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Comment by srott | Hacker News Reader

Some of them wont sink because they float...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordhordland_Bridge

There are three floating bridges on Lake Washington in the Seattle area as well. The Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge[0], the Homer M. Hadley Memorial Bridge,[1] and the world's longest floating bridge the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge.[2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacey_V._Murrow_Memorial_Bridg...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_M._Hadley_Memorial_Bridg...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Point_Floating_Bridg...

And one on the bottom, no longer floating.

(note -- was a bridge engineer in Seattle and did work on the old 520 bridge when we designed the retrofitted post-tensioning it in the late 90's. Among other tasks, I supervised a guy drilling holes in the bottom of the bridge with a concrete corer. )

"The last tolls were collected on 31 December 2005.”

Let that sink in. They paid for the project and then stopped taking everybody’s money.

That was the plan in Chicago, too...

> Tolls were reinstated on the bridge in 2019 to finance other road projects in the area

:-\

IMO it's probably a better idea to just keep on collecting them, and putting it away for the future. E.g. the I-5 bridge(s) across the Columbia River had tolls which stopped when Oregon & Washington bought the bridge, and now look where we are at. We have a 110 year old bridge needing replacement and no funds set aside for it. So what they will undoubtedly do is add tolls after spending a few billion to build a new bridge, and eventually it will get paid off. We could have been saving up for the cost and getting interest on it instead of the other way around. Even with a fairly modest toll, when you have a century to save.

This does require some legislative fortitude, however, to set aside the money for real and not just spend it on other things.

To me, the way they've done it seems correct. In your mind, where does the interest come from on the money saved for the bridge? The government has to be collecting interest from somebody no?

Local governments use banks. What are you getting at?

I assume the state can buy shares in index funds like the rest of us.

So, lets expand that idea a bit. Why doesn't the government just buy a lot of shares in index funds, kind of like an endowment, and then never collect any taxes? I can see a world where a large portion of private enterprise is held/managed by the government, and the proceeds of that is used to fund public works.

Well, the first reason is that most state governments[0] do not have anywhere near enough money in their accounts to get a return that will replace the revenue stream they get today through taxes. You might be able to build it over time by reinvesting budget surpluses.

The other problem I foresee is that the market is fickle. The S&P 500 reached a level in the second half of 2000 that it would not see again for over 14 years[1]. Any investment that needs to generate consistent revenue isn't going to have nearly the growth rate over the long haul that an index fund would provide. That makes the initial investment requirement significantly larger.

But otherwise, I am okay with the government owning a lot of private enterprise via index funds, so long as it has exactly the same voting power that I have. Which is to say, none.

[0] In case anyone needed the clarification, this whole discussion is about state governments; it does not really apply to the federal government for obvious reasons.

[1] Adjusted for inflation. The index did recover to the same number in 2007 just before dropping 50% in 2008.

Well, for the sake of argument, let’s say the federal government prints all of the money the state would need for an endowment and hands it to the state. There is inflation, but the state never has to collect taxes again.

I think there are some small optimizations we can make to this flow though, like what if the feds who printed the money held the endowment for the state and just distributed payments, instead of letting each state manage its own endowment.

Pretty much the same? Inflation, but no taxes.

There is a principle of governance that "you are taxing too much" is soo easy to build a platform off of that you will be DOA in elections if you manage any government that tries to invest like you say.

Investment restricted to "government responsibility foresight" infrastructure gets enough flac already. It only takes one down turn for the "golden goose" of the investment to be spent on the buddies of who just got into office

You can't trust politicians to just save money for the future. It will be abused by both sides. One side will gain votes by diverting it to something that has nothing to do with transportation, the other side will gain votes by repealing it and taking credit for lowering taxes.

I agree, it would be tough to implement, and I do not have an easy answer. Maybe something like a deposit-only account with a binding agreement on the earliest date the money can be withdrawn. No, I do not know how such a thing could be created in practice :). If it were possible, that would address the first issue, but not the second.

On the other hand it is more fair for the people using the new bridge to pay for it than for previous generations to pay for the old bridge and then keep paying for the new one which they will never see.

I consider infrastructure like bridges to be fundamental constructs of society, something we should build to promote the general welfare. I willingly pay for infrastructure today that will get more use by my children than I will ever see, and I think that is fair. My parents contributed to much of the infrastructure I am using.

> willingly pay for infrastructure today that will get more use by my children than I will ever see

Well, not many voters think that way...

And that’s how we ended up with the selfish Boomer meme. Previous generations set them up for success. Rather than paying it forward, they kept those funds along with their own economic growth and left the rest of us in the lurch.

There is a huge difference in being taxed to create and maintain infrastructure that you and your children will both use, and being taxed to fund future hypothetical infrastructure that you will never use.

I don't like that we as a country put off the costs of maintenance as long as possible thus creating debt for future generations, but asking the current generation to create a savings fund to pay the future generation's (non emergency) expenses is a bridge too far.

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in"

Still is the plan, they just keep building and rebuilding the roads.

Man in Year 10: See, this is how you do it. No tolls.

Man in Year 50: We need funding for much needed maintenance that has been neglected through sheer incompetence

We did that here in Seattle, where we have the longest floating bridge in the world, SR 520 across Lake Washington: tolls stopped in 1979 after construction was paid off.

Alas, tolling resumed in 2011, to pay for the complete reconstruction of the bridge. This time we are probably stuck with it, since WSDOT has grown inordinately fond of tolling as a traffic-management tool.

How do they pay for maintenance?

> Plans for a bridge had existed since the 1960s, and after the decision to construct the bridge was passed by the Parliament of Norway in 1989, construction started in 1991. The bridge opened on 22 September 1994

Pretty impressive timeline for an innovative idea.

And here in NY we've had 4 generations working on the 2nd ave subway line and only 3 of planned 15 stations have been opened so far.

I live in Seattle. _Our_ bridges sink!

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0YQ3vuyyY

I'm not an expert but I have seen Titanic (1997) and I would think a floating bridge is most vulnerable to sinking.

Nah. You see the floating bridge is compartmentalized, so that it is impossible for an entire segment to flood at once and sink.

They are virtually unsinkable!

Seattle: hold my beer.

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