It's not just in megaprojects either. In my large, fairly dense US city, basic, easy-to-build, local infrastructure like adding a 1-mile bike lane to a straight street is impossible because a handful of NIMBYs are constantly taken seriously by local politicians.<p>My city has many bike lanes that are popular and well-used, as well as a bike-share program that is extremely popular. It also has a large number of cyclist deaths - including children! - due to the spottiness of existing bike infrastructure and overall lack of protected bike lanes. It seems like improving that infrastructure would be both easy, cheap, and popular, given the popularity of cycling and its existing infra, and the cheapness of plopping a concrete barrier onto a street. But no - the second anyone mentions protected bike lanes, a handful of NIMBYs write in with "but muh cars" and the politicians throw up their hands and surrender.<p>I don't understand why NIMBYs have been taken so seriously in the US in the past 50 years. It seems like at any point in history, any local project will be opposed by <i>somebody</i>, no matter who they are or what the project is. But previous generations seemed to be able to get over that in favor of building. For today's generation it seems like doing nothing has become better than doing something. If this were the 1900s, government would have told the NIMBYs to get bent, we're building Thing X because it's good for society and if you don't like it, tough. That's what living in city means sometimes!
One of the things I love about Palladium (and closely related, Samo Burja's newsletter) is the depth of research.<p>Like the detail that one of the most egregious episodes from California HSR involved a Spanish company that performed excellently on rail projects in Spain. Overall, this piece makes a strong case that the problem is specifically NIMBYism and loss of government institutional capacity.<p>I think the million dollar question is how government organizations can hire and retain better. The current situation looks dire. Obviously a charismatic leader with a broad anti-NIMBY mandate would go a ways at getting competent people to want to work in government. You saw that succeed on a small scale with orgs like US Digital Service.<p>The elephant, after that, is merit-based pay and promotion. Someone needs to sell this to the public. RN literally random cops and plumbers make mid six figures thru overtime while the directors of $100b mega-project are low-energy lifers making less than that. That's not gonna work.
People generally call out NIMBY-ism as though it's just some sort of irrational bias that people have, but I don't think that always explains it. Sure, in a lot of cases, people are overprotective of their neighborhoods or communities. But where did that attitude come from? I'd argue it came from decades of corporate greed and government dysfunction that bred a general distrust of large institutions. It's not like people have no reason to feel like big business doesn't have their best interests in mind.<p>Another commenter gave the construction of highways as an example, saying that people used to look at large infrastructure projects like that with a positive attitude. Well, I'd say look where that got them. The way highways were built in this country completely wrecked communities (especially poor ones located in less desirable parts of town) and eventually led to the uniquely American aesthetic of the urban and suburban wasteland.<p>If large organizations in this country want to undertake large projects, they have to first work to regain the trust of the average person by acting like they actually give a damn and really want to the world to be a better place for their efforts.
A friend has worked in construction project management for almost 40 years, mostly in Texas. A few years ago, he moved to San Francisco to work on the Van Ness project, which was approved in 2003, began construction in 2017 (!), went $40 million over budget, and finally completed this year. The project essentially added a median and some bus lanes to a two mile stretch of road through San Francisco and took 19 years.<p>During his time in SF, no construction took place—so he told me he would essentially go into the office and do nothing while waiting for various city hearings to happen. After 8 months, he quit in frustration and moved back to Texas.
NIMBY-ism is just an example of people not caring for one another in our country. Everyone in the last 20 years or so seems only out for themselves. I remember when the interstate was being built through my town as a kid and people would say it's going to be great. Nowadays I feel every new report about new construction projects only reflect the negative impacts like cost, environment etc. It's just as if everywhere I look all I see is negative outlook from society. And take from that how people's first response is how they can protect themselves.
The article lays out a lot of the problems with American projects, but doesn't do much to explain why European projects are able to manage a better track record. Are their unions weaker, or are their goals better aligned with the projects?<p>Also the article suggests eliminating National Environmental Policy Act(NEPA) provisions as a way of cutting red tape. I don't doubt that there's a lot of NEPA that ought to be revised, but we need to remember why these provisions were created in the first place. If we eliminate environmental impact studies rather than come up with a more efficient way to conduct them, we should expect that megaprojects will have unforseen environmental impacts. In some cases, local species will be driven to extinction, and in other cases the long term health of nearby people may be compromised. These risks may be worth the payoff, but we should be upfront about these risks and who could be affected.
> Incredibly, the state has not laid a single mile of track and it still lacks 10 percent of the land parcels it needs to do so. Half of the project still hasn’t achieved the environmental clearance needed to begin construction. The dream of a Japanese-style bullet train crisscrossing the state is now all but dead due to political opposition, litigation, and a lack of funding.<p>Among my favorite images are hulking segments of unfinished CHSR viaduct dominating the skyline of Central Valley towns that didn't want it in the first place. A man-made monument to hubris.<p>E.g. <a href="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d88bcf176aba93cb014bff7a9be1461fdfddb771/0_225_4722_2832/master/4722.jpg?width=940&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=7321bad7a8697606722ce0dc2e3f7761" rel="nofollow">https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d88bcf176aba93cb014bff7a9be14...</a>
The kicker is right at the end:<p>> Like Germany, the U.S. regularly shows that its current stall is ultimately a political choice. In February 2017, heavy rain damaged the nation’s tallest dam, Oroville Dam, creating the risk of catastrophic and deadly flooding in the Sacramento valley. Over 180,000 people living downstream along the Feather River in Northern California were evacuated from their homes. As in the current German case, the risks posed by inaction necessitated a bypassing of the usual rules.<p>><p>> Within 10 days of the damage incident, Kiewit was awarded a contract. A little over two weeks later Kiewit’s team and equipment were fully mobilized at the site. After only 165 days Kiewit had brought the dam’s main spillway into working condition. It then completed a second phase where it built a 1.2 million square foot spillway—an area so large that 25 NFL regulation-sized fields could fit inside it. The combined project was completed in only 18 months.<p>Same company, two different bureaucratic contexts. The US legal and bureaucratic system is a legacy codebase. It’s done well and continues to work but is vastly inefficient. Now, how to reboot America with a new codebase? That’s the real question…
America can build; but America does not <i>want</i> to build, or at least a large portion of America doesn’t. And they try their darnedest to slow everyone else down.<p>And there may be a good reason for that. Consider this nugget from the article:<p>> The entire $160 million-per-mile road lane project, and the five years of gridlock it created, were justified by the promise of shaving one minute per mile off commute time for its users. The final indictment of the project was a Metro study that found that Sepulveda had actually made commute times longer.<p>Many of the things people want to build are pointless! Lanes are added but commute times don’t drop. Roads are added and they are soon choked with traffic. New homes are built but prices go up anyway.<p>Or worse, they are actively harmful. The “big project” urban highway builds of the late 20th Century ruined waterfronts and neighborhoods and in some cases were weapons wielded at minority communities. It took a horrible earthquake to reclaim San Francisco’s waterfront from the highway. It took a famously difficult “Big Dig” to reclaim downtown Boston.<p>Or look beyond roads at the huge ecological damage done by the big project dams of the 20th Century. Look at abandoned mines and coal power plants all over the country.<p>So: it’s hard to build because so many people are against building. And so many people are against building because there is so much evidence that most building projects are pointless or harmful.<p>The end result is a much higher bar for projects to clear to get started, and a higher bar for them to clear while underway. These may be good things in the long run.
I think on the whole America is in decline quite a bit. We don’t see it yet in terms of GDP or economic output, but the politics have changed considerably over the years and that is going to have a lasting impact. Mitch McConnell is singly responsible for this. One party doesn’t vote for the other party’s initiatives, not even one vote. If anyone votes they are targeted and primaried. We don’t realize it but this is what happens on a much worse scale in poor countries as the only objective in those countries for poliiticians is to siphon money for themselves. Getting things done is never on the cards. We are on that same path.
If you need to do so much work to make a single carpool lane you really have to think if that is the best solution in the first place. You already have too many cars. The obvious solution is reducing the existing number of cars. Open a couple extra bus routes and turn one of the existing lanes into a bus lane.
Most of the comments here seem to be decidedly pro-building-big-stuff. As though that were obviously in the interest of the greater good, and everyone should just get with the program.<p>But the primary exhibit in the author’s opinion is a project that, by his own account, probably should never have been undertaken.<p>So let’s ask a question. What if the hurdles and pushback, (which the author identifies as environmental reviews, pushback from local communities, and unions) are performing a necessary function (but doing so inefficiently). What if they are saying something that shouldn’t be ignored?<p>What if we shouldn’t be building huge freeways (odd that all the examples are roads and bridges—-what about energy projects)?<p>What if that investment went into methodically reshaping our cities to be walkable, livable, sustainable, fed from locally grown food, integrated with wild space…<p>Just consider the amount of concrete it takes to build one of these megastructures. Concrete alone accounts for 8% of global CO2 emissions [0]. What would happen if you accounted for that cost in addition to the billions of dollars spent on a one-minute-per-mile faster commute. (If only there were some power to the irony of wasting CO2 emissions for the sake of enabling more cars on the road. See Braess’ Paradox [1] and Jevons Paradox)<p>Maybe environmental concerns are right. Maybe labor concerns are right. Maybe we need to integrate the values they represent into planning, rather than making them file lawsuits. Maybe we should think more carefully about what we should build.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02612-5" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02612-5</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox</a>
I stopped reading at "Incredibly, the state has not laid a single mile of track" for California High Speed rail, which is completely false. There are 119 miles under active construction and they've been putting down track since 2018.
<i>"This takes time, with the average EIS taking 4.5 years to complete. Some have taken longer than a decade. A cottage industry of consultants is devoted to completing these documents, earning themselves millions in fees."</i><p>Now there's an opportunity for a startup. Make the process paperless. Go out with drones, phone apps, and ground-penetrating radar, tie all the info to location. Hook this up to AR goggles, so the people involved can see all the data when on-site.
Much of the environmental paperwork could be generated automatically.<p>Drone-based ground penetrating radar is now available.[1] It's a lot cheaper than finding pipes and cables during construction.<p>[1] <a href="https://integrated.ugcs.com/gpr" rel="nofollow">https://integrated.ugcs.com/gpr</a>
If I learned one thing in countless city planing videos on youtube it is that car centrist ideology combined with car centrism enshrined in regulation combined create the urban sprawl that is so common in North America. The main problem with it is the extreme inefficiency: Because of the big surfaces needed for parking and driving a large fraction of the land is not only failing at generating a revenue for the city, it is in fact a liability, because when that street needs to be renewed the money will not be there to do it.<p>In Europe when a new distric is built outside a city the <i>first</i> thing put up is the public transport. This leads sometimws to the absurd situation that you can take a subway to what looks like a barren wasteland with a station in it, but 10 years later it will be a living place full of flats, shops, bars and so on. Living close (<10 min walk) to a public transport hub is a major factor when I look for a place.<p>I grew up on the country side and had a car (I was even driving as a job), but haven't had a car in the past 12 years. The places I need to go to are typically faster to reach by bicycle or public transport, the few times I need to transport something car sharing works perfectly fine.
What are peoples thoughts on palladium? I’ve found their articles and podcasts to be a refreshing analysis on modern socio-political issues with minimal culture war or partisan interference. Any other podcasts of similar quality and rigor anyone is listening to?
Doesn't this article display a classical fallacy when it attempts to equate vastly different construction projects (building an additional highway lane vs. building a factory, for example)?
Megaprojects are mostly wasteful and don't deliver on their promise. They appeal to dreamers and idealists, and the GCs make out like bandits while residents are harmed and the promised benefits don't arrive. We don't build because private industry would rather issue buybacks to the oligarchic class in Arkansas and Kansas than invest in infrastructure used by the rest of too stupid to be born generationally wealthy with family offices.
American cities, being large and complex systems, are not centrally planned or managed to the extent that would allow for optimization of logistical concerns. The financial motivations of large development firms, coupled with their political power (aka bribery of elected officials) has resulted in cities that are disorganized and unoptimized for the movements of goods and people. These systems are very good at creating profitable projects for those with enough capital, however. The federal highway system is about the best thing one can say about America concerning large scale construction projects - the relic of a bygone era.
The title is misleading. Why something cannot be built on time or on budget in Los Angeles versus the rest of the country is apples and oranges. Given the complications inherent in LA I'm surprised the project is actually finished.
I would say it's not an issue about democracy or bureaucracy, it's because the responsibility is diluted. Someone is not happy with this? Great, it is now not because we do not do it, it is because we take every complaint seriously. The dilution of responsibility may appear in different ways. Leave the issue to some dedicated committee, they will work very hard to make sure the project won't start in a millennium, and cost possibly even more than actually building the project. In case people are concerned about the endless delay, all the process is transparent and no one is to blame.<p>This is not limited to building project. We all remember that when covid started, it took the CDC a long time to acknowledge that masks are effective, and even longer to acknowledge that the disease is airborne (in Oct. 2020). Why? They based their guidelines on "science and evidence". In events like, any delay in the decision leads to many deaths that could have been saved.<p>Ironically, in current America, only the fanatics are making prompt decisions. Look how fast the red states are passing abortion laws after the RvW overturned.
NIMBY is the least of the problems. The real problem is the private sector that exists to siphon money off the government spending. They amplify the cost of each initiative many times, making it utterly ineffective to invest in any infrastructure.<p>There is a reason why China's infrastructure industry is largely state-owned or dominated. It prevents such profiteering.
I don't find this thesis to be true at all, at least from the perspective of someone living in the Seattle area, where we recently:<p>- Hugely expanded the light-rail system and should have a major east-side extension opening within 2 years.<p>- Tore down an above-ground waterfront highway and replaced it with a tunnel underneath downtown Seattle.<p>- Currently reconstructing the waterfront to connect to the historic pike place market.<p>- At least one major new ferry terminal in the region in the last few years.<p>- Major expansion of the bike-lane network to where it's now easy to bike pretty much anywhere downtown, largely on protected bike lanes.<p>As far as I can see the only issue really is funding that pushes the timelines out on further expansions. The federal government seems to give peanuts for major transportation projects so the state/city/county pretty much has to fund it all themselves.
The costs of growing complexity cannot be exaggerated. Note there's a new effort to help create more effective government in CA that's worth checking out: <a href="https://effectivegovernmentca.org/" rel="nofollow">https://effectivegovernmentca.org/</a>
There are other reasons. I live in a major city that has difficulty completing infrastructure projects. In grad school, one of the projects we did was to evaluate the city’s contracts, which were publicly available. What our team found was that the city routinely contracted subsequent projects with higher bonuses for earlier completion than the penalty on prior contracts for being late. Since many of the projects were going to the same handful of companies, it became a lucrative pyramid scheme with local taxpayer dollars. This was in the late 80s and things are better, but no one ever went to jail or was voted out of office. But I did get my MBA as did the other team members. In the end, it all felt like a game.
The NIMBYism crisis in Canada has also reached a fever pitch:<p><a href="https://www.tvo.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-cmhc-says-abandon-all-housing-hope-ye-who-live-in-ontario" rel="nofollow">https://www.tvo.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-cmhc-says-aba...</a><p>That's the Ontario provincial public broadcaster.<p>Canada currently builds a measly 286,000 homes per year, but the housing crisis is so severe that the government thinks we need to build 5.7 million homes over the next 9 years to alleviate the crisis. Which is basically impossible. And the municipalities are still crying about Character Of The Neighborhood and the importance of democratic local control.
Brightline is being built and it is a private railroad. The local highway authorities are attempting a shake down.<p>Perhaps policies should tie transportation, rezoning, and real estate to incentivize private construction of transportation infrastructure.
This article could have been written about any industry at all, like healthcare, aerospace, or fast food, and have made essentially the same points, on the same timeline, and with the same conclusions.<p>Maybe something happened in the 1960s…
>Incredibly, the state has not laid a single mile of track and it still lacks 10 percent of the land parcels it needs to do so. Half of the project still hasn’t achieved the environmental clearance needed to begin construction. The dream of a Japanese-style bullet train crisscrossing the state is now all but dead due to political opposition, litigation, and a lack of funding.<p>Surely this is the worst way to do a project. Not even having the land yet?<p>I mean even a kid would now know the incredible amount of leverage the remaining land owners have over you. They can ask basically any price for it now.
In the past we have made cities because of economy of scale effects, and because we are social animals. In the very past we have made them because we do not have had effective quick enough transportation systems, for defense, water proximity etc.<p>Nowadays at the actual evolution state, at the actual needs the economy of scale effects do not happen in cities anymore but in Rivieras, witch differ from USA suburbs because they are not residential-only areas but a mix of residential and work areas, a bit dense but not too much to have no room for evolution, not too low do have no benefit of density scale. That's is.<p>In the very past when cities were little and made of rocks and wood changing them was moderately easy and normally happen after a <i>not infrequent</i> catastrophe, now with concrete thing have changed much, we can't "source raw materials where we are, recycling the past mess" and that's another important issue: we know concrete do not last forever and we made big stuff with it with no real plan on what to do when will be time to decommission them. We allow keeping up crappy things because of someone interests against all others and again no plan how to sort the issue out. That's why not USA in particular but essentially all other the world we can't build.<p>USA have showed and tested why differentiation fails: suburbs fails because they are residential-only, you need a car just to get a bottle of milk. Cities fails because of density. EU give even worse example of dense-cities issues. BUT all other the world we see that Rivieras keep going. Surely they are not universal, we can't made a mining industry with that model. We need some "districts" but some with a single purpose, a single owner, aside that we can a day erasing them and restart over.<p>Such model is <i>implicit</i> in the Green New Deal, even if people, even UN New Urban Agenda deny it, we can evolve single-family homes with a bit of land around, we can't for tall buildings and dense areas. IMVHO the Green New Deal also tell without telling their "solution": pushing poor in modern cities who happen to be like prisons, of small size to be manageable, and live few wealthy aside. I doubt such model can scale, I doubt such "separation" can work in nature though...
I think we’re all dancing around the real issue which is that this is what happens when you have a low trust society in which everyone is trying to get theirs and there is no social cohesion or sense of common purpose. You get nimbys.<p>The only thing that has held the country together up till now is “free” real estate and prosperity due mostly to luck and abundant natural resources. Take that away, and suddenly everyone is attacking each other. It’s no wonder we don’t get anything done.
Regarding just the Public-Private-Partnerships: Alon Levy doubts it's benefical (at least for transit), partially due to high ongoing costs <a href="https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/01/15/friends-dont-let-friends-build-ppps/" rel="nofollow">https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/01/15/friends-dont-l...</a>
In the last bit he leaves out Bell Labs, which was <i>de facto</i> the national research laboratory for decades, funded by a system that was a tax in everything but name, and which was encouraged to try new things even with the assumption that most of them would fail.
Because there are too few builders.<p>I am trying to get an old house updated and keep hearing no one goes into those jobs anymore. The crews are aging and backed up on work.<p>This rag makes a huge philosophical social statement without looking at the reality; there are more office workers than builders.<p>You can’t build anything when everyone is preferring computer jobs and high salaries to go along.<p>America does not need to build more industrial nonsense. Or even homes. It needs to use empty space that it built better.<p>This whining about how grand greenfield projects cannot get off the ground is propaganda. Pay trades people what a programmer makes and America will build again.<p>But that won’t happen as Thiel, Musk and company would not have their way with human agency if it could afford it’s own.
In USA you are lucky, at least you don't find unexploded WWII air bombs or mines or even underground nazi weapons storage rooms...yes, we still find them in Italy and it costs a lot to deal with, both time and money.
"build" has turned into one of those zero-entropy words like "content". Let's build back better our ability to build because [insert massively simplified view of society] means we can't build.
I called BS when the author claimed that dock workers make $100,000/year.<p>The article seems to imply that the main part of the problem is organized labor and the need to follow environmental regulation. I don't buy that.
America can build if it wants to. It's just got to want to.<p>It is good to want things if they are good for you! There is merit in wanting what is right! And little kids can't do anything but want what they want to want. Just want.<p>Concomitantly with my Idealistic Christianity, let me share the Atheistic perspective running in parallel: I developed an algorithm that can solve any problem in a math textbook, but it can't want anything. And I'm not going to automate that, that must always be left to someone in flesh and bone.<p>Seek, and ye shall find.
As a NIMBY, for some things, and a YIMBY for others, I sense my power in this situation is significantly smaller than other costs and consequences. Nothing I think seems to be vested with much power.<p>Do people think NIMBY have more power than YIMBY? I think it equalises. It might be NIMBY power is indicative of risks, and unassessed costs and consequences?
You get sold on Global Warming, Healthcare for All, and Social Justice and end up with a Byzantine System 57 bureaucratic layers deep, mountains of paperwork, legal problems, and grift whose total government size is 44% of the GDP - with big plans to grow. Good luck building anything.
We really need this generation's Robert Moses or Lyndon Johnson. Someone with the ambition and political saavy for cutting through layers of bureaucracy, though maybe today's setup would be too much for even them.
I assumed "build" meant "erect buildings". Appparently the story is that USA can't lay roads. Is that the result of a timely regulatory reaction to the USA's car culture?
The california HSR has spent 44 billion dollars over budget and still hasn't even gotten the first leg's real estate done?<p>I hope most of that was for the land, which is not a sunk cost/lost asset.
Why? Because successfully completing large infrastructure projects is - at best - a "lip service" priority for most people. But it is an <i>actual</i> priority for very few people.
The US needs dramatic, progressive change, but instead we're failing and regressing in so many ways and places. I expect cascading failures to continually compound.
Meanwhile, China is building high speed rail, roads, and bridges around the world, mainly in Eastern Europe and Africa. Biden has announced a competing initiative: <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1106979380/g7-summit-2022-germany-global-infrastructure" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1106979380/g7-summit-2022-ger...</a> but we all know this is empty talk. The US cannot build in its own land; outside of the US, it is hopeless.
My favorite NIMBY story is of the Golden Gate bridge:<p><a href="https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/place/article/Golden-Gate-Bridge-construction-and-indignation-3554707.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/place/article/Golden-Gate-Bri...</a>
a better question? does America need to build? The answer is a resounding no. Japan and China are building bridges to nowhere. Their ethno-nationalism is holding them back. If they take in immigration like the rest of the rich world, they'd have a better luck to tackle their aging population issue. But they wouldn't for ethno-nationalistic reasons.<p>America already has fantastic infrastructure in the form of roads. they don't need all these bullet trains etc. It's propaganda. Spain has one of the largest bullet train network but their economy is still sluggish. If the bullet trains were such a good idea then a Elon Musk-type would've invested in one. U see, that's how the railway system got built in America. Think Rocker-feller.<p>The fact that America doesn't have it just means it doesn't make economic nor political sense.<p>Also, if an enemy nation like Mexico invades, do u want them to have fast trains to move soldiers around? Do you want Mexico to take back the city of angels?<p>All in all. It's asking the wrong question. The assumption is that building good, not building bad. Which is the fundamentally wrong. China will not overtake the US just by building. The US is fine just the way it is.
do construction workers in US have reputation of working under the influence too?<p>those who work on those "simple" projects like renovation of homes and stuff