pave it and make traffic living hell"
In Michigan we've also run into issues where infrastructure crumbles before the bonds that built it from scratch are paid off, which then causes significant pain in paying for repairs, since it requires all new taxes or significant other service cuts. This was one of the main arguments in the 2018 gubernatorial campaign and then in the early part of Whitmer's term.
It's... complicated.
A big problem IMO is the politicization of funding.
So for example, when doing road maintenance, it's unique in that it is essentially ALWAYS cheaper to do the maintenance NOW rather than later. So like doing a cheap slurry seal/ chip seal on a road that was just paved 2 years ago is probably actually a really good idea. If you do maintenance like that, you can pretty much maintain that road indefinitely at remarkably low costs. As roads degrade toward failure, the costs to repair them go up exponentially. However, the public doesn't get it. They see the road that is already failed, full of pot holes and cracks and wonder why they're spending money fixing a road where nothing is wrong instead of doing the same thing to the failed road. What they don't realize is that the cost to repair the failed road is 10x, 25x maybe even 100x more expensive than that cheap slurry seal. But they can't differentiate between a seal, or an asphalt overlay or a full repair of the road and subgrade. So the optics of correct and optimal road maintenance strategy are weird, and make the road works strategy dependent on political whims.
Now the problems really start to compound. Politicians in the US have been divorced from the reality of costs for a long time. Local jurisdictions essentially rely on "emergency funding" to do the really expensive (over 10-100x cost) repairs that could have been entirely avoided if they had just spent the money to do the maintenance earlier. But they had basically NO incentive to do so. If anything, to get the big money from the state or the fed, they have to let it fail so that it looks really bad and becomes a genuine priority or safety issue.
They also just can't help but spend the money on feel-good sexy-looking bullshit out of the general fund instead of properly funding the boring infrastructure projects, because, like a good IT guy, no one notices at all when you're doing your job well.
Couple that with polarized politics: Republicans can't help themselves but fight to cut taxes that should go to things like this because they are displeased with government waste and Democrats can't help but spend the tax revenue on other things without worrying about how to pay for them all until tomorrow. So the end result from both sides is: There's just not enough money to do things the cheap way, so now there's REALLY not enough money.
That reminds me of DB, the german railway company, sometimes trying to get bridges demolished and rebuilt from scratch instead of renovation, because if they are rebuilt, the federal government pays for it while a renovation has to be paid by the DB. The funny part is that the federal government owns 100% of the DB shares.
I find myself frustrated when it seems there are more workers than necessary, when potholes aren't at least filled with a stopgap filler so it doesn't suck to drive/bike on (doesn't seem that hard to do, even if it doesn't fix the road long-term), or when there are many simultaneous projects where you could be working on one site 24/7 to get it done so you have fewer impediments to traffic. (I understand paying for a night shift is more expensive, but the man-hours lost in traffic due to extra projects that take longer seem absurd).
When you ask about inefficiency, what incentives do private contractors have to not milk funds dry?
Anyhow, end result was a renegotiation of the contract where overruns would largely come out of LM's side. Shockingly they suddenly started hitting the targets. /s
It's really hard to structure the incentives right here, and to some extent relies on having government leaders willing to rock the boat in negotiations.
Not enough incentives, in any case. I do believe that there should be more incentives for finishing under-budget and ahead or on schedule to allow rolling efficiently into the next project. Assuming these aren't perverse incentives that invite corner-cutting, record falsifying, and so on.
I don't really care if the government or private contractors are doing the work. In either case, if the work being done is extremely inefficient, I'm less likely to vote for a candidate that wants more money to spend on roads.
Maybe.
> I don't really care if the government or private contractors are doing the work.
Okay, so you really mean can government do a good job of funding a massive infrastructure project?
It can, but everything has been setup over decades to make it fail.
Is the government rarely allowed to break down large projects into smaller ones, and bidding happens on each small slice?
Why are incentives aligned to hamper this?
And how do you prevent different states battling to get a bigger slice, at the cost of others?
> In either case, if the work being done is extremely inefficient, I'm less likely to vote for a candidate that wants more money to spend on roads.
Increased spending doesn’t mean inefficiency. Not until you factor in pushed-off expenses.
If maintenance cost $1.00 per year but rebuilding costs $100.00 after 20 years of neglect; then wouldn’t you say the inefficiency was from the politicians that blocked/prevented said maintenance?
How much revenue do our bridges and roads generate? What would be the loss if even 30% of said roads were to crumble overnight?
Perhaps it’s just me, but I think being pennywise and pound foolish as bad thing.
How many workers for particular jobs do you think is appropriate?
Where did you get this information and why is it correct?
Asphalt is mostly crushed rock, and you need different sizes of rock from fines to bean size. Part of the QA process is checking that the rock mix is composed of the right ratios and have enough faces to meet the spec. This is done with random samples from the asphalt as it’s laid down. They also check the temp, if it’s too cool it won’t work. So they mostly stand around. On the other side of the paving train is another QA where they use a radioactive density meter to check the asphalt after the rollers hit it, and they also take core samples along the joint to confirm the rollers are doing right.
Then there is a guy from DOT supervising. The State owns the roads, he’s there making sure no one is cutting corners and to coordinate the train with the supervisor of the crew.
Add in a couple more hands to rake/shovel (think guardrails etc) and it LOOKS like 5 guys working and 10 standing around but it’s 15 people taking turns in a continuously moving operation, often in live traffic
Despite being visible, having relatively cheap workers hang around when their role is not needed 100% of the time doesn't add much to the overall cost.
And you can't effectively redeploy them elsewhere to other jobs during those gaps anyway.
Asking your friend first would have been the move
This is something that seems to happen in the US on a constant basis. People just assume they know or understand things that they have never learned about nor had contact with and then we get people voting and making policy decisions based on that info that was pulled out of someone's ass
Thank God that sort of thing is limited to the United States.
How did you know I didn't ask a friend first? And second, if my friend agreed these are good questions, then I get to ask an expert? Or do I have to ask more friends? How many unknowledgeable people do I have to ask before I get to ask someone knowledgeable to get an answer?
> Not quite, I'm offended by people assuming they know the correct answer about something and making baseless assertions.
Thirdly, who are you to say any of my assertions are baseless? You don't know if any of my other experience is relevant enough to form a meaningful base on which to pose a question.
I'm wondering why you chose to respond to me rather than the person who chimed in with solid experience and an explanation for you.
If there was a separate "department of closing shit infrastructure" then the politicians might not be so inclined to "keep things open" just to prevent complaints.
Same thing with schools. The state won't pay for updates or maintenance, but they will for an entirely new building. School districts deliberately set up their budgets to maximize the state contribution, which means foregoing obvious updates and maintenance until the buildings become run down enough to capture those sweet sweet state dollars. Even in very affluent towns. That's how two out of six elementary schools in my town got replaced with buildings worthy of a FAANG campus. It's why people applaud the school board's decision to teach high-school classes in converted trailers through my daughter's entire time there, and now the state's going to pay a good chunk of the cost for a nine-figure replacement (that she might never even see). It's really pretty sick.
Also most 70 year old concrete bridges are fine, even as they go past their original designed lifespan with deferred maintenance. But an increasing number of concrete bridges will need major refurbishment or to be replaced entirely. Something like 40% of bridges in the US are past their original lifespan
Privatization is almost the definition of a government not maintaining its bridge (and calling it proper that the government not maintain the bridge is part of the neoliberal attitude). It is exactly the delegation of what some might consider government responsibilities to the private sector.
I used to work as a government contractor and I came out of it with the strong opinion that it's nothing but wasted tax payer dollars designed to enrich private companies over actually getting work done.
There are already. There's more work than people right now. All that work you describe is so expensive we can only do a small portion of it.
What's really needed is more trade school so we can get more people in those positions (and yes, this increase in supply will lower wages).
It actually seems there's more work than money in every single field. We need to figure out how to make a world that doesn't take so much work to keep running. Demographics being what they are, we aren't going to be able to have complete funding for everything in the future.
It's either that, or have a world with well funded profitable amazing things, next to crumbling basic things.
I'm well aware. I'm a lead engineer on a critical infrastructure project in the hundreds of millions range, that probably costs double what it actually should thanks to any number of issues with the process.
> What's really needed is more trade school so we can get more people in those positions (and yes, this increase in supply will lower wages).
Agreed 100%. There is a crisis in the loss of institutional knowledge, bringing new blood in, training and mentoring them up. Workers and engineers are direly needed at all levels.
> It actually seems there's more work than money in every single field. We need to figure out how to make a world that doesn't take so much work to keep running. Demographics being what they are, we aren't going to be able to have complete funding for everything in the future.
> It's either that, or have a world with well funded profitable amazing things, next to crumbling basic things.
Either less work to keep running, or less money to do the work required.
(And any attempt to build anything these days, at least in the UK, will face a horde of NIMBYs and environmental activists trying to stop it, adding more to the cost and timescale if the project ever happens. Even 'green' projects like wind and solar farms face heavy opposition)
During the construction of New York's East Side Access subway project, union rules required 18 workers to run and supervise one of the tunneling machines. The manufacturers of the machine say no more than six are required to do this, which is how many are used in hardly-slave-labor countries like Norway.
Underground construction projects usually require three to four times as many staff in NYC as they do in Asia or Europe.
Also, when you throw huge balls of government money at these problems once every 10 or 20 years, it's a lot less efficient that just funding needed maintenance every year. Those huge federal spending bills tend to get frittered away on all kinds of middlemen and pork projects, and when the dust clears the original problems have not gotten any better.