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I wonder what changed in our mindset in the last 50 years that such projects seem impossible now but possible back then. I mean subways were not any easier to
by the_mitsuhiko 8y ago
I wonder what changed in our mindset in the last 50 years that such projects seem impossible now but possible back then. I mean subways were not any easier to build 100 or 50 years ago than today. And it surely was not cheaper.
- mikehollinger 8y agoMy favorite theory is that the post WW2-era American value shifted to personal liberty and the American dream: your home, your picket fence, and your car. You choose where you go, when you go, and how you get there. Drive on those new interstates! Take the family for a picnic. Go surfing! How can you be truly independent and live that perfect magazine cover life if you’ve got to wait on the 9:27 to take you to the B line so you won’t be late to work?
- michaelt 8y agoI think the_mitsuhiko is wondering not about rail projects specifically, but about a loss of confidence about performing large-scale projects in the abstract sense, independent of what the project is for. For example, in 1930 it seemed feasible to build the Hoover dam; in 1950 it seemed feasible to build the interstate highway system; in 1960 it seemed feasible to land a man on the moon. Now, in 2018, people think it isn't feasible to build some train stations. And those people might be right! What happened to our ability (practically, politically, and financially) to get such things done?
- yourapostasy 8y ago> Now, in 2018, people think it isn't feasible to build some train stations. And those people might be right! What happened to our ability (practically, politically, and financially) to get such things done? Over time and increasing population there is a evolutionary niche filling kind of process that occurs within social, political, economic, cultural and other axes/planes/spheres. After the density of these filled niches increase sufficiently over some threshold, our civilization experiences a calcification of movement across the niches. Each niche acts as a middleman to extract some portion of energy to successfully navigate across them. This takes the form of some kind of concession, trade, grant, swap, boon, promise, etc. Fill a path with enough niches that didn't use to exist before, and we experience it as "we can't get it done" because the cumulative energetic cost rises above a tolerable amount. Historically, the emergent property in most capitalist structures appears to naturally tend towards influencing government agents via the principal agent challenge to support/enforce increasingly rentier behavior over time and deviate from capitalist structures; I personally believe this is due to scaling issues (Adam Smith was not a fan of the kind of large-scale capitalism we take for granted today). This wasn't supposed to happen according to some economic schools of thought, but here we are. And niche filling, and use of our government to enforce stakeholder extraction claims, appear as another form that this behavior takes.
- closeparen 8y agoFor starters, the political system started caring about the concerns of average people, and stopped letting grand visionaries destroy people’s neighborhoods for the greater good. Having to appease each and every household you affect will put a damper on things.
- oftenwrong 8y agoHalf of it is what people wanted, and the other half is what the people were given. The Federal Government directly created today's heavily suburbanised America through its policies: https://www.historysouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/The-Other-22Subsidized-Housing22-Federal-Aid-To-Suburbanization-.pdf https://www.historysouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/The-...
- intertextuality 8y ago> How can you be truly independent and live that perfect magazine cover life if you’ve got to wait on the 9:27 to take you to the B line so you won’t be late to work? By that stance, no one living in Chicago, NY, or any city with public transit are "truly independent", or whatever. Waiting a few mins for a train or bus is no different than being stuck in traffic. When I lived in Chicago my quality of life went up precisely because I didn't need to use my car. I never had to worry about finding parking. All I needed to do was learn some of the bus timetables and where the CTA lines generally were.
- mikehollinger 8y agoAgreed! I lived in Taipei for a couple of years, and currently am spending some time in NY. I was being a bit flippant. :-)
- elvinyung 8y agoI'm going to give the typical leftie answer: neoliberalism. Basically, large public works projects still seemed possible up to the early 1970s. The hypothesis is that it's only after two near-simultaneous changes, the rise of Reaganism-Thatcherism and the fall of the Soviet Union, that the state seemed to lose all of its potency. It seems like we placed all of our faith in the wisdom of the market, a machine that can never be stopped once given power.
- exelius 8y agoCitizens United was the nail in the coffin. What potency the state has left is now designed to funnel tax dollars into corporate interests at minimal expense. That precludes any public works projects that don’t directly benefit corporate interests.
- madengr 8y agoIt was cheaper. Google can’t even run a lousy fiber in a right of way without giving up due to the cost. Now try digging a subway.
- maxxxxx 8y agoThat's one thing that concerns me about the US in general. Other than military it seems the country has given up on acting on any issues society faces. Be it gun violence, health care, immigration, retirement or infrastructure, issues are just used as material for never ending political fights but nothing gets solved. Pretty sad.
- ams6110 8y agoPoliticians need those issues to divide and rally their voters. If they actually solved the problems, they would lose those wedges. To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, "It's impossible for man to solve a problem, when his salary depends upon it."
- maxxxxx 8y agoI don't think it has to be that way. When I compare US politics to Germany Germany politics is much less vicious and they talk more about issues instead of the focus on character assassination and demonization of the "other" side as it's common in the US.
- rrdharan 8y agoReally? I don't get that impression at all when looking at the AfD, in fact it seems to be playing out more or less identically to US politics: https://www.npr.org/2018/09/30/652284976/germanys-far-right-afd-party-now-polls-second https://www.npr.org/2018/09/30/652284976/germanys-far-right-...
- maxxxxx 8y agoYes, there is the AFD but the general tone is much more civilized.
- meddlepal 8y agoThis is pretty much it. The political class needs conflict to have purpose and reason to exist.
- lstodd 8y agoHere's a nice summary of NY issues with this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
- otikik 8y agoMy favorite reason: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_States#/media/File:US_Effective_Corporate_Tax_Rate_1947-2011_v2.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_States#...
- aesthesia 8y agoToo-low corporate tax rates can't be a reason for this. Until the 2017 tax changes, the US corporate tax rates were (depending on who you asked) either on par with or significantly greater than those of comparable countries. So we can't attribute the US failure in developing public transit to low corporate tax rates.
- ams6110 8y agoRegulation. Environmental impact studies. Workplace safety rules. When we first built the interstate highway system, we just started bulldozing a path across the land. Now, there's five years of planning and permitting necessary for even a small bypass project. Edit: I'll add, also, survivorship bias. We see what was achieved. We don't see what was planned and never came to fruition for lack of political will or whatever reasons.
- starbeast 8y agoThe one that always gets me for sheer ambition is the raising of Chicago. "By 1860, confidence was sufficiently high that a consortium of no fewer than six engineers—including Brown, Hollingsworth and George Pullman—took on one of the most impressive locations in the city and hoisted it up complete and in one go. They lifted half a city block on Lake Street, between Clark Street and LaSalle Street; a solid masonry row of shops, offices, printeries, etc., 320 feet (98 m) long, comprising brick and stone buildings, some four stories high, some five, having a footprint taking up almost one acre (4,000 m2) of space, and an estimated all in weight including hanging sidewalks of thirty five thousand tons. Businesses operating out of these premises were not closed down for the lifting; as the buildings were being raised, people came, went, shopped and worked in them as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening. In five days the entire assembly was elevated 4 feet 8 inches (1.42 m) in the air by a team consisting of six hundred men using six thousand jackscrews, ready for new foundation walls to be built underneath. The spectacle drew crowds of thousands, who were on the final day permitted to walk at the old ground level, among the jacks." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
- rootusrootus 8y agoIt was quite a lot cheaper, AFAIK. To use a recent example local to me, in Portland, Oregon. We built a replacement bridge for an old one that was at the end of it's service life. The new bridge is largely similar to the old one. A little bit wider so it has wider sidewalks and bike lanes, but still it is a two-lane bridge. Adjusted for inflation, the budget for this bridge was 10x what the first one cost. And that doesn't include any overruns that may have occurred, that was just the sticker cost. For various reasons that could probably be debated for a long time, big project construction now is much, much, much more expensive than it was a century ago.
- jdlshore 8y agoI assume you're talking about the Sellwood bridge. If so, you're being disingenuous. The new bridge is more than twice as wide as the old one (64' vs. 28'). It's also an entirely different design (deck arch vs. truss). The work included moving the existing bridge, demolishing the existing bridge, earthquake resilience, and building a big new traffic interchange on the west side. The inflation-adjusted cost of the original bridge was $7.5 million. The final cost of the new bridge project was about $324 million. (2016 dollars) The new bridge project was 43x more expensive than the original bridge, but so much is different, I don't think you can draw any conclusions about changes in construction costs.
- rootusrootus 8y agoThat is sort of my point, though. We raise the standards for everything we do, from safety during construction, to safety during use (bicycle lanes, wider pedestrian sidewalks, earthquake resistence, etc). This all bumps the price up, and significantly so. Whether that is good or bad is a separate issue, but it's definitely a major factor in why we don't do more big infrastructure projects now. Heck, I wonder if it would have been cheaper to build a more comparable direct replacement bridge for vehicle traffic, and then a completely separate walking/riding bridge. The new Sellwood bridge cost nearly three times what Tilikum Crossing did, and that has light rail and buses in addition to bikes & pedestrians.
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- orangecat 8y agoI mean subways were not any easier to build 100 or 50 years ago than today. And it surely was not cheaper. They were much cheaper: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-...