3 ms·

I can't believe the level of disfunctionality a local authority must attain to even contemplate such an infrastructure. I realize not everyone in local governme

I can't believe the level of disfunctionality a local authority must attain to even contemplate such an infrastructure. I realize not everyone in local government can be a genius, but the collective IQ/EQ of this must be substantially south of 100. Then again, I know a local mayor that had cobblestones placed on a 30 meter stretch of road, officially to revive a picturesque and photogenic atmosphere near the village church, unofficially because it was right in front of the house of his political opponent which he hoped would be driven insane by the noise.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
I can imagine this. It's like my hometown, but in Europe. This is exactly the kind of poorly thought out, money wasting boondoggle projects you get when government is a gravy train not held accountable by it's source of funding. Right now my hometown is engaged in all manner of hand wringing over a pet cemetery. They also put in more bike trail where a rail line was and spent millions of dollars tearing down rail bridge and building a more visually pleasing bike bridge. They must be expecting some fat cyclists since apparently just converting the rail bridge wasn't appropriate. The police are thoroughly overpaid and overstaffed and all run side businesses on taxpayer time. It sucks that you have to under-fund and under-staff local government and services in order to get them to be well behaved (which to me means do their jobs without screwing around and wasting too many resources on non-mission critical crap) but I guess that's just how it is. If you just keep naively feeding the monster (e.g. "oh, you've squandered all your money on new cop cars and your building is falling down, well we'll give you the money this time but please pinky promise you don't do this again") it will grow big enough that you can't control it. Edit: I know my last paragraph won't be popular here because it conflicts greatly with the politics of the typical HN reader but I'd appreciate it if you'd actually try and refute something I said.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

I can imagine this. It's like my hometown, but in Europe. This is exactly the kind of poorly thought out, money wasting boondoggle projects you get when government is a gravy train not held accountable by it's source of funding. Right now my hometown is engaged in all manner of hand wringing over a pet cemetery. They also put in more bike trail where a rail line was and spent millions of dollars tearing down rail bridge and building a more visually pleasing bike bridge. They must be expecting some fat cyclists since apparently just converting the rail bridge wasn't appropriate. The police are thoroughly overpaid and overstaffed and all run side businesses on taxpayer time. It sucks that you have to under-fund and under-staff local government and services in order to get them to be well behaved (which to me means do their jobs without screwing around and wasting too many resources on non-mission critical crap) but I guess that's just how it is. If you just keep naively feeding the monster (e.g. "oh, you've squandered all your money on new cop cars and your building is falling down, well we'll give you the money this time but please pinky promise you don't do this again") it will grow big enough that you can't control it. Edit: I know my last paragraph won't be popular here because it conflicts greatly with the politics of the typical HN reader but I'd appreciate it if you'd actually try and refute something I said.