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Civil Engineer here. It's... complicated. A big problem IMO is the politicization of funding. So for example, when doing road maintenance, it's unique in tha

Civil Engineer here. It's... complicated. A big problem IMO is the politicization of funding. So for example, when doing road maintenance, it's unique in that it is essentially ALWAYS cheaper to do the maintenance NOW rather than later. So like doing a cheap slurry seal/ chip seal on a road that was just paved 2 years ago is probably actually a really good idea. If you do maintenance like that, you can pretty much maintain that road indefinitely at remarkably low costs. As roads degrade toward failure, the costs to repair them go up exponentially. However, the public doesn't get it. They see the road that is already failed, full of pot holes and cracks and wonder why they're spending money fixing a road where nothing is wrong instead of doing the same thing to the failed road. What they don't realize is that the cost to repair the failed road is 10x, 25x maybe even 100x more expensive than that cheap slurry seal. But they can't differentiate between a seal, or an asphalt overlay or a full repair of the road and subgrade. So the optics of correct and optimal road maintenance strategy are weird, and make the road works strategy dependent on political whims. Now the problems really start to compound. Politicians in the US have been divorced from the reality of costs for a long time. Local jurisdictions essentially rely on "emergency funding" to do the really expensive (over 10-100x cost) repairs that could have been entirely avoided if they had just spent the money to do the maintenance earlier. But they had basically NO incentive to do so. If anything, to get the big money from the state or the fed, they have to let it fail so that it looks really bad and becomes a genuine priority or safety issue. They also just can't help but spend the money on feel-good sexy-looking bullshit out of the general fund instead of properly funding the boring infrastructure projects, because, like a good IT guy, no one notices at all when you're doing your job well. Couple that with polarized politics: Republicans can't help themselves but fight to cut taxes that should go to things like this because they are displeased with government waste and Democrats can't help but spend the tax revenue on other things without worrying about how to pay for them all until tomorrow. So the end result from both sides is: There's just not enough money to do things the cheap way, so now there's REALLY not enough money.

bombcar 4y ago
Combine this with the local government in charge of building/maintaining the bridges being the same one that inspects them and you have a recipe for disaster. If there was a separate "department of closing shit infrastructure" then the politicians might not be so inclined to "keep things open" just to prevent complaints.
drcongo 4y ago
Definitely didn't expect such a comprehensive answer, thanks for that. We have different funding conflicts here in the UK, and while there's definitely a lot of that "do the shiny thing" going on, we also have a weird annual event where local councils try to use up any remaining budget they have just to make sure it's seen that they needed it, and it won't get cut the following year. So every Feb / March, you see a sudden increase in road maintenance across the country as councils who've ignored your reports of a giant pothole all year suddenly decide to fill every pothole in the county.
ErikVandeWater 4y ago
How efficient would you say the government is when it is in fact doing the work? I find myself frustrated when it seems there are more workers than necessary, when potholes aren't at least filled with a stopgap filler so it doesn't suck to drive/bike on (doesn't seem that hard to do, even if it doesn't fix the road long-term), or when there are many simultaneous projects where you could be working on one site 24/7 to get it done so you have fewer impediments to traffic. (I understand paying for a night shift is more expensive, but the man-hours lost in traffic due to extra projects that take longer seem absurd).
- netizen-936824 4y ago
  How many construction projects have you managed? How many workers for particular jobs do you think is appropriate? Where did you get this information and why is it correct?
  - ErikVandeWater 4y ago
    Were you offended by my comment? I'm asking someone familiar with the industry exactly because I don't know the answers.
    - netizen-936824 4y ago
      Not quite, I'm offended by people assuming they know the correct answer about something and making baseless assertions. Asking your friend first would have been the move This is something that seems to happen in the US on a constant basis. People just assume they know or understand things that they have never learned about nor had contact with and then we get people voting and making policy decisions based on that info that was pulled out of someone's ass
      - justin66 4y ago
        > This is something that seems to happen in the US on a constant basis. People just assume they know or understand things that they have never learned about nor had contact with and then we get people voting and making policy decisions based on that info that was pulled out of someone's ass Thank God that sort of thing is limited to the United States.
JasonFruit 4y ago
One thing I think American governments need to do better, if they're going to be in charge of indestructible projects, is creating an informed electorate. Much of what is in this answer is new information to me, and I'm pretty sure I'm not unusual in that way. That still doesn't fix the problem that politicians don't understand these tradeoffs, but if they could be brought to that understanding and encouraged to communicate it clearly, it would at least direct public pressure the right direction to some extent.
est31 4y ago
> If anything, to get the big money from the state or the fed, they have to let it fail so that it looks really bad and becomes a genuine priority or safety issue. That reminds me of DB, the german railway company, sometimes trying to get bridges demolished and rebuilt from scratch instead of renovation, because if they are rebuilt, the federal government pays for it while a renovation has to be paid by the DB. The funny part is that the federal government owns 100% of the DB shares.
notacoward 4y ago
> to get the big money from the state or the fed, they have to let it fail Same thing with schools. The state won't pay for updates or maintenance, but they will for an entirely new building. School districts deliberately set up their budgets to maximize the state contribution, which means foregoing obvious updates and maintenance until the buildings become run down enough to capture those sweet sweet state dollars. Even in very affluent towns. That's how two out of six elementary schools in my town got replaced with buildings worthy of a FAANG campus. It's why people applaud the school board's decision to teach high-school classes in converted trailers through my daughter's entire time there, and now the state's going to pay a good chunk of the cost for a nine-figure replacement (that she might never even see). It's really pretty sick.

bombcar 4y ago

Combine this with the local government in charge of building/maintaining the bridges being the same one that inspects them and you have a recipe for disaster. If there was a separate "department of closing shit infrastructure" then the politicians might not be so inclined to "keep things open" just to prevent complaints.

drcongo 4y ago

Definitely didn't expect such a comprehensive answer, thanks for that. We have different funding conflicts here in the UK, and while there's definitely a lot of that "do the shiny thing" going on, we also have a weird annual event where local councils try to use up any remaining budget they have just to make sure it's seen that they needed it, and it won't get cut the following year. So every Feb / March, you see a sudden increase in road maintenance across the country as councils who've ignored your reports of a giant pothole all year suddenly decide to fill every pothole in the county.

ErikVandeWater 4y ago

How efficient would you say the government is when it is in fact doing the work? I find myself frustrated when it seems there are more workers than necessary, when potholes aren't at least filled with a stopgap filler so it doesn't suck to drive/bike on (doesn't seem that hard to do, even if it doesn't fix the road long-term), or when there are many simultaneous projects where you could be working on one site 24/7 to get it done so you have fewer impediments to traffic. (I understand paying for a night shift is more expensive, but the man-hours lost in traffic due to extra projects that take longer seem absurd).

netizen-936824 4y ago
How many construction projects have you managed? How many workers for particular jobs do you think is appropriate? Where did you get this information and why is it correct?
- ErikVandeWater 4y ago
  Were you offended by my comment? I'm asking someone familiar with the industry exactly because I don't know the answers.
  - netizen-936824 4y ago
    Not quite, I'm offended by people assuming they know the correct answer about something and making baseless assertions. Asking your friend first would have been the move This is something that seems to happen in the US on a constant basis. People just assume they know or understand things that they have never learned about nor had contact with and then we get people voting and making policy decisions based on that info that was pulled out of someone's ass
    - justin66 4y ago
      > This is something that seems to happen in the US on a constant basis. People just assume they know or understand things that they have never learned about nor had contact with and then we get people voting and making policy decisions based on that info that was pulled out of someone's ass Thank God that sort of thing is limited to the United States.

JasonFruit 4y ago

One thing I think American governments need to do better, if they're going to be in charge of indestructible projects, is creating an informed electorate. Much of what is in this answer is new information to me, and I'm pretty sure I'm not unusual in that way. That still doesn't fix the problem that politicians don't understand these tradeoffs, but if they could be brought to that understanding and encouraged to communicate it clearly, it would at least direct public pressure the right direction to some extent.

est31 4y ago

> If anything, to get the big money from the state or the fed, they have to let it fail so that it looks really bad and becomes a genuine priority or safety issue. That reminds me of DB, the german railway company, sometimes trying to get bridges demolished and rebuilt from scratch instead of renovation, because if they are rebuilt, the federal government pays for it while a renovation has to be paid by the DB. The funny part is that the federal government owns 100% of the DB shares.

notacoward 4y ago

> to get the big money from the state or the fed, they have to let it fail Same thing with schools. The state won't pay for updates or maintenance, but they will for an entirely new building. School districts deliberately set up their budgets to maximize the state contribution, which means foregoing obvious updates and maintenance until the buildings become run down enough to capture those sweet sweet state dollars. Even in very affluent towns. That's how two out of six elementary schools in my town got replaced with buildings worthy of a FAANG campus. It's why people applaud the school board's decision to teach high-school classes in converted trailers through my daughter's entire time there, and now the state's going to pay a good chunk of the cost for a nine-figure replacement (that she might never even see). It's really pretty sick.