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> European and East Asian You just basically named two continents and said they build faster than the US and you're accusing someone else of simplistic takes?
by esperent 4y ago
> European and East Asian
You just basically named two continents and said they build faster than the US and you're accusing someone else of simplistic takes?
Which European country builds infrastructure faster than the US?
- etblg 4y agoBerlin made great progress on the Brandenburg Airport, a shining example of German efficiency and construction prowess /s
- MengerSponge 4y agoPeople who'd like to understand the /s should check out "How to F#€k up an Airport" from Radio Spaetkauf: https://www.radiospaetkauf.com/ber/ https://www.radiospaetkauf.com/ber/
- klooney 4y agoSpain is the outlier for fast/cheap/good, but I hear that even Italy has gotten its act together, and the recent Rome subway was done quickly and cheaply. The Nordic countries also have a good reputation. England is pretty bad/comparable to the US in speed and cost. https://pedestrianobservations.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/ and the less feisty https://transitcosts.com/ https://transitcosts.com/ are the canonical sources on comparative infrastructure costs.
- throwaway2037 4y agoSpain's high speed rail is criminally underrated. It is an amazing achievement.
- dazc 4y agoIs laying rail across a desert that hard?
- klipt 4y agoProbably helps that wages are lower in Spain. Americans want cheap infrastructure but also want high wages and that's probably an impossible combination.
- bluGill 4y agoWages are lower in Spain, but not by anywhere near enough to explain the cost difference.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoyou cant blame slowness on wages
- Spooky23 4y agoSure, but wages + census makes a difference. The NY Times did a comparison of the construction of the 2nd avenue subway project after the governor took the 5th or 6th victory lap. As I recall, the TBM used in NYC was “mannned” by 5x more workers than an identical machine in Paris. We’re talking like 50 people. France isn’t known for labor efficiency, but between the various labor agreements, minority/women owned employee and subcontractor requirements, etc that many extra hands were being paid. Whether they did anything is another story.
- klooney 4y agoTransit Costs' full analysis (https://transitcosts.com/executive_summary/ https://transitcosts.com/executive_summary/) decomposed the 2nd avenue subway costs into - station sizes (causing spend on stations to increase by a factor of 2) - nonstandard systems (elevators, escalators, etc) (causing an increase over nominal best practices of approximately 1.35) - inefficient procurement (how contracting works) (increase by a factor of 1.85, although this is a squishy) - soft costs (design, planning, construction management, contingencies) (factor of 1.2, again fairly squishy) - labor costs (factor of 1.5 over a well run transit system baseline) so it's both the case that the labor costs are outrageous and that they're insufficient to explain the outrageous project costs.
- wozniacki 4y agoWith Italy, we may not want to use 'quickly' and 'cheaply' too soon. The collapse of the Ponte Morandi / Polcevera Viaduct was just a few years ago and is still fresh in the minds.[1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi#Collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi#Collapse [2] Police release new footage of doomed Morandi Bridge collapse in Genoa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V479srTBlAk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V479srTBlAk Genoa motorway bridge collapse caught on camera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pl0rsVdXxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pl0rsVdXxM
- renewiltord 4y agoYeah, but Americans built a bridge that fell on people. American rails can't keep their trains on them (a crucial functionality of trains and Rails) and American pipes have poisoned thousands. Fast, cheap, good. Pick none. The American construction mantra. So far it's worked because of the reserve currency and technological progress. But the time of the American monopolar world is coming to an end. In twenty years, the bill will come due and instead of acting to liberate themselves, Americans will fall over themselves to justify their status quo - unable to reconcile the existential shame they feel at the thought that they inherited power the likes of which the world had never seen before and transformed it to impotence. "The billionaires", "we do it to be safer", "the X are ruining it". All the while they drift into irrelevance, raging hopelessly at shadows while their own choices drive them to destruction
- throwaway2037 4y agoI'll bite. He is probably talking about Hongkong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, China. They all build infra much faster than the US. If we move south, then Malaysia and Singapore also build very fast. For Europe, France builds much faster than the US, but it is more centralised.
- winter_blue 4y agoWhat's their secret? How do they keep their standards up, but still build so fast, and so cheap (compared to the US)? It would be amazing if someone could research this, and publish a paper on exactly what reforms the United States needs to make†. † to get to the same speed/quality/cost-efficiency as these countries
- Weneedlead 4y ago[dead]
- BurningFrog 4y agoThere is no secret. They're pretty normal developed countries. The weird outlier is the US!
- localplume 4y ago[dead]
- concordDance 4y agoAnd the UK.
- pchristensen 4y agoCheck out https://transitcosts.com/ https://transitcosts.com/ - it's a huge study of projects in many countries, broken out by budget line item.
- janalsncm 4y agoPart of it is the fact that they do it so much so they’re very good at it. China has laid more concrete since 2000 than the rest of the world combined prior to 2000. So the Chinese have a lot of expertise and a lot of the supply chain, and for example in Singapore the Chinese have built a lot. By the way, much of the same can be said about manufacturing. In the US a lack of construction has caused the industry to atrophy.
- pchristensen 4y agoBasically all of them, and at 1/2 to 1/10 of the cost. Spain, Italy, the Nordic countries, and Turkey are all much more efficient at building infrastructure than the US. Alon Levy is the most accessible source for this kind of cross-national comparision. https://transitcosts.com/ https://transitcosts.com/ and https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/03/03/we-gave-a-talk-about-our-construction-costs-report/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/03/03/we-gave-a-talk... is a good place to start.
- lostlogin 4y ago>Turkey How well build that infrastructure is/was built is debatable, and a massive loss of life has just occurred. https://www.bbc.com/news/64568826 https://www.bbc.com/news/64568826
- ryan_lane 4y agoTurkey may not be an example you want to choose here.
- bonzini 4y agoWow it takes effort to be slower than Italy. :) There are some infamous cases here of highways taking decades to complete (and also some positive experiences such as an awesome high speed rail network). I think it depends heavily on which infrastructure you're talking about though and what parts of the project you're considering. Some countries may be faster at obtaining permits and/or finding the money, and others may be faster at actually building the thing; my impression is that Italy absolutely sucks at the former, but some projects are also slowed down by the sheer amount of archaeological finds that you stumble upon when digging under Rome or Naples.
- rayiner 4y agoYeah, we are much worse than Italy. There is basically no example of a major transit project in the US being done fast and on budget in the last couple of decades. Here in Maryland we are almost 5 years behind schedule building a light rail line through some suburbs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/01/19/purple-line-maryland-delays/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/01/19/pur.... For the same money, and in far less time, Copenhagen built an entire fully automated subway under the city.