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But the point is they are not spending enough on infrastructure. Only paying 10% on maintenance and then having perpetually potholed roads or a bridge collapse

But the point is they are not spending enough on infrastructure. Only paying 10% on maintenance and then having perpetually potholed roads or a bridge collapse means the true cost is much higher. Infrastructure has a lifetime and it needs big capital infusions to replace, of that money isn't being stored away for that date then that's just hiding the spending problem.

xyzzyz 5y ago
All these roads have been built by a society that has been poorer than ours. If they could afford that, so can we. It’s really as simple as that.
- radicalbyte 5y ago
  Poorer in absolute terms, sure. But take a random sample of 100 people from the city population and compare inflation (calculated including housing!) adjusted income and you'll see the opposite.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    There is a machine on the road under my balcony right now, chugging and chewing asphalt 2 yards wide and spitting it up on a truck in-front of it. Road maintenance must be so much easier today than in the 70s. It feel to me neglect is by choice not necessity.
    - croes 5y ago
      But the demands on the roads are also higher. Cars have more horsepower, higher speed, more weight. In addition, the roads are usually poorly repaired, so you have to repair them more often. In addition, the contracts are often tendered for private companies and the cheapest company wins. Thanks to the poor quality, repairs then have to be carried out correspondingly often.
      - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
        Highways need to be completely rebuilt every 10 years. Most countries can't do this hence potholes and non working lights.
        xyzzyz 5y ago
        > Highways need to be completely rebuilt every 10 years. This is completely false. Even just repaving usually has longer schedule.
        LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
        Wouldn't this vary, depending on load and climate?
      - pseudo0 5y ago
        Isn't the vast majority of road damage done by trucks due to their much heavier loads per axle? There probably are more trucks on the roads today to serve our larger population, but at the same time we've also built more roads. No idea how to translate that into average wear over time though per road.
      - zepto 5y ago
        > Cars have more … weight. Really?
        croes 5y ago
        Thanks to the rise of SUVs.
        tharkun__ 5y ago
        And apparently not just that (as in more huge cars being bought). Even "small European cars" contribute. Smallest trim/model 1999 F150 curb weight ~3900lbs F150 2020 model ~4000lbs (the F150 apparently can all go up to almost 5000 lbs) VW Jetta 1991 ~2700 lbs VW Jetta 2020 ~3200lbs VW Golf 1992 ~2400lbs VW Golf 2020 ~3000lbs
- lcpriest 5y ago
  That's not how that works. Infrastructure is built with many years of a cities budget; they are maintained with the current years (and sometimes, the next 5 years) budget.
- audunw 5y ago
  In some ways, we are poorer than our parents. Sure, we can buy TVs that are a ten times bigger for a fraction of the inflation adjusted price.. But we’re talking roads here, and roads are built with bitumen. The fact is that bitumen is getting scarcer and more expensive. Our cars are getting more fuel efficient and EVs don’t use fuel at all. But the cars still require the same amount of road, the same amount of bitumen, or maybe even more since cars are heavier and faster now. We can’t extract oil just to make bitumen. That’s not economical. We primarily extract oil to get the fuel we need, and we get a certain amount of bitumen as a by-product. Our parents generation was lucky that oil was practically pouring out of the ground..
  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    Schrodinger's Market Economy. This is the most prosperous, generous, and advanced civilisation ever, with the largest number of billionaires. But most people who are younger than Boomers are poorer than their parents, and public infrastructure and public services have somehow become unaffordable.
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    Bitumen is such an insignificant portion of the price of a road that it can increase in price an order of magnitude with no noticable effect on the road price. It would have an even smaller effect on road maintenance costs.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Let's use Carbocrete, made of co² sucked out of the air, powered by advanced high temperature fission or fusion. Mixed with remolten desert sand if need be, which is otherwise unusable.
- White_Wolf 5y ago
  That is not entirely true. Try comparing how many minimum wage paychecks you needed to buy a house then and with how many you need now and what is took to build a house (including permits and land) and what it takes now. It will be different form country to country and the tech level was lower but the majority of the young ones these days will neven own (paid morgage) a house by the time they are 35.
  - syshum 5y ago
    While housing is extremely over priced right now, it is also important to note that a "standard home" has changed ALOT. My Grandparents raised 4 children in a 2 bedroom 1 bath 900 square foot home, which was a "standard home" in the 40/50's Today the standard home is 2x the size with more bathrooms, and larger lots. This is a source of alot of the problems as well. When developers build a subdivision they are not building small homes, they are building 4 bedroom, 3 bath, 2,000 square foot homes Overall The World Is Becoming a Better Place [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J5s6aZCPSg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J5s6aZCPSg
    - theelous3 5y ago
      To add to this: larger houses and plots hav the knock on effect of making under street piping need to be x3 or even x4 times longer to span the frontage, and have more complex outputs, and be larger with higher pressures - same but inverse for waste lines and their inputs. Same for electric lines, and those lines have to carry _way_ more power. And Internet cabling, and road surface standards are higher, blah blah forever. Size and modernity makes this not scale so linearly The debt of modern development is higher than the debt of the previous cycles.
    - ElFitz 5y ago
      Really depends who you ask and where they live. Home sizes in Paris haven’t changed much over the past 50 years. Yet, prices have exploded. Heck, they’ve skyrocketed. For the exact same thing. Only a bit older. New apartments, no bigger but built in the suburbs, far from the subway (and not close to the regional trains) cost the same as the old ones of the same size did in Paris 10 years ago (and they were already priced crazily). With the same numbers of bathrooms but no job that could enable one to afford such a place less than 45 minutes away. The 2.000sqft 3 bathrooms home with a lawn appears to be a very American thing.
jancsika 5y ago
> But the point is they are not spending enough on infrastructure. OP said the point-- referenced in the article-- was that they are Ponzi schemes. If that is true then user treis is correct: we should see at least one municipality that went bankrupt from this problem.
- tom_ 5y ago
  The whole point of a Ponzi scheme is that it works, for a while.
lr4444lr 5y ago
Like I said, they are identifying an important problem that needs more discussion. But I do think think they're presenting the full picture, and either misattributing or distorting causes.
treis 5y ago
>Only paying 10% on maintenance and then having perpetually potholed roads or a bridge collapse means the true cost is much higher. The numbers out there suggest that for 50-100% more spending we could fix everything. That means spending 20% or less of the budget instead of 10% or less. Even a worst case scenario is not the apocalypse Strong towns suggests. And more to the point it ignores the things that are a threat. As an example, today Flint spends half the budget paying pensions for retired workers. Then there's things like Social Security, Health care costs, education costs, and housing costs. We have a lot of large and looming problems that defy a simple solution. Infrastructure is easy by comparuson.
- Marazan 5y ago
  Ah, the old "they only need to double the budget" approach. So simple and straight forward. What are they cutting to do that?
  - rualca 5y ago
    > What are they cutting to do that? False dichotomy. You can cover a budget where you double a 10% entry by increasing taxes 10%. Or increase taxes 5% and cut 5% over the remaining 95% budget. Or a mix in between. This isn't rocket science. It's politics. In a democracy it is literally nothing more than a matter of personal will by an elected official. Budgets are drafted every year.
    - Marazan 5y ago
      Yes, and the history of municipalities raising taxes to actually cover the infrastructure/other costs is that residents that can move out to other municipalities still using the Growth Ponzi strategy to keep taxes low.
      - rualca 5y ago
        No, not really. That's just the strawman you've grabbed hold to. Quite literally every single government institution has its budget set each and every single year, and every single public institution has to allocate their resources to their programs. Even though it's politically easier to increase debt and spending, let's not fool ourselves into believing a fairytale about how no expenditure has ever been lowered ever.

xyzzyz 5y ago

All these roads have been built by a society that has been poorer than ours. If they could afford that, so can we. It’s really as simple as that.

radicalbyte 5y ago
Poorer in absolute terms, sure. But take a random sample of 100 people from the city population and compare inflation (calculated including housing!) adjusted income and you'll see the opposite.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  There is a machine on the road under my balcony right now, chugging and chewing asphalt 2 yards wide and spitting it up on a truck in-front of it. Road maintenance must be so much easier today than in the 70s. It feel to me neglect is by choice not necessity.
  - croes 5y ago
    But the demands on the roads are also higher. Cars have more horsepower, higher speed, more weight. In addition, the roads are usually poorly repaired, so you have to repair them more often. In addition, the contracts are often tendered for private companies and the cheapest company wins. Thanks to the poor quality, repairs then have to be carried out correspondingly often.
    - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
      Highways need to be completely rebuilt every 10 years. Most countries can't do this hence potholes and non working lights.
      - xyzzyz 5y ago
        > Highways need to be completely rebuilt every 10 years. This is completely false. Even just repaving usually has longer schedule.
        LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
        Wouldn't this vary, depending on load and climate?
    - pseudo0 5y ago
      Isn't the vast majority of road damage done by trucks due to their much heavier loads per axle? There probably are more trucks on the roads today to serve our larger population, but at the same time we've also built more roads. No idea how to translate that into average wear over time though per road.
    - zepto 5y ago
      > Cars have more … weight. Really?
      - croes 5y ago
        Thanks to the rise of SUVs.
        tharkun__ 5y ago
        And apparently not just that (as in more huge cars being bought). Even "small European cars" contribute. Smallest trim/model 1999 F150 curb weight ~3900lbs F150 2020 model ~4000lbs (the F150 apparently can all go up to almost 5000 lbs) VW Jetta 1991 ~2700 lbs VW Jetta 2020 ~3200lbs VW Golf 1992 ~2400lbs VW Golf 2020 ~3000lbs
lcpriest 5y ago
That's not how that works. Infrastructure is built with many years of a cities budget; they are maintained with the current years (and sometimes, the next 5 years) budget.
audunw 5y ago
In some ways, we are poorer than our parents. Sure, we can buy TVs that are a ten times bigger for a fraction of the inflation adjusted price.. But we’re talking roads here, and roads are built with bitumen. The fact is that bitumen is getting scarcer and more expensive. Our cars are getting more fuel efficient and EVs don’t use fuel at all. But the cars still require the same amount of road, the same amount of bitumen, or maybe even more since cars are heavier and faster now. We can’t extract oil just to make bitumen. That’s not economical. We primarily extract oil to get the fuel we need, and we get a certain amount of bitumen as a by-product. Our parents generation was lucky that oil was practically pouring out of the ground..
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  Schrodinger's Market Economy. This is the most prosperous, generous, and advanced civilisation ever, with the largest number of billionaires. But most people who are younger than Boomers are poorer than their parents, and public infrastructure and public services have somehow become unaffordable.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  Bitumen is such an insignificant portion of the price of a road that it can increase in price an order of magnitude with no noticable effect on the road price. It would have an even smaller effect on road maintenance costs.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Let's use Carbocrete, made of co² sucked out of the air, powered by advanced high temperature fission or fusion. Mixed with remolten desert sand if need be, which is otherwise unusable.
White_Wolf 5y ago
That is not entirely true. Try comparing how many minimum wage paychecks you needed to buy a house then and with how many you need now and what is took to build a house (including permits and land) and what it takes now. It will be different form country to country and the tech level was lower but the majority of the young ones these days will neven own (paid morgage) a house by the time they are 35.
- syshum 5y ago
  While housing is extremely over priced right now, it is also important to note that a "standard home" has changed ALOT. My Grandparents raised 4 children in a 2 bedroom 1 bath 900 square foot home, which was a "standard home" in the 40/50's Today the standard home is 2x the size with more bathrooms, and larger lots. This is a source of alot of the problems as well. When developers build a subdivision they are not building small homes, they are building 4 bedroom, 3 bath, 2,000 square foot homes Overall The World Is Becoming a Better Place [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J5s6aZCPSg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J5s6aZCPSg
  - theelous3 5y ago
    To add to this: larger houses and plots hav the knock on effect of making under street piping need to be x3 or even x4 times longer to span the frontage, and have more complex outputs, and be larger with higher pressures - same but inverse for waste lines and their inputs. Same for electric lines, and those lines have to carry _way_ more power. And Internet cabling, and road surface standards are higher, blah blah forever. Size and modernity makes this not scale so linearly The debt of modern development is higher than the debt of the previous cycles.
  - ElFitz 5y ago
    Really depends who you ask and where they live. Home sizes in Paris haven’t changed much over the past 50 years. Yet, prices have exploded. Heck, they’ve skyrocketed. For the exact same thing. Only a bit older. New apartments, no bigger but built in the suburbs, far from the subway (and not close to the regional trains) cost the same as the old ones of the same size did in Paris 10 years ago (and they were already priced crazily). With the same numbers of bathrooms but no job that could enable one to afford such a place less than 45 minutes away. The 2.000sqft 3 bathrooms home with a lawn appears to be a very American thing.

jancsika 5y ago

> But the point is they are not spending enough on infrastructure. OP said the point-- referenced in the article-- was that they are Ponzi schemes. If that is true then user treis is correct: we should see at least one municipality that went bankrupt from this problem.

tom_ 5y ago
The whole point of a Ponzi scheme is that it works, for a while.

lr4444lr 5y ago

Like I said, they are identifying an important problem that needs more discussion. But I do think think they're presenting the full picture, and either misattributing or distorting causes.

treis 5y ago

>Only paying 10% on maintenance and then having perpetually potholed roads or a bridge collapse means the true cost is much higher. The numbers out there suggest that for 50-100% more spending we could fix everything. That means spending 20% or less of the budget instead of 10% or less. Even a worst case scenario is not the apocalypse Strong towns suggests. And more to the point it ignores the things that are a threat. As an example, today Flint spends half the budget paying pensions for retired workers. Then there's things like Social Security, Health care costs, education costs, and housing costs. We have a lot of large and looming problems that defy a simple solution. Infrastructure is easy by comparuson.

Marazan 5y ago
Ah, the old "they only need to double the budget" approach. So simple and straight forward. What are they cutting to do that?
- rualca 5y ago
  > What are they cutting to do that? False dichotomy. You can cover a budget where you double a 10% entry by increasing taxes 10%. Or increase taxes 5% and cut 5% over the remaining 95% budget. Or a mix in between. This isn't rocket science. It's politics. In a democracy it is literally nothing more than a matter of personal will by an elected official. Budgets are drafted every year.
  - Marazan 5y ago
    Yes, and the history of municipalities raising taxes to actually cover the infrastructure/other costs is that residents that can move out to other municipalities still using the Growth Ponzi strategy to keep taxes low.
    - rualca 5y ago
      No, not really. That's just the strawman you've grabbed hold to. Quite literally every single government institution has its budget set each and every single year, and every single public institution has to allocate their resources to their programs. Even though it's politically easier to increase debt and spending, let's not fool ourselves into believing a fairytale about how no expenditure has ever been lowered ever.