5 ms·

People Who Draw Lines on Maps Are the Problem

39 points by gok 5y ago

chmaynard 5y ago
A better title: "Why we don't build High Speed Rail"
rtutz 5y ago
A bit OT, but I just looked at the Wikipedia on the high-speed rail plans. It states: >As of 2020, the California High-Speed Rail Authority is working on the California High-Speed Rail project and construction is under way on sections traversing the Central Valley. The Central Valley section is planned to open in 2029 and Phase I is planned for completion in 2033. At the pace that the world is changing, isn't that a little slow. I dont know if it could be called an achievement to have an approximate travel duration of about three hours between LA and SF.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  For comparison the transcontinental railroad was completed in less than 7 years. Of course, there weren’t property disputes to deal with but they still had to blast their way through the Rocky Mountains a decade before the f*cking light bulb was invented
  - yostrovs 5y ago
    The actual tasks were different. Back then they built a railroad, but now we don't just build a railroad. We also have to employ armies of lawyers to fight each other, and they consume more time and money laying the legal groundwork for the railroad than the railroad itself.
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      It would be a wonder to see the spending breakdown Maybe this could have been avoided if the original bond had legal fees capped at something like 100 million - the people voted for a railroad, not a legal battle!
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    One minor nit: The Rocky Mountain crossing (Sherman Hill) didn't require much blasting. Crossing the Sierras (Donner Pass) required a lot of blasting.
Gunax 5y ago
Ostensibly about trains, but I think the author's thesis may be a broader point about oversimplification and underestimation. I call it design arrogance. It's when you think 'this is so poorly done, whoever made this was an idiot!'. But in reality, you just don't understand some non-obvious detail that lies underneath. This is also a parallel to democracy--for all of our fist-rattling about politicians, sometimes they really do know what's best--that is their job afterall. The public is easily duped.
- tdeck 5y ago
  > sometimes they really do know what's best--that is their job afterall. not: That's the expert's job, not the politician's. A politician's job is to secure and maintain enough support from critical stakeholders so that they can stay in power. Depending on how the society is organized, that might mean making many people happy with successful public policies, or only a few people happy in the army command, megadonor class, central committee, etc...
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    I would say the politician's job is finding workable compromises between conflicting peoples and agendas. A technician of the polis . Rulers need power so they won't need to compromise.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    Sorry but I feel it important to correct one detail: -- experts are the ones supposed to be reliable about the outcomes¹; politicians should be the ones reliable about the weighs to choose as multipliers to said outcomes in decision. How good one is at one's job, it still depends on the individual. -- ¹That's not exactly «knowing what's best». Experts are often biased in a field. To the doctor it may easily be "not to overcrowd the hospital", to the economist "not to undercrowd the commercial areas".
  - tdeck 5y ago
    Oops meant to write "nit" but my phone didn't think that was a likely word.
adamjb 5y ago
>Meanwhile the argument in opposition says that they were lying about the cost- instead of the $20 billion proponents were promising (they rounded up, of course, and assumed 1:1 federal matching funds), it would likely cost $90 billion, according to the opponents, which would make it “the most expensive railroad in history”. This is a rare situation where participants in a public debate understated their argument. In fact, the full cost of the train, according to the Los Angeles Times this past February, is now over $100 billion! Even the initiative’s opponents underestimated what a boondoggle this was! One thing you don't see clarified very often when talking about the costs of megaprojects is inflation. $90 billion in 2008 dollars is $114 billion in 2021 dollars, meaning that the apparent cost blow out (against the opposition estimate) could just be an inflation induced illusion.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Where we are heading there won't be any inflation.
AbrahamParangi 5y ago
The California example is extremely telling in that the only parts of the rail (a progressive project) that have been built are in the relatively conservative areas of the Central Valley. There is a genuine disconnect between the politics of rich, liberal American cities towards building infrastructure (including housing) in theory and in practice.
- mc32 5y ago
  I think there is something to this sentiment. People support things that reflect positively on them, even if they are personally against it for some specific reason. This was going to share UP lines in some areas (the peninsula, for example). There is no way people in San Carlos or Menlo Park were going to uproot their homes… but they expected everyone in the valley who needed to move, to move. The metoo phenomenon had some of this too. People who engaged in some of the things the movement stood against were some of the same people caught up in the zealousness. Also see Yimbys vs NIMBYs.
- gumby 5y ago
  The Central Valley was the right place to start, for several reasons. One: it's a very conservative part of the state; giving them part of the train line first might blunt criticisms of continuing the project. Two: it's important to tie this part of the state into the two large conurbations (Bay Area and LA Basin) for resilience against changes in economic mix (e.g. perhaps water shortages cause agriculture to fall or conversely Silicon Valley burns out and people there need a more diverse set of job opportunities. Currently 5 and 99 run N/S through the valley while on the other side of the hills 880/101/280 (in Bay Area; dunno about LA) run N/S through the Bay Area. Crossing from one to the other isn't super convenient.
sfifs 5y ago
And yet while the US debated endlessly, China built this. It's transformed how people travel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China
- Scaevolus 5y ago
  Having unified government support behind your project really simplifies the "CAN we build here?" problem. The engineers figure out the cheapest path based on geography, eminent domains clears out anything in the way, and they build it. Simple.
- musicale 5y ago
  Unlimited eminent domain would be very powerful for helping infrastructure projects move forward, but doesn't seem to be compatible with the approach of allowing citizens to remain in their homes or cities and/or or compensating them at fair market value for property loss.
- sul_tasto 5y ago
  I wish the US had that instead of the debacle in Afghanistan.
setr 5y ago
I watch technical sales do this all the time — the project needs a migration from X to Y, so they simply draw a line between the two. And of course, that little line becomes 90% of the project timeline, and everybody’s baffled. That line is willing to carry an infinite amount of work.

39 points by gok 5y ago

A better title: "Why we don't build High Speed Rail"

A bit OT, but I just looked at the Wikipedia on the high-speed rail plans. It states: >As of 2020, the California High-Speed Rail Authority is working on the California High-Speed Rail project and construction is under way on sections traversing the Central Valley. The Central Valley section is planned to open in 2029 and Phase I is planned for completion in 2033. At the pace that the world is changing, isn't that a little slow. I dont know if it could be called an achievement to have an approximate travel duration of about three hours between LA and SF.

jazzyjackson 5y ago
For comparison the transcontinental railroad was completed in less than 7 years. Of course, there weren’t property disputes to deal with but they still had to blast their way through the Rocky Mountains a decade before the f*cking light bulb was invented
- yostrovs 5y ago
  The actual tasks were different. Back then they built a railroad, but now we don't just build a railroad. We also have to employ armies of lawyers to fight each other, and they consume more time and money laying the legal groundwork for the railroad than the railroad itself.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    It would be a wonder to see the spending breakdown Maybe this could have been avoided if the original bond had legal fees capped at something like 100 million - the people voted for a railroad, not a legal battle!
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  One minor nit: The Rocky Mountain crossing (Sherman Hill) didn't require much blasting. Crossing the Sierras (Donner Pass) required a lot of blasting.

Gunax 5y ago

Ostensibly about trains, but I think the author's thesis may be a broader point about oversimplification and underestimation. I call it design arrogance. It's when you think 'this is so poorly done, whoever made this was an idiot!'. But in reality, you just don't understand some non-obvious detail that lies underneath. This is also a parallel to democracy--for all of our fist-rattling about politicians, sometimes they really do know what's best--that is their job afterall. The public is easily duped.

tdeck 5y ago
> sometimes they really do know what's best--that is their job afterall. not: That's the expert's job, not the politician's. A politician's job is to secure and maintain enough support from critical stakeholders so that they can stay in power. Depending on how the society is organized, that might mean making many people happy with successful public policies, or only a few people happy in the army command, megadonor class, central committee, etc...
- h2odragon 5y ago
  I would say the politician's job is finding workable compromises between conflicting peoples and agendas. A technician of the polis . Rulers need power so they won't need to compromise.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  Sorry but I feel it important to correct one detail: -- experts are the ones supposed to be reliable about the outcomes¹; politicians should be the ones reliable about the weighs to choose as multipliers to said outcomes in decision. How good one is at one's job, it still depends on the individual. -- ¹That's not exactly «knowing what's best». Experts are often biased in a field. To the doctor it may easily be "not to overcrowd the hospital", to the economist "not to undercrowd the commercial areas".
- tdeck 5y ago
  Oops meant to write "nit" but my phone didn't think that was a likely word.

adamjb 5y ago

>Meanwhile the argument in opposition says that they were lying about the cost- instead of the $20 billion proponents were promising (they rounded up, of course, and assumed 1:1 federal matching funds), it would likely cost $90 billion, according to the opponents, which would make it “the most expensive railroad in history”. This is a rare situation where participants in a public debate understated their argument. In fact, the full cost of the train, according to the Los Angeles Times this past February, is now over $100 billion! Even the initiative’s opponents underestimated what a boondoggle this was! One thing you don't see clarified very often when talking about the costs of megaprojects is inflation. $90 billion in 2008 dollars is $114 billion in 2021 dollars, meaning that the apparent cost blow out (against the opposition estimate) could just be an inflation induced illusion.

imtringued 5y ago
Where we are heading there won't be any inflation.

AbrahamParangi 5y ago

The California example is extremely telling in that the only parts of the rail (a progressive project) that have been built are in the relatively conservative areas of the Central Valley. There is a genuine disconnect between the politics of rich, liberal American cities towards building infrastructure (including housing) in theory and in practice.

mc32 5y ago
I think there is something to this sentiment. People support things that reflect positively on them, even if they are personally against it for some specific reason. This was going to share UP lines in some areas (the peninsula, for example). There is no way people in San Carlos or Menlo Park were going to uproot their homes… but they expected everyone in the valley who needed to move, to move. The metoo phenomenon had some of this too. People who engaged in some of the things the movement stood against were some of the same people caught up in the zealousness. Also see Yimbys vs NIMBYs.
gumby 5y ago
The Central Valley was the right place to start, for several reasons. One: it's a very conservative part of the state; giving them part of the train line first might blunt criticisms of continuing the project. Two: it's important to tie this part of the state into the two large conurbations (Bay Area and LA Basin) for resilience against changes in economic mix (e.g. perhaps water shortages cause agriculture to fall or conversely Silicon Valley burns out and people there need a more diverse set of job opportunities. Currently 5 and 99 run N/S through the valley while on the other side of the hills 880/101/280 (in Bay Area; dunno about LA) run N/S through the Bay Area. Crossing from one to the other isn't super convenient.

sfifs 5y ago

And yet while the US debated endlessly, China built this. It's transformed how people travel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China

Scaevolus 5y ago
Having unified government support behind your project really simplifies the "CAN we build here?" problem. The engineers figure out the cheapest path based on geography, eminent domains clears out anything in the way, and they build it. Simple.
musicale 5y ago
Unlimited eminent domain would be very powerful for helping infrastructure projects move forward, but doesn't seem to be compatible with the approach of allowing citizens to remain in their homes or cities and/or or compensating them at fair market value for property loss.
sul_tasto 5y ago
I wish the US had that instead of the debacle in Afghanistan.

setr 5y ago

I watch technical sales do this all the time — the project needs a migration from X to Y, so they simply draw a line between the two. And of course, that little line becomes 90% of the project timeline, and everybody’s baffled. That line is willing to carry an infinite amount of work.