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...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.
Typically, the relevant public works department has X projects it would like to do, Y dollars of annual budget, and Y is way, way too short to cover all of projects in X. The decision is made by relevant government officers which projects are actually going to be built, and the cost most definitely plays a role in the considerations.
Now, of course, government decision making about projects and spending has multitude of problems. The point is, however, that the suggestion that nobody thinks or cares about the cost is ludicrous. They do care. Typically they don’t care enough, or don’t care properly, I’ll give you that, but these sort of projects don’t just randomly pop up as work orders for the construction crews, there definitely is a lot of planning and analysis involved beforehand. Often in fact too much, or of the wrong kind, but total lack of consideration is definitely not an issue here.
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