From the paper:<p>>Overdesign: American infrastructure is often overbuilt, not out of higher quality but out of agency turf battles, obsolete standards like NFPA 130 that have better foreign replacements, or scope creep.<p>>Poor procurement practices: there is improper supervision of private contractors, and things are getting worse as public agencies offload more risk to the private sector, which responds by bidding higher to hedge against the risk; there are also some one-bid contracts, for example the 7 extension in New York, leading to even higher costs.<p>> Poor project management: design review teams are usually understaffed and cannot respond to contractors fast, so there is little institutional capacity to build big projects. Wages for office workers are below market rate and hiring
is difficult.<p>>Labor: in New York, the productivity of construction labor seems unusually low and wages high.<p>>NIMBYism: the United States makes it easy to sue, for example NEPA is enforced by lawsuit, whereas its Italian equivalent is enforced by the administrative state. Lawsuits in the US and other lawsuit-happy countries like Germany rarely win, but do delay projects, so there is defensive design, including unnecessary scope in order to buy off political support. Leah Brooks and Zachary Liscow have a paper on the growth in Interstate construction costs over the decades, blaming citizen voice lawsuits for the increase.<p>>Politicization of projects: the civil service is weak compared with both elected politicians and their unelected political appointees, and there is not much continuity in design.<p>One thing I think they missed, environmental impact studies (that aren't even associated with reduced environmental impact!) I remember Seattle's light rail project included 8 years of environmental impact review of a light rail extensions along routes that were planned along existing rail corridors!<p>Also, relating to overdesign, I think younger generations suffer from a cult of perfectionism. But perfect is the enemy of good. A streetcar might seem so much cooler, but a dedicated rapid bus can do more with less money!