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This strikes me as a classic separation of buyer interests from vendor interests leading to misaligned incentives. The contractors have no incentive to update t

This strikes me as a classic separation of buyer interests from vendor interests leading to misaligned incentives. The contractors have no incentive to update their equipment. In fact if this is scientifically proven to be a major solution they should want to avoid this. If the province could incentivize the vendor to pay them more for every year there is no pothole and punish them for every pothole they would totally adopt this tech.

pg_bot 9y ago
I would argue that lack of adoption is likely a discovery and design problem rather than an economic one. In a free market other people can choose to enter into the contracting business. If I have a leg up on my competition (paving better roads for the same cost) I will eventually out compete people who fail to adapt to the new method. This doesn't happen immediately, but you can't fool everyone forever if there truly is a better way of operating. This technology likely has not been adopted due to difficulty and expense of manufacturing a robust machine and lack of marketing. How many people even knew this solution existed? What is the measurable benefit to paving roads this way? How much does the machine cost vs traditional roller method? All of this work is expensive and there isn't a guarantee of success. While the hypothesis seems reasonable you have to do all the math/science to figure out if this truly is cost effective. Ideas are great, execution is hard.
- brianbreslin 9y ago
  Great points. We don't know if he is manufacturing these pavers or licensing his tech to others. We also don't know how much more his are than the regular Komatsu or john deere ones. What if the vendors buy the existing companies because they provide superior service?
  - goodcanadian 9y ago
    I suspect nobody is manufacturing these machines. Unfortunately, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door," is completely wrong. It is one thing to develop a new technology, but another thing entirely to convince someone to manufacture, and another thing again to convince anyone to buy.
- wyager 9y ago
  > I will eventually out compete people who fail to adapt to the new method. This doesn’t really work for government contractors because the government isn’t even remotely a rational buyer. The government doesn’t generally have the latitude to pick the best value - they are constrained by procedural rules. For example, in the US, 5% of federal small contractor spending must go to minority-owned businesses, regardless of their relative quality. Generally there is a fixed bidding procedure that doesn’t allow for judgements about the quality of the final product. Where the government isn’t constrained by procedural rules, politics will come before rational spending. This argument only really works for privately owned and operated roads that have rational incentives.
- aldoushuxley001 9y ago
  Actually in this case the answer is fairly simple: it's corruption. Most people living in Ontario or Quebec know that the construction industry there is dominated by the mob. You gotta be real careful not to step over the wrong people's feet, especially if you're going after public contracts. So, suffice to say, there is little real competition because most new competitors get literally threatened for their lives if they try to compete.
  - 3pt14159 9y ago
    I don’t know about the rest of Ontario, but this is 100% not true for the Toronto area. I used to be in the industry and I saw something shady only once and it was very, very minor. My brother is also a higher up at Ellis Don and he complains about concrete trucks getting stuck in traffic, not mob grift.
    - horsecaptin 9y ago
      I know current senior engineers that see plenty of corruption and shady practice, including on road construction on a regular basis in Ontario, and yes, the Toronto area. Construction companies routinely don't build each layer of road up to code. Thus potholes appear much sooner than they should.
      - 3pt14159 9y ago
        Corruption is bribing the construction inspector to look the other way—it’s not laziness or poor workmanship. I’ve both worked for pavers and for the TTC as a construction inspector. Never once saw real corruption or a bribe over 5 years. I bent the rules a tiny bit once when a concrete placement was going sideways in the interests of expediency (but followed up with additional testing to make sure everything was ok) and the CEO got me a 26 of Crown Royal as a thanks. That’s the full extent of the shadiness that I’d witnessed.
        horsecaptin 9y ago
        Since we're talking roads - layers of gravel, and asphalt - it is very easy to save a a lot of money by shaving off some thickness at any level. Construction companies the world over do this and a mm here and there are usually tolerated. Toronto area construction companies skim so much that the roads cave in. If it isn't corruption, then how are they getting away with it?
- chrismcb 9y ago
  I don't think it really is a free market. When the government is essentially mandating that the lowest bid weeks. A new method may be better and last longer, and be more fuel efficient on our cars. But to recoup your R&D it will most likely going to be more expensive than the lowest bidder. Even if, in the long run, it is cheaper.
- Kagerjay 9y ago
  > If I have a leg up on my competition (paving better roads for the same cost) This sounds great in theory but it doesn't work this way, at least in the private sector. Recently, I had to contract out a 100k pavement parking lot job for the first time for property management. I talked to about 10 different contracting firms, some being indepedent firms - and some firms directly employed by the asphalt plant. Its very hard to tell what you are going to get if you haven't worked with that contractor before. Sure, everything is on a contract with specific line items that specifies each piece of work done (e.g. uproot asphalt where concrete meets it to pave evenly, compact a 2.5" to 2" using a specific grade mix [there's about 3-10 different mixes]), you can read contractor reviews online, but really how are YOU specifically going to measure the results? How do you know your contractor is really going to be doing a better job than another competitor? What it all boiled down for me in selecting the vendor is whether or not they actually specified every concern I had regarding the parking lot job. Did they actually care about asking the right questions, did they put every concern I had in writing under the contract? Was the price reasonable? Did this person seem knowledgeable based on past experience? Honestly this is what it all boils down to most of the time in contractual-based jobs when selecting a contractor that is not the lowest bid job. Public jobs are going to be slightly different, but to the extent the same, depending mostly on the city's municipality. I can't speak from experience here, but it would make much more sense for a government entity to employ stricter regulations on major road arteries (3-4 lane roads) using equipment such as the AMIR. But this is when you have to deal with government bureaucracy, and some contracting firms are not going to look to highly on the need to invest in more expensive equipment and reduce the potential number of jobs they have in the future (since there would be less maintenance needed). Not only that, but also the infrastructure in housing an AMIR along with other cost such as maintenance / training could become costly for the contracting firm. Minor road arteries / minor jobs (1 or 2 lane roadways) probably not so much since its traditional rollers are extremely portable, have high availability (both for renting, contractors familiar with / used the equipment, etc) and require smaller more versatile machines and can be loaded on one trailer. In addition, every city municipality is different. Your rural city in the middle of nowhere is not going to really care about using AMIR. I don't know how much the AMIR cost, but for it to be adopted for widespread use, it would have to have the following: 1. Compact and portability for small and large jobs alike 2. Justified cost for short-term profitability for contractors 3. Enforcement by government and regulations to private industries to use such technology
pedasmith 9y ago
Or, the town engineer can simply add it in to the contracts. An example from the Project Gutenberg copy of [The Municipal and Sanitary Engineer's Handbook](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55935/55935-h/55935-h.htm#Page34 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55935/55935-h/55935-h.htm#Pag...), page 35, there's a considerable discussion of how to specify a road paving contract. And later on page 57 or thereabouts there's talk about specifying the machinery needed to break the stones for a roadway (some produce much better road stones than others). And page 163 (about) has a super interesting diversion on how awful most companies are about replacing the road surface after ripping it up:
- Cyph0n 9y ago
  This is a dupe FYI.
  - pedasmith 9y ago
    Thanks. My browser was acting up. Dups should be removed, and the one good comment saved.
deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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pedasmith 9y ago
Project Gutenberg has a copy of the Victorian-era (The Municipal and Sanitary Engineer's Handbook)[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55935 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55935]. There's a good discussion on how to write a paving contract on about page 35, including a quick discussion of using machinery to crush rocks for the road surface. It turns out that different machines produce wildly better or worse crushed stone, and that it makes a difference. And there's a snarky comment on page 163 about companies that have to fix roads after ripping them up ("breaking"): if they do condescend to cart anything away it is generally the metal, which they think will come in nicely for the repairs of the trench during their liability for such repairs. TL/DR: your town engineer just needs to specify the right stuff in the contract, and the road paving companies will just have to adapt. If you think about it, the same thing holds true for any large, bespoke contract. What you get at the end depends in part on the supervision you put in.

pg_bot 9y ago

I would argue that lack of adoption is likely a discovery and design problem rather than an economic one. In a free market other people can choose to enter into the contracting business. If I have a leg up on my competition (paving better roads for the same cost) I will eventually out compete people who fail to adapt to the new method. This doesn't happen immediately, but you can't fool everyone forever if there truly is a better way of operating. This technology likely has not been adopted due to difficulty and expense of manufacturing a robust machine and lack of marketing. How many people even knew this solution existed? What is the measurable benefit to paving roads this way? How much does the machine cost vs traditional roller method? All of this work is expensive and there isn't a guarantee of success. While the hypothesis seems reasonable you have to do all the math/science to figure out if this truly is cost effective. Ideas are great, execution is hard.

brianbreslin 9y ago
Great points. We don't know if he is manufacturing these pavers or licensing his tech to others. We also don't know how much more his are than the regular Komatsu or john deere ones. What if the vendors buy the existing companies because they provide superior service?
- goodcanadian 9y ago
  I suspect nobody is manufacturing these machines. Unfortunately, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door," is completely wrong. It is one thing to develop a new technology, but another thing entirely to convince someone to manufacture, and another thing again to convince anyone to buy.
wyager 9y ago
> I will eventually out compete people who fail to adapt to the new method. This doesn’t really work for government contractors because the government isn’t even remotely a rational buyer. The government doesn’t generally have the latitude to pick the best value - they are constrained by procedural rules. For example, in the US, 5% of federal small contractor spending must go to minority-owned businesses, regardless of their relative quality. Generally there is a fixed bidding procedure that doesn’t allow for judgements about the quality of the final product. Where the government isn’t constrained by procedural rules, politics will come before rational spending. This argument only really works for privately owned and operated roads that have rational incentives.
aldoushuxley001 9y ago
Actually in this case the answer is fairly simple: it's corruption. Most people living in Ontario or Quebec know that the construction industry there is dominated by the mob. You gotta be real careful not to step over the wrong people's feet, especially if you're going after public contracts. So, suffice to say, there is little real competition because most new competitors get literally threatened for their lives if they try to compete.
- 3pt14159 9y ago
  I don’t know about the rest of Ontario, but this is 100% not true for the Toronto area. I used to be in the industry and I saw something shady only once and it was very, very minor. My brother is also a higher up at Ellis Don and he complains about concrete trucks getting stuck in traffic, not mob grift.
  - horsecaptin 9y ago
    I know current senior engineers that see plenty of corruption and shady practice, including on road construction on a regular basis in Ontario, and yes, the Toronto area. Construction companies routinely don't build each layer of road up to code. Thus potholes appear much sooner than they should.
    - 3pt14159 9y ago
      Corruption is bribing the construction inspector to look the other way—it’s not laziness or poor workmanship. I’ve both worked for pavers and for the TTC as a construction inspector. Never once saw real corruption or a bribe over 5 years. I bent the rules a tiny bit once when a concrete placement was going sideways in the interests of expediency (but followed up with additional testing to make sure everything was ok) and the CEO got me a 26 of Crown Royal as a thanks. That’s the full extent of the shadiness that I’d witnessed.
      - horsecaptin 9y ago
        Since we're talking roads - layers of gravel, and asphalt - it is very easy to save a a lot of money by shaving off some thickness at any level. Construction companies the world over do this and a mm here and there are usually tolerated. Toronto area construction companies skim so much that the roads cave in. If it isn't corruption, then how are they getting away with it?
chrismcb 9y ago
I don't think it really is a free market. When the government is essentially mandating that the lowest bid weeks. A new method may be better and last longer, and be more fuel efficient on our cars. But to recoup your R&D it will most likely going to be more expensive than the lowest bidder. Even if, in the long run, it is cheaper.
Kagerjay 9y ago
> If I have a leg up on my competition (paving better roads for the same cost) This sounds great in theory but it doesn't work this way, at least in the private sector. Recently, I had to contract out a 100k pavement parking lot job for the first time for property management. I talked to about 10 different contracting firms, some being indepedent firms - and some firms directly employed by the asphalt plant. Its very hard to tell what you are going to get if you haven't worked with that contractor before. Sure, everything is on a contract with specific line items that specifies each piece of work done (e.g. uproot asphalt where concrete meets it to pave evenly, compact a 2.5" to 2" using a specific grade mix [there's about 3-10 different mixes]), you can read contractor reviews online, but really how are YOU specifically going to measure the results? How do you know your contractor is really going to be doing a better job than another competitor? What it all boiled down for me in selecting the vendor is whether or not they actually specified every concern I had regarding the parking lot job. Did they actually care about asking the right questions, did they put every concern I had in writing under the contract? Was the price reasonable? Did this person seem knowledgeable based on past experience? Honestly this is what it all boils down to most of the time in contractual-based jobs when selecting a contractor that is not the lowest bid job. Public jobs are going to be slightly different, but to the extent the same, depending mostly on the city's municipality. I can't speak from experience here, but it would make much more sense for a government entity to employ stricter regulations on major road arteries (3-4 lane roads) using equipment such as the AMIR. But this is when you have to deal with government bureaucracy, and some contracting firms are not going to look to highly on the need to invest in more expensive equipment and reduce the potential number of jobs they have in the future (since there would be less maintenance needed). Not only that, but also the infrastructure in housing an AMIR along with other cost such as maintenance / training could become costly for the contracting firm. Minor road arteries / minor jobs (1 or 2 lane roadways) probably not so much since its traditional rollers are extremely portable, have high availability (both for renting, contractors familiar with / used the equipment, etc) and require smaller more versatile machines and can be loaded on one trailer. In addition, every city municipality is different. Your rural city in the middle of nowhere is not going to really care about using AMIR. I don't know how much the AMIR cost, but for it to be adopted for widespread use, it would have to have the following: 1. Compact and portability for small and large jobs alike 2. Justified cost for short-term profitability for contractors 3. Enforcement by government and regulations to private industries to use such technology

pedasmith 9y ago

Or, the town engineer can simply add it in to the contracts. An example from the Project Gutenberg copy of [The Municipal and Sanitary Engineer's Handbook](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55935/55935-h/55935-h.htm#Page34 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55935/55935-h/55935-h.htm#Pag...), page 35, there's a considerable discussion of how to specify a road paving contract. And later on page 57 or thereabouts there's talk about specifying the machinery needed to break the stones for a roadway (some produce much better road stones than others). And page 163 (about) has a super interesting diversion on how awful most companies are about replacing the road surface after ripping it up:

Cyph0n 9y ago
This is a dupe FYI.
- pedasmith 9y ago
  Thanks. My browser was acting up. Dups should be removed, and the one good comment saved.

deleted 9y ago

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deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pedasmith 9y ago

Project Gutenberg has a copy of the Victorian-era (The Municipal and Sanitary Engineer's Handbook)[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55935 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55935]. There's a good discussion on how to write a paving contract on about page 35, including a quick discussion of using machinery to crush rocks for the road surface. It turns out that different machines produce wildly better or worse crushed stone, and that it makes a difference. And there's a snarky comment on page 163 about companies that have to fix roads after ripping them up ("breaking"): if they do condescend to cart anything away it is generally the metal, which they think will come in nicely for the repairs of the trench during their liability for such repairs. TL/DR: your town engineer just needs to specify the right stuff in the contract, and the road paving companies will just have to adapt. If you think about it, the same thing holds true for any large, bespoke contract. What you get at the end depends in part on the supervision you put in.