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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34413 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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Why is transit in the US so expensive?

The starting point for this video is an upcoming report on why transit, most notably subways, cost so much more in American than in other developed countries. However, the discussion covers much more than just transit, and discusses how cost disease effects pretty much all public works projects, from roads to sewage. While there are many individual pieces that contribute to inflated prices (outside consultants, unions, red tape, bureaucrats, etc.), they don't really like this explanation. As Chuck points out shortly after 31:00, each of the 2 major political sides can point to a few of these issues to fuel their particular narrative. But, he says, they're incomplete, and miss the real underlying causes. If I were to summarize their description, it seems like the question is mostly one of attitude:

  1. No one cares about cost. People will say they do, but their actions say otherwise. Voters don't, especially with the ability to borrow from the future by issuing bonds. Which means politicians don't, because why would they? And the appointed heads of agencies don't consider it their responsibility to account for cost; they treat cost as fixed and let the legislature decide how to pay for it. Possible sub-point: We treat a lot of these projects as jobs programs and so end up hiring more people than necessary.

  2. There's an underlying assumption everywhere that everything has to be the best, no matter what. Roads in rural areas, that in other countries would be very narrow and winding, are in the US flat, smooth, paved asphalt with 2 lanes in each direction. We don't treat money as a constraint, we just decide we want a thing and then go and get it without regard for the future. Of course, this attitude depends on what one is used to. Boomers, especially, are not used to having these sorts of constraints; Millennials also feel a certain sense of entitlement, but at least have more experience with these constraints. (The latter sentence seems to be more or less speculation, they don't cite any research here).

The conclusion is that nothing will really get fixed until it accumulates to the point of a major economic recession or depression, at which point we'll be forced to actually do something, but not until after we have wasted enormous amounts of time, effort, and resources on poorly planned public projects. Or, if we collectively decide to actually care about these things before then.

Where are those smooth 2 lane roads in rural areas? This certainly has not been my experience in Washington state. Most of the roads that are yellow on Google Maps, except actual interstate freeways and certain non interstate freeways in urban areas (like 520 or 169) are single lane. Overwhelming majority of US 101 highway over the Olympic Peninsula, for example, is single lane. Almost all US 2 is single lane. All major highways in northeastern Washington are single lane. One counter example I can come up with is highway 97, which has passing lanes for most of its course, but beyond that, it’s mostly single lane roads except in busiest urban areas and actual Interstates. These are some of the most important roadways in the entire state, the most important ones in their region. Is it any different in other states? Where exactly rural roads are made to be two lane?

edit: found another counter example, highway 395 is double roadway (so two lanes each direction), and given where it’s at, I can’t imagine it getting a lot of traffic, but overall, very few of rural roads in Washington are double lane.

I haven't been to Washington. It's probably mostly interstates they're thinking of (they mentioned ND, so I looked at I-94, and yep, 2 lanes paved in each direction in the middle of nowhere), but for example 87 in Northwest Texas and Northeastern New Mexico is 2 lanes in each direction, through an area with about 6 buildings and more cows than people.

It is certainly the case that not all rural roads are like this, I've driven on many that are not, but they definitely exist.

Interstates are categorically different from other road projects. They are major freight arteries and are partially federally funded because they are inter-state highways. I-94 connects Billings to Bismarck to Fargo to Minneapolis. US-87 that you're talking about in Texas and New Mexico is still a US numbered highway and that section specifically is the main route off of I-25 from Colorado (and Wyoming) into Texas through Raton, NM rather than routing through Oklahoma. Interstates need to be thought of like freight railroads that commuters occasionally drive on (like how Amtrak sometimes runs on freight rail and by sometimes I mean they are a minority of traffic on those rails, the rails are almost all freight owned) rather than as just "roads" and especially not "rural roads".

Ok, but would other countries have such big freight thoroughfares in such sparse areas? Especially on roads, rather than trains? I think this is part of the point they are making: We say "wow, it sure is nice that we have these massive interstate roads connecting everything to everything in a direct way" but the cost isn't really considered. Regardless of the intent of 87, is there enough traffic of any kind to justify making it 2 lanes in each direction?

Ok, but would other countries have such big freight thoroughfares in such sparse areas? Especially on roads, rather than trains?

Yes, of course they would, especially if the freight thoroughfare connected two big population centers. Look at Spain or France, for example. And yes, especially on roads, rather than trains: US is the world leader in freight rail, other countries are less likely to use trains for freight than US.

Regardless of the intent of 87, is there enough traffic of any kind to justify making it 2 lanes in each direction?

Enough that the federal government wants to upgrade it to an interstate. That said the FHA thinks it's not that much traffic compared to other major routes. But it's not "nice to have direct connects" so much as the country functions because of the surface freight moving on those highways. And we've seen what happens trying to identify what is or is not essential from a business logistics perspective.

And we've seen what happens trying to identify what is or is not essential from a business logistics perspective.

I'm confused. You say that like it's a bad thing (which I would agree with) but the government building freight roads everywhere is doing just that. If you really want to let the market decide what's "essential" then the cost of shipping on them should reflect the actual cost of the roads, rather than being built by the federal government and used for free.

Probably not, but most other countries don't have to cover the sheer land area that the US does. As I understand it the impetus behind the interstate system is not freight routes (though that's nice), it's "what if we need to transport troops across the country if we get attacked". That's a legitimate need for any country, we simply have more area to cover.

Interstates are not what people think of when the talk is about rural roads. Interstates are big, because they usually carry significant traffic. I-94 is literally the only interstate going through entire North Dakota. It is not serving local rural Dakotans, it is serving every single resident of ND who needs to get some stuff from elsewhere in the country by a truck, and also people in Minnesota and Montana. How many other two-lane roads are in North Dakota?

I mean, the argument here was that in US, everything (emphasized in the original) has to be best, and what would be a windy shabby road elsewhere is a 2 lane each direction, smooth and straight in the states. You don’t get to claim that and then provide Interstates as an example: these are uniquely unrepresentative of rural roads in US. I think this argument is utterly false.

mean, the argument here was that in US, everything (emphasized in the original) has to be best

Are you making that big of a deal out of what I figured, when I watched the video, was clearly an exaggeration?

I am pointing out that the example provided to support the argument is clearly false and does not support it in any way. Not sure what you are getting at here.

I think it's clearly true in that there clearly are wide, straight, paved roads through very sparse parts of the country, and we never really think about to what extent the cost is justified. The existence of much smaller rural roads disproves the literal interpretation of (my summary of, not even the original, which is in the video) a rhetorical flourish.

Sorry, but who is “we”? I certainly don’t really spend much time thinking whether the cost of some particular rural road is justified, but so what? Someone does. I really lost the plot here in this discussion: what’s the argument here? That, uh, infrastructure costs are high because random Joe doesn’t think a lot about costs of random rural roads somewhere?

Someone does.

...do they? I mean, engineers estimate what maintenance costs and write down a number, but who pushes back and says it's too expensive? Or asks if the road needs to be that wide? Who is actually responsible for determining what sort of expense is justified? Who pushes back when the cost of a project is high and the benefits unclear? Maybe you know, and if so, I would like to know who does it.

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Yeah, but that's because the interstate highway system isn't for transit, it's so the military can drive tanks (and troop movers, and other military convoys) from Florida to Washington and Maine to California. Citizens using the roads is a nice bonus, but their purpose is to project the power of the military to every part of the nation.

This probably played a significant role in the creation of the interstate highway system, but I think it is far from accurate to say that this is what interstates “are for”. This consideration plays really rather marginal role today. DoD certainly is not funding or managing the Interstates.

If that's what they were created for, then I think it's fair to say that's what they "are for".

First, this is not what they were created for. This is only one reason for which they were created. In common speech, when we say that "A is for B", it carries implication that B is the single most important reason for A, and other reasons are of little significance. Second, even if they were, in fact, originally built mostly for military transports (which they weren't, though it was important reason to build them), if they are not meant for this use case today, one can scarcely say that they are for it. At best, you can say that they were built for it.

The ironic counter to the "what about the roads" critique of libertarianism is noting that roads are tools of state military power from the Romans to today. Edit: it should be noted that a significant portion of ground logistics (military and commercial) especially tanks (train loads of tanks only seem to be noticed when people think something is imminent) are handled by rail not truck convoys.

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