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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:
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.
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 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.
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?
...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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