Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

> Has nothing to do with cookie cutter designs.

If you can't build the design, then someone will have to design something else that can be built. If people aren't already using cookie cutter designs, there is a reason for that. The reason may be one that most people don't like, but it is still going to be there.

And I am putting that the reason is probably going to be that the law probably does require consideration of site-specific factors.

> Strange how literally everyone in the world can figure this out, but not the US.

As mentioned, most of the world doesn't apply US standards and laws.

And you're speaking a bit strongly. Most of the world doesn't figure infrastructure out. The median for project management and country-wide governance is dysfunctional failure across most of the globe. You can tell because most people are impoverished despite us having all the tools to sort that out for something like a century.

View on HN

> As mentioned, most of the world doesn't apply US standards and laws.

EU environmental protection rules are, generally, rather stricter than those in the US, and Europe does mostly manage to build proper train systems (though not nuclear plants, unless one happens to be France).

It's worth noting that the US has no particular problem building _roads_, visiting from Europe, as a country it seems to be about 50% road. I don't think environmental rules are as big a factor as you think they are in the US's train-y woes.

EDIT: An interesting point of comparison might be Ireland; like the US, Ireland is a wealthy country which can't build infrastructure to save its life. It has pretty much the same environmental rules as other highly-developed European countries, but hyper-local politics and extreme NIMBYism makes doing anything impossible.

There's a proposal at the moment to build a high-speed (ie 300km/h) line from Cork to Dublin to Belfast, but it's more or less tacitly acknowledged that that's the sort of thing you just can't do here, so there is a parallel plan, which may actually happen, to upgrade the existing Cork to Dublin line to fake high speed (ie 200km/h); this is kind of within the realm of the possible in Ireland, in that it doesn't require a new line, so may eventually happen at huge expense. Sound familiar?

The US appears to be 50% road due to sampling bias because you travel everywhere by road. The US also also has far more freight rail per capita than the EU.

It’s less a matter of who is better at building rail, than it is prioritizing freight over passengers.

Kinda. If "road" includes parking, they're not that far off, hyperbole aside. https://parkingreform.org/resources/parking-lot-map/

So, funny thing. Most of my experience of the US has been San Francisco and its immediate area. From my perspective, it's very road-oriented, and has an astonishing amount of space given over to parking; giant tech company offices and new apartment blocks are side by side with massive parking lots. You just don't really see that much in large European cities.

Anyway, looks like it's 3% based on that map (though the area I was primarily thinking of falls just outside their definition of 'central', I think), compared to _26%_ for Atlanta. I'm having trouble visualising what that even looks like.

I went to school right in the middle of that map. It’s very selectively picked to get to 26%.

The boundary includes a very small percentage of the city which happens to house a large sports stadiums, local and federal government buildings, a large hospital, and one of the largest universities in the country that is primarily a commuter school.

Also the map seems to count some of the underground parking at GSU as taking up space above ground.

I don’t think they are talking about parking because parking has nothing to do with a government being able to build roads vs rails. Parking essentially has none of the problems of building across the boundaries of multiple land owners that makes building a road or rail difficult.

Even if you do count roads if you move that boundary out just a little the number will drastically drop. It’s essentially a boundary drawn around some government buildings, sports arenas, and one of the largest Universities in the world which also happens to be a commuter school (I went there for undergrad btw).

> EU environmental protection rules are, generally, rather stricter than those in the US, and Europe does mostly manage to build proper train systems

It’s not a question of US laws being stricter (i.e. more protective of the environment), but rather requiring a process that is more onerous and expensive. In France, for example, the government does whatever environmental review is appropriate in deciding whether to build something. It then passes a law to build the thing, which preempts all local laws that could hold up building of the thing. Once the decision has been made, you can’t easily sue to stop the project in its tracks.

In the US, the government’s decision to build something is just the first step in a process that involves many layers of review and phases of litigation that takes years before you can start digging.

> If you can't build the design, then someone will have to design something else that can be built.

Again. This literally has nothing to do with cookie cutter designs.

If something cannot be built in the area because there's some local wildlife, there are exactly two choices:

- no building is permitted, period, so you build in a different place (or don't build)

- you can build, so you chose the cookie cutter design for the type of construction permitted. E.g. you can't build on the ground, but can build a bridge? You literally take "bridge cookie cutter design N" out of 3 cookie cutter designs for a bridge station (or out of the 15 combinations for a modular station because that's what cookie cutter designs are).

> If people aren't already using cookie cutter designs, there is a reason for that.

It's not. It's the US' insistence on how special and unique they are.

> As mentioned, most of the world doesn't apply US standards and laws.

US is not as special as you make it out to be. The world also has "Red Spotted Scuttlers" and different pollution considerations based on locations, etc.

There is a 3rd option - do a custom design that considers site-specific issues. Say there is a project with an unusual requirement. Taking one from my experience, a height limit so that a certain area still gets an appropriate amount of sun.

The options are "go", "redesign to be more squat" or "no-go".

What I'm giving you is a sketch at how advanced environmental laws actually conflict with the idea of using cookie cutter designs. The ideas are at odds with each other.

> The world also has "Red Spotted Scuttlers"

Not after a typical infrastructure project. Usually a bunch of habitat gets killed off and it isn't unusual to lose a population of something exotic.

> There is a 3rd option - do a custom design that considers site-specific issues.

And this option is extremely rare.

> What I'm giving you is a sketch at how advanced environmental laws actually conflict with the idea of using cookie cutter designs.

No. What you're giving me is a lie that these are applicable everywhere all the time. You're also trying to sell a lie that the US is so distinct and special and unique that it can't have cookie cutter designs (unlike other countries) because only in the US this applies everywhere all the time.

> Not after a typical infrastructure project. Usually a bunch of habitat gets killed off and it isn't unusual to lose a population of something exotic.

That is, of course, not as true and not as common as you make it out to be.

BTW. I live in Stockholm, in a country obsessed with ecology and pollution etc. Most stations are cookie cutter designs (of course). There's exactly one subway station that never got built precisely because there was endangered wildlife in the area.

You are really aggressively arguing that you understand US law while demonstrating repeatedly that you don’t.

Why?

The core of the argument roenxi is making is that the legal system in the US is *very very different* from that which adheres in Sweden.

roenxi at no point argues that the legal system in play in the US is good, or better. They are just saying that because of legal barriers, what you seem to imply is incompetence at the planning level is, in fact, evidence of a poorly designed legal system.

No, what roenxi, and now you are arguing, quite literally, that somehow cookie cutter designs for infrastructure are impossible because somehow laws are so extremely different and impossible to go around for every single one of the infastructure projects that for every single one you will need a bespoke design because environmental protection or something.

Which is absolutely blatantly false.

BTW, as far as environment protection goes, there's a sibling comment addressing the same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39511375

Infrastructure always relies on cookie-cutter designs and/or modular designs, and there's nothing special about the US in this regard except its insistence that it is somehow excluded from common sense.

I agree that that comment summarizes what appears to be your argument “you can build infrastructure cheaper even with restrictive environmental protections”.

The response from rayiner explains why this argument misses the point. It’s not about terminal goals being more or less virtuous in the US. It’s about the *process* for building in the US having many points of potential legal interaction that lead to delays and redesign requirements.

And that legal system is quite different from how large projects are able to be executed in the rest of the developed world.

The US used to build large projects this way, but there was a large populist movement that pushed to add more local veto opportunities.

Those vetoes are extremely expensive at the macro level.

Funnily enough how you can build cookie-cutter parking lots everywhere. Cookie-cutter roads everywhere. Cookie-cutter shopping malls and gas stations everywhere.

But any other bit of infrastructure? "oh no, local laws would not permit it because difficult legal landscape".

So this let me get this straight. This https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y7cvszoFfzxmAG6Q8 (Aurora, CO) and this https://maps.app.goo.gl/ByZfS93g82C1NkjdA (Derry, NH) and this https://maps.app.goo.gl/uUEdDNtcK5MfHZUW8 (Ankeny, IA) and literally hundreds if not thousands of these can be built from cookie-cutter designs so that they are really indistinguishable from each other. But when we talk about anything else, it's "impossible because US is like no other and also you have to make sure there's site-specific design because advanced environment laws actually conflict with the idea of using cookie cutter designs" or something

You keep arguing with a strawman. I’m not sure why.

No one is saying “advanced” environmental laws directly conflict with building specific projects. First, I would never call these laws advanced. They’re bad laws, in my opinion.

Second, what they do is not forbid specific designs. Instead, they allow many different entities to exercise fairly arbitrary veto power over large projects, unless their idiosyncratic demands are met.

To first order approximation, it is the idiosyncratic demands of unpredictable groups of complainants with the power to use lawsuits to delay projects, that lead to large bespoke projects.

The core of the argument is that the folks planning and designing those projects are responding to the threat of lawsuits. Most other countries have one feedback period, rather than allowing an arbitrary number of unknown groups to embroil projects in delaying lawsuits at many different points during planning and construction.

> No one is saying “advanced” environmental laws directly conflict with building specific projects.

Why do you think I put quotes in my last sentence? Let's see. Perhaps because it was a quote? Literally?

--- start quote ---

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39510603

What I'm giving you is a sketch at how advanced environmental laws actually conflict with the idea of using cookie cutter designs. The ideas are at odds with each other.

--- end quote ---

> The core of the argument is that the folks planning and designing those projects are responding to the threat of lawsuits. Most other countries have one feedback period

People keep saying this is impossible to do a) cheaply and b) cookie-cutter style because "laws" whereas the US is littered with cookie-cutter designs indistinguishable from each other in scale much larger than anything we're discussing.

It's not that it's impossible. It's that for some reason the US is a) ignorant, b) assumes it's unique and special in each and every shape or form, c) extremely allergic to any kind of infrastructure except roads.

And then that same US turns around, paves an area the size of Pentagon in a village with population of 1000, and plops immense cookie-cutter designs there and no one blinks an eye.

Are you a non-native English speaker? You do seem to be picking a confusingly aggressive tone given that the topic is infrastructure, and I'm not sure if I should be attributing that to culture clash or if it is just a standard misunderstanding.

1. The context behind that quote was "nuclear reactors, bridges, stations". As far as I know parking lots are being built by private interests on private land and there is no regulatory body responsible for parking lots. So it would make sense that they use good design principles.

2. I wouldn't trust the cookie-cutter impression from looking at roads so much; the design isn't as much in the road itself as in where the road goes and flattening out / tunnelling through/bridging over the local environment (your example earlier of the Swedish Metro, according to Wikipedia, is actually interesting from this aspect because apparently they're putting more of the new parts underground for environmental reasons - if so that is quite slow and expensive relative to above ground construction). In my estimation it isn't that usual to get stories of road projects that are turned in knots due to environmental factors.

But if you want to take roads as different that is fine by me. The US does like building roads, maybe they've got the regulation for that under control.

> Why do you think I put quotes in my last sentence?

I thought it was for emphasis. It isn't a direct quote because you're the person who is talking about impossible things or the US being special - I've been saying US law adds a layer of complications and drives costs up. It only makes things impossible in extreme cases (like what we see with the death of the US nuclear industry).

> Are you a non-native English speaker? You do seem to be picking a confusingly aggressive tone

Is ad hominem your go to argument or you just have no others?

As evidenced below I could ask the same question. I don't.

> The context behind that quote was "nuclear reactors, bridges, stations"

Yes, it was. And? How does this context make anything of what I wrote invalid?

How is it you can build thousands of these: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y7cvszoFfzxmAG6Q8 across the country but when it comes to "bridges, stations" this becomes "advanced environmental laws actually conflict with the idea of using cookie cutter designs"?

> the design isn't as much in the road itself as in where the road goes and flattening out / tunnelling through/bridging over the local environment

You don't say. So this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ByZfS93g82C1NkjdA you have no problem building. But anything else "oh it's a problem and needs bespoke designs"?

> It isn't a direct quote

Go look up the definition of a quote.

> because you're the person who is talking about impossible things or the US being special

I'm not that person. You're literally spending all your time in this discussion saying how difficult and nigh impossible it is to build cookie-cutter designs for things like bridges and stations in the US. Even though the US is literally one big cookie cutter design from beginning to end for things that are significantly larger than that. I gave three examples of that.

> your example earlier of the Swedish Metro, according to Wikipedia, is actually interesting from this aspect because apparently they're putting more of the new parts underground for environmental reasons

There's no article on Wikipedia about Swedish Metro. This is the article on Wikipedia for Stockholm Metro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_Metro Not a single sentence on that page mentions environment. Or ecology.

To expand on your frankly bizarre idea that building a station or a bridge is somehow extremely difficult and cannot be done with cookie cutter designs, here's a map of Stockholm's rail transport: https://sl.se/contentassets/7bf3767b47ed44ff98b06403c08eaa6b...

This includes: subway, commuter train, light rail and narrow-gauge railway.

So let's compare.

This is a field of asphalt and concrete https://maps.app.goo.gl/uUEdDNtcK5MfHZUW8 in Ankeny Iowa. Population 70 000. Not impossible to build. No one bats an eye. Completely cookie cutter design. In that small place alone there are several such examples. For example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/nJ4F4ZUxhSJeF6hD9 or https://maps.app.goo.gl/MGMnkJFieo1edgje9

Compare that to the "context of bridges and stations".

Farsta and Farsta strand stations (population ~50 000):

- Farsta Subway station, Google Streets: https://maps.app.goo.gl/jMDdA56xstQ7q77N8 and photo inside the station: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Farsta_T...

- Farsta Strand commuter train station: https://maps.app.goo.gl/RWKjNh3DJfjsDDuc6 and photo inside: https://jvgfoto.se/banor/nynasbanan/alvsjo-tungelsta/farsta-...

See how it destroys less of the environment than any shopping mall in the US?

I mean, we could go on. Literally every single station in Stockholm area is cookie-cutter design. Even the 7 or so stations in the center in of the city that photographers like (see e.g. https://uncharted.io/@dominikgehl/exploring-the-stockholm-su...) are absolutely cookie-cutter with all elements absolutely standard and modular, and just have art added on top of them.

Here's a narrow gauge railway station: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Hägernäs... which is literally in the middle of a forest. Indistinguishable from the "hard to do cookie cuter designs" of the above.

Here's a light rail station: https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fil:Tvärbanan,_Stora_Essinge... oh look. Cookie cutter design. Even with a bridge it takes up about 1000x less space than a shopping mall in a US village. And destroys less habitat: https://maps.app.goo.gl/aYxLypPL41p2yufw7

Somehow you're arguing that these are very challenging to build in the US because, quote: "It seems unlikely that a cookie cutter design could just be emplaced in different areas without running into problems in the environmental reviews" and "advanced environmental laws actually conflict with the idea of using cookie cutter designs".

I will reiterate: the US is a) ignorant, b) assumes it's unique and special in each and every shape or form, c) extremely allergic to any kind of infrastructure except roads.

And then turn around, look at huge swaths of land covered in cookie cutter shopping malls, and parking lots, and gas stations, and.... and say "yup, that is easy, and good design". If that field of concrete and asphalt could pass environmental review, so can any bridge or station.

Anyway, this is going around in circles, so I bid you a good day.

The original text did not include the word “directly”, which, ironically, is the reason your quote is not direct, and directly vs. indirectly is the substance of our disagreement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com