The Problem of Infrastructure in the US
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- Опубликовано: 11 июн 2024
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Does the United States have the worst infrastructure in the entire developed world? Why on earth is public construction so expensive in this country? In this special video, we answer two of the big questions that always surround the North American power.
#infrastructure #USA #America
I'm a French civil engineer and I studied opportunities on the American public infrastructures market for French construction companies 30 years ago. I was struck then by how America was way, way behind in constructing, managing and maintaining its infrastructures. The techniques used by construction companies were outdated by half a century, public authorities didn't know what they were doing and designers used old standards, fearing innovation in case there was a lawsuit. Roads were poor, trains were a joke, sanitation and water supply were neither healthy or environmently friendly, etc.
Were it not for the Buy American Act and the ridiculous whims of unions (and I'm for strong unions defending workers rights, not fancies), French companies would have had a fieldday out-competing American competitors.
Sometimes, I saw laughable things : not golden toilets like you describe but, for example :
- a dirt road in the middle of the desert (where there was plenty of space) connected to the highway by a huge bridge to an even bigger bridge worthy of the Mississipi... over a dry brook-bed,
- a 4 lane deadend connecting a little piece of suburbia not bigger than a dozen individual houses,
- modern new roads turning to dirt roads at the county limit,
- not sanitized water in an upscale condo in a rich neighborhood,
- access ramps for the disabled leading to stairs,
- sewers pouring non-treated water into a river, just downstream a huge water treatment plant,
-etc.
I was appaled. I was even more appled to see beautiful, well thought and well built amenities spoiled by poor planning and poor management.
Other People's Money and the bigger the country, the bigger the ... Russia, China, Brazil, India connection between public expenses and organized crime. Small countries are just better run.
thats not a problem as everyone in US is expected to have 1-2 cars and buy bottled water from walmart.
@@nkristianschmidt forgot mexico from that list.... it is big country and has cartels run it. also huge population nowadays (russia level, over 100mn).
American government: OUR INFRASTRUCTURE IS COLLAPSING!
Also American government: Yes spending $1.7mil to build a shitshack is a wise investment.
liberals for you
@@Robert-hy3vv yea, but try and get the conservatives to stop sniffing glue for long enough to be viable alternative.
@@Robert-hy3vv Tell that to Ohio. It wasn't liberals fighting against regulations that would've prevented those derailments.
cheaper to hire the artisanal brick maker from the Swiss Alps
😂
I learned a joke during my stay in the USA in the 1990s :
"Elementary school problem : A high speed train going 30 miles per hour, goes from Washington to Baltimore. The distance is 60 miles. How long will it take?
Answer : 20 hours before derailing in North Carolina.
$1.7M on a public toilet? We can beat that. In Wellington, New Zealand's capital city, the Wellington City Council spent $2.5M on a pedestrian crossing.
Was that a walking bridge over a roadway?
Sounds like the politicians are getting paid to hire contractors and give them more than what's needed to finish the job!
Let me guess, no one went to jail for that? What a surprise...
Was that NZD or USD though?
That was NZD so around $1.6M USD.
As a NYer, I can attest our infrastructure is god awful, wondering why I'm paying top dollar to live here.
Is it cuz u can't get a job anywhere else? Genuine question I don't understand why people live in big cities, my work is flexible so I can live in a village but I wonder why others don't.
I live in Los Angeles and can say the same thing. Been here all my life 38 years... it just gets worst and worst. I need to find the balls to man up and just move somewhere.
The US has the very same problem as Russia: There are Silowiki and greedy entrepreneurs everywhere. And one hand washes the other. This results in unaffordable and never ending infrastructure projects. And that is far not all. It encompasses education, social welfare, geratric care, public flats for poor people and ends with the military and NASA's space programs. Therefore, I don't think it is a far fetched idea, presidant canditate Trump will improve the situation by overturning the US management system (note the fine difference to a government system) and flipping it to the Russian system. RUclipsr Jake Tran made a couple of good videos about the US-Silowiki system where every (!) competition has ceased to exist.
Big cities has different mindset & working style especially in big corporates. You learn something you can never learn & earn in a small city or town.
But recently big cities are collapsing across the world. I lived for 10 years in the wealthiest city in india but left it as it became a sinkhole to live. I am quite happy with my decision.
Keep in mind, as awful as NYC infrastructure is, it's still better than most of the country. Even so, every time I visit family in the City I want to take a mop and a bucket to the subway. Such ridiculous neglect of vital infrastructure!
"Corruption, insanity and incompetence" are nouns, not, as you claim, adjectives.
Dammit! :-)
The US stopped spending on education a long while ago as well ;) That's why nobody in the US can speak proper English anymore, but will have the loudest voice and biggest ego when someone brings it up.
@@tstcikhthys I'm not sure how much the spending of even twice the money could ever accomplish when most students think that mastering _their own_ language is profoundly uncool, when they hate reading (except the near-gobbledegook on their phone screens), when they listen at home to the dubiously literate speech of their parents, etc. etc.
Many emerge nonetheless into adulthood as intelligent users of language in some sense of the word, which certainly is some consolation. But that is hardly enough to maintain America's position as the world's leading country -and a rich one by virtue of that - for very much longer. Improved mastery of English isn't something that would put an end to the country's woes, but people have to get ready for another reduction in their standard of living, a much larger one this time.
Anyone who knows about the 1950-75 period in Britain has some idea what it will be like. Except in that instance Britain passed the baton to its best friend, the US. This time the top spot will go to a very, very hostile nation.
@@dixonpinfold2582 Indeed. Though it's not really that mastering their own language would give them some sort of economic advantage (though that might be true in some contexts), but that it's more of a symptom/harbinger of decay. Moreover, it's an indicator per se that people would be looking for an "economic advantage" in everything that relates to their life rather than the inherent joy/value of having said skill (e.g., speaking their language properly).
The US as a whole has a desperate problem with aging dams, bridges, roads, reservoirs, and urban structures. But focusing on NYC gives a distorted picture. NYC is one of the most expensive cities in the world, and Manhattan is more expensive than any other part of it. The Second Ave. subway had to be built by tunneling through bedrock. But it was a new structure, needed and useful. The infrastructure problems of the country overall are different--aging, dangerous, outdated bridges, tunnels, dams, etc., need to be repaired or replaced. Why that is so difficult is what this video should have examined. Maybe another one is needed.
Somewhat, but a significant portion of funding comes from shared state and federal pools of money. So an expensive toilet in one city means less to spend on projects in other places. Additionally these pools of money have requirements associated with access to them, these requirements are designed around more complex projects.
Finally, if your writing a budget and your infrastructure budget at the state or federal level is an unfillable black hole, you might decide to spend less which affects the areas outside major cities too. So NYCs and other cities infrastructure issues can indeed affect everyone.
It is worth noting that in other cities like Stockholm, they also had to tunnel or blast through bedrock on the metro lines. And with the city being built on islands, it has similar challenges to NYC.
But I do agree that there needs to be more discussion about the issues of obtaining funding for public infrastructure as well as the ridiculous amount of bureaucratic red tape that drives up costs and makes everything behind schedule.
Currently, Paris is massively extending its metro network by 200 kilometers (125 miles), with 180km (112 miles) of which that are bored deep underground in difficult terrain (flooded ground, gravel, crumbling gypsum and sulfur layers, unstable sand pockets and layers, former quarries, marly clays, shallow reaching aquifers, voids, etc.).
So much that they frequently have to freeze the ground hard with large, on-site cold generation and liquid nitrogen pumping factories with massive ground piping. They also often need to use mud-pressure or slurry TBM's built like submarines with pressure chambers at the front to be able to dig tunnels without stalling or ending up flooded.
They had to deal with surprise floods due to shifting water tables, etc. A deep station located between two arms of a river loop had to be anchored and cautiously water sealed to avoid infiltration and buoyancy...
On the 4 entirely new lines and 3 extensions to 2 existing lines, they're building 84 new stations (68 on new lines, 16 on extensions), and more than 100 deep access and evac shafts, as per stringent French tunnel safety laws, they must not be farther than 800 meters (half mile) apart from each other.
So there have been and currently is hundreds of different building sites scattered all around the metropolitan area.
Station designs all pretty much look like they came from architectural contests and are almost all unique (only 3 aerial stations share roughly the same model with different colors, all underground stations so far are unique in their designs).
The 4 new lines are fully automated driverless and equipped with platform screen doors (just like the largest of the 2 existing line that's being extended from both ends.).
All this for.... drumroll... 40 billion euros! (Estimated at 38, I rounded up).
So, about 200 million per kilometer (90% underground so it might be around 225 million per kilometer of underground line), for a great infrastructure with all the bells and whistles you could think of, and grandiose architecture.
Phase one, which saw more than 20 TBM's digging simultaneously at its peak, is nearing completion as the infrastructure is beginning primary testing with trains.
The first bits delivered, which are the 3 extensions to 2 existing lines, are opening (one extension opened a few days ago and the 2 other ones open Thursday this week).
The first main large section of new line will open next year to the public.
And then, a large section will open pretty much every year till 2030-2032.
The first large section that will open in fall 2025 is the South part of M15, the huge, fully underground, 75km (47mi) long express loop line around Paris core.
The South section of M15 is about 35km long (22 miles) and has 16 stations.
The project is called Grand Paris Express, and ridership forecasts have already been revised to 3 million daily rides on the extension itself.
A few months ago, more than 100km of tunnels had already been built, and a substantial portion of the small surface and elevated sections were also built.
Phase 2 has recently begun building and digging.
I'm particularly excited and eager to visit the Northern and main hub of the GPE project that will open this week to the public. The station looks grandiose and is quite huge. There are 56 escalators, if I recall correctly, and big groups of them cross a large vertical void, like a geological fault in an ocean ridge. It's really stunning.
This station will have 4 express lines stopping there, all fully automated. This major interchange station is called Saint-Denis Pleyel.
NYC could have something of the kind with a real proper express automated subway instead of the proposed IBX light rail project. But I wouldn't even dare to imagine the cost with outrageously excessive NY infrastructure costs...
The same thing is happening in Canada. In my city, there was a plan to build a new arena and event center on an open field at the city's edge. They had to do a $2 million environmental study for it. After the city council approved the project, some groups opposed to the location took the city to court. The legal battle lasted over 10 years. During that time, the environmental study expired, so they had to do five more studies, each costing $2 million. So, $10 million was spent, but nothing has been built yet.
Why didn't the builders countersue and force the groups to pay for the new environmental study?
The problem is BOTH!!!
1. We spend way too little on infrastructure.
2. We spend poorly.
Doing one-off small projects that don't properly connect with the overall system drives up costs and drives down system reliability.
One word: corruption.
The cost of building in the U.S. varies by state. But if Federal funding is involved there are so many strings attached that many companies won't offer bids. The "Infrasture Act" was signed into law in 2021 and it included 7.5 billion dollars to build a car charging network. It's now 2024 and only 7 have been built.
The 45 billion for rural internet has given the U.S. a grand total of 0 additional people in rural areas connected to the internet after 3 years.
all the places you mentioned were better are also highly unionized. it is not the unions it is the politicians and buraucrats.
So you are saying a toilet in California can cost more than the life time income of many people? Thats insane. No wonder companies are reluctant to manufacture in US
Union requirements? Wut? This is not a problem in any country that's heavily unionized.
Right in Europe we have much more Union worker, but they understand they loose their jib if they are not competitive. It is a government problem if they hire such companies. Give the job a chineese company and it is done. Next time they make a better offer.
Unions aren’t the same in every country. American unions, for example, were/are far more aggressive in providing benefits to their membership. European unions (and companies) however, were/are far more accommodating because the government insisted them they accommodate each other.
For example, while in the US construction workers don’t generally work evenings or weekends. In Germany, construction companies just have to pay them overtime.
Lol 2 mil for a public bathroom. You should check the Philippines, a public bathroom costed 250 million pesos or roughly 5 million dollars, and doesnt even have dividers. That was a big scandal way back a decade ago
The problem is that are cities are designed like trash with massive sprawl. All of those pipes, bridges, and cables are unsustainable at the levels of tax we are imposing on suburbanites. They were almost fully subsidized when built and are still heavily subsidized by the city cores where sane land usage was barely possible. If even one tenth of the money we spend on cars was spent on public transportation we wouldn't need more than half the roads we have. All that extra space is just more distance we have to travel for no reason. The car is killing America.
All that extra space makes US property the cheapest in the world ;)))
@@philoslother4602 for now.
once US cities start to tax the people that live in sprawling suburbs their fair share of tax, it will become a lot more expensive.
because everything is so sprawled out the people living there should pay more for (among other things):
- tv, internet, water, sewage, electricity (because the infrastructure needed for them to be connected to these services is way more than in the city itself)
- the roads. because everything is so spread out, the amount of road (and road related infrastructure, like bridges, or tunnels) per household is a lot more than in the city.
everything gets more expensive when you have to connect far away places instead of compact places. and until now US cities use taxes payed by the people/businesses inside the city to pay for those suburbs upkeep. but that isn't enough to keep the infrastructure in decent shape.
so there will be a time that cities have to increase the taxes for the people living in suburbia because otherwise the city will go bankrupt.
I don't know it doesn't cost that much for building a public bathroom here in Texas it only cost us $100,000 that includes drain pipes as well as all the materials for the walls yeah but most of these cases are usually in New York state or in California or any other Blue State because I never heard of anyone in my region ever spending 2 billion dollars on a single Public Restroom. Plus all our cities in Texas are modernized in fact they're all brand new buildings.
I vote for buccees to build all the public restrooms in the us.
Considering that between 1950 and 1980 you tore most of the old cities' centers down and most of that for highways and parking lots. Since then you've built back on a lot of the parking lots, so... 🤔
It costs more in blue states because land costs more because they are worth more and more successful, compared to cheaper red states where wages are low it is cheaper to build
The first time I went to the US (New York) the state of the infrastructure really shocked me, even riding the bus from New Jersey to NYC the only thing that felt missing was caged birds and chickens running around
Consider yourself lucky. :-)
I know someone in Boston who rode an MBTA bus through a Latino neighborhood. He really felt alienated and was sure that beginning at the next stop they were going to bring goats and sheeps and live chickens on the bus, and even give birth on the bus.
the NYC Subway is not the most famous subway in the world, the London Underground is (lets not get pendantic over the term subway)
No easy solution to America's problems. We're stubborn & infatuated with real or imagined "rights". Changing us either needs a L-O-N-G, painful campaign or a worse disaster. Of course, worst disaster is if we never change!
When most of our infrastructure was built in the 30s up through the 70s union membership was around 30% now it's somewhere around 8 or 10%.
The problems that we have are an absolute mania for privatization and so little of infrastructure work gets done here.
The problem isn't unions in general, which exist in Spain and Germany and the Netherlands too, but that in the US they are as greedy and probably more corrupt than the corporations they often criticize and because infrastructure can't be shipped overseas like all the other industries unions have ruined, they use it as a slush fund.
Your argument doesn't make sense to me. If a mania was for privatization was the problem, wouldn't there be a lot of projects being done so that private parties could make money? Private enterprises can build a lot of infrastructure comparatively efficiently - essentially all road construction and sewers are being built are done by private businesses in preparing for new subdivisions. It seems to me more likely that we have progressed further along in our mixed economy of regulation, representative democracy, litigating everything, people having property interests in the general situation, etc.
@@richdobbs6595 what you're saying follows a certain logic but an actual fact privatization almost always increases costs.
@@vinnieramone4818 I just don't see privatization as being the driving factor behind these cost overruns. I'd argue that this is all an outgrowth of the idea that the government controls property rights, and that it allocates them by political processes. Sometimes that could be called "privatization", but just as often it is called environmental impact statements or providing contracts to "female or minority owned businesses".
@@richdobbs6595 I'm not arguing that privatization ought to cost more money I'm arguing that it does. This has been thoroughly studied.
I'm not aware of any evidence did women and minority owned businesses perform any different than others.
Environmental impact studies and regulations probably could be streamlined, but I would guess that has a lot to do with the fact that we hardly ever do any infrastructure in this country so we don't know how to do those things in addition to not knowing how to do the physical work
Yes, I definitely see this problem in United States. I am a Turkey citizen, but I’m always going back-and-forth to United States and each time I’m arriving to United States. I see all the infrastructure is lacking way behind Turkey.
Where do you go in America? Where do you live in Turkey? If Turkey's infrastructure is so good, why is your country so poor and you are going through an almost hyperinflation?
@@richdobbs6595 Oops. :-) Also, why can't they spell Turkiye?
@@richdobbs6595 u.s. is a 3rld world country unless you're in corperate America. Turkey quite similar to the US...
@@MrJdsenior Yeah!
@@anthonyhotspot7890 Parts of America are a 3rd world country. In the part of America that I live in, it is definitely first world and has first world problems. Infrastructure is definitely not the problem. Freeways are good, all the cars are shiny and new, no bridges collapsing. OTOH, forget buying a home if you are young. Starbucks is filled with folks with Master's Degrees. The downtown is filled with illegal immigrants and they are firing police to pay for them, and every intersection has panhandlers, who apparently find that more profitable than standard employment. Winning!
The problem with infrastructure in the US is that the people who use it don't want to pay for it to be fixed. Everyone wants someone else to foot the bill.
Sounds like the summary of neo-liberalism…
thats what taxes are 😂
@@opelfrost exactly my point. I don't live in NYC and get no benefit from infrastructure in NYC. Why should my tax dollars fund NYC infrastructure? Make the residents of NYC pay for their own infrastructure.
@@mindyobeeznisit's tough to go down that road, though, because New York heavily subsidizes the rest of the country through federal income taxes. Large cities like it support the rest of the country.
@@mindyobeeznis because you are a citizen of US, not the citizen of whichever state you are in. the same applies for any other country where the tax paid could end up building infrastructure not in their vicinity. that's the purpose of tax
200 BILION is nothing for such a big contry,in my much poorer country Serbia 4 billion in federal budget is for infrastructure. But USA has 320 milion people and my country 7 milion so if you divide that is 625$ in USA and 570$ in my country ,so still more in USA but in USA everything cost much more to build or repair.
But also in mu country half off money is always stolen and put in private pockets
what? no. Americans make more, technically but imo americans make less than the numbers imply because things are so expensive.
Serbia's a lot smaller as a whole. Serbia also is not divided up into 50 states with chronic political negligence and tension to stop beneficial public infrastructure from being built and maintained properly.
The 7 charging stations for 7.5 billion was a good deal 😬👌🏼
Thats because 90% of it was stolen in brood daylight lol
😂Meanwhile, China can build 10 charging stations for only 900 million USD
That's because more than that is held up by red tape, and still in the permitting and approval process. Getting public fast charging stations approved is a 2-4 year process, and often longer than that. That isn't corruption, though I'm sure there's some of that, but mostly it's just red tape.
@@carkawalakhatulistiwa And the stations in China are as big as a Buc-ee's in Texas am I right?
Great presentation. I am a retired architect and have engaged construction since the 1970s. I really did not see extreme problems with commercial construction. Military construction though is simply criminal.
LOL they took 10 mins to get to the point of the video.
I will put one example .I just read that new Baltimor Bridge will cost 2-2.5 bilion $.And here in Croatia Peljasac Bridge which same lenght over the sea opened last year costed 420 milion euros or 450 milion $,so same bridge in USA 4-5 times more expensive
Contract corruption, no accountability.
Are workers paid the same? Do materials used cost the same? You should count that in.
I waited 10:40 for him to say Unions…. I know it’s what he wanted to say right at the beginning; but he held back and had me sit through 10:40 of essentially the same paragraph. You can see how relived he is after saying it too. 10:40.
Just to add I don’t hate union’s or dislike this video I just could see that the first thing that would be mentioned would be the negativity of unions, and I found it very funny and mildly irritating about how long it took.
One day in history books we will laugh and think ''how in the world could country like that ever exist''
A big part of why American labor has become so expensive is that they started pushing college, and stopped teaching driving in most schools, so fewer know how to drive, and its more expensive to get started, and few are trained to do labor jobs, often privately thought by friends, family or employers. So qualified labor is limited, and rents are going up due to immigration and the before mentioned lack of qualified labor to resolve that housing shortage. So few can afford to work for less, are money doesn't go very far within our own nation
Since I live in the United States and have been a part of this type of work for years, from experience, the real reason that construction projects cost so much is because the workers are generally lazy and unskilled causing the work to go beyond the deadline, and the other major problem is all of the corruption on every level from planning to construction everything is marked up excessively. That's the real truth.
Canada has the same Problem
This is so backwards, their system needs a major reset
US public works costs so much because of misuse of labor. Most roads being built don’t need 3 guys watching one guy work as you often see on the side of the road
Most of the tools NIMBYs use were put in place as a reaction to 1950s freeway building and 1960s Urban Renewal which turned our cities into parking lots.
Builders quoted multiple years to get a bridge done in Florida. Governor DeSantis stepped in and cut red tape and graft out of the situation and it got done in months and on budget. Many of the problems America faces in trying to build anything have to do with over regulation and graft. You need the right person in charge to get things done.
As crazy as the CA high speed rail is, it’s hard to point at anything they have done wrong. The alignment is designed to maximize ridership and reduce tunnel expense. All of their design and reviews went through required procedures. It’s just the proscess has been made so difficult
Crumpling and mostly full of hideous stroads
With the exception of major cities like San Francisco, Miami, New York, and Chicago which I found all had surprisingly impressive subway networks.
Washington DC has great public transportation except for the no bathrooms in stations. Hard to find a place to piss that is not a tree or alley while out and about in DC.
Some states like Maryland have great roads but others like Pennsylvania invest nothing.
it's ironic because those cities you mentioned crumble in comparison to second or third tier European cities when it comes to public infrastructure. A small city like Nuremberg has a better metro system than Chicago, Naples has better public transport than San Francisco given the same uneven terrain, Miami is a joke and New York is the only one that can stand its ground. Hell, even Mexico City has better public transport than LA from my personal experience. The US is a joke and it's kinda sad.
You think New York and San Francisco have surprisingly impressive subway networks? 😐
@BatCountryAdventures
Well I've been to 2 of those cities recently, so yes.
Dont get me wrong, nowhere near as extensive or meticulously planned as Tokyo or London.
But they're not too bad.
@nailil5722
Don't get me wrong, they're nowhere near as well integrated as say - Tokyo
But they weren't too bad.
Oh and other viewers, I DIDNT like its/his comment.
It/he did 😅
“Other countries” have labor unions and there costs are still lower and projects get complete faster
Is it just me that think this whole situation reeks of corruption? Ballooning cost, different tender for same project, hiring more people than necessary, etc. That is the symptom of "the difference in cash is inside somebody pocket".
I work in public sector construction... the government agencies are the ones who add unnecessary costs. If we were to price public work like private work, we'd lose tons of money
I live in US but I am originally from Sydney. Feels like going into the future getting out of the airport in comparison to US dilapidated infrastructure
Bro the average age of a building in the UK is older than your king. But yeah i believe the Army Corp of Engineers gives our infrastructure a "D" grade every year
If I am not mistaken, the US Army Corp of Engineers are tasked with maintaining many of the levee's and dykes that control flooding of a number of major US inland waterways......Those poor bastards must be pulling their hair out in pure frustation.
The US railway "network" is a disgrace.
US Airport terminals are shockingly awful to anyone from outside the US.
Sounds like Germany. We want to extend a existing commercial house in the town center (small supermarket, dentist, bakery, restaurant, fast food (Kebap) and some 10+ apartments). We try to extend it for 5 years now. No chance. 50+ objections from people around from this small town. Now interest rates are up a lot and the regulations are rising every year for environmental or social things to check. I think this project will fail and there will not be more apartments in town. That's how it is going here as well
Expensive vital resources is the price we pay for being so “business friendly” and letting private sector interests drive public spending, especially when it comes to natural monopolies like infrastructure.
youre blaming private companies for government waste? wild lol.
The bottom line of government is continuity, not profit. Resilience is the direct competitor to efficiency, and this is why the public sector cannot and should not run like a business... where like 90% of new ventures go belly up within 10 years.
@@Robert-hy3vv Who do you think the lobbyists work for?
I believe the fact that the US is a pioneer in so much city infrastructure over a longer period than most other countries means they end up with more rules, regulations and other legislation that really slow things down and forces costs up. China has less of such concerns and besides, their authoritarian policies means they can force infrastructure construction more easily. Then there’s also the fact that China had learned so much from the US and know where many pitfalls are found.😅The solution is something that Trump, in of the few good ideas he had, to remove twice as many old regulations as new regulations introduced!
CAHSR's biggest cost overrun/delay generator was land purchasing for the rights-of-way. A lot of that goes back to the decision to go through the Central Valley which was both good politics and good policy - it's often forgotten but has a population about that of many medium-size states - as well as the path of least resistance geographically.
We are crumbling in many other ways
How much does it cost to build that tunnel under the Thames and when will it be complete?
Whether it is Hawaii, California, New York, or Alaska, you will find that the Venn Diagram of states whose infrastructure budgets go almost entirely to grift and states with long term one-party rule look less like the Mastercard symbol and more like the Japanese flag.
Note also that it is not reasonable to talk about spending in context of GDP. As I recall from a look at theory some years ago, governments need to invest in maintenance/replacement each year about 2 to 3% of the replacement cost of existing infrastructure, before considering the cost of new infrastructure.
Much of the infrastructure is severely under-maintained because the various governments have ignored less visible needs while striving to give tax cuts to big businesses and the wealthy. This is an international problem of the Thatcher/Reagan followers, as governments choose to race to the bottom, giving tax cuts which help investors and do nothing for most people, instead of attracting with good infrastructure. In the long run, this leads to failed infrastructure which hurts business.
The 20 billion, 1% of the arrears of 2 trillion in 2016 mentioned earlier, is less than needed for actual maintenance/replacement per year!
Im curious if US knows that enormous cost of those projects or enormous cost of health care or education are part of they "wealth"
You had me until the end when you said TEXAS was much better, it is NOT. Arizona also has issues too.
American here. I can tell you the root cause of our public transit issue. In 1956, congress drafted a budget to renovate our infrastructure (in an attempt to one-up the USSR). But then lobbyists from car manufacturers and insurance companies "convinced" congress to prioritize interstate highway construction over public transit.
Combine that with the decreasing budget stated in the video, and public transit has been deteriorating ever since. You have to go to a major city to even find a bus system, and they're a poor excuse for transportation. You're often better off walking. It's all but impossible to reliably get anywhere in the US without a car (which makes things incredibly difficult as I'm disabled to the point I can't drive).
Grift, graft, and corruption, for the most part. Kind of like how we spend the most on healthcare and get basically nothing as americans.
The sign inside the subway that said "ride and stay alive"😂
Same reason as the one that explains persistently high US inflation when it is weakening elsewhere: corporate greed running amok, abetted by red and blue politicians.
California High-Speed Rail Authority and California High-Speed Rail in California.😮
Design and build is very common in the construction industry the world over…
Yeah, what a weak point. Didn't really address the benefits versus disadvantages of design - build. It seems like it gives good results for bridge construction both for cost and speed of construction.
Not even remotely. In most developed countries, maybe.
If you design it, the next logical step is to build it. Otherwise, you're not a construction company, you're a picture book company 😂
@@MrJdsenior well that’s the part of the world that runs most projects in the world. It might be Chinese, Saudi or Indian money, but the big projects are run and managed by Europeans and Americans and those projects are usually design and build.
I’m pretty sure that restroom is being built by the USACE 😂
In a book, written by two soviet authors after their voyage in the USA they express their astonishement about the brand new and shiny US-american roads, railroads and (silver -color- painted!!!!) bridges and steel structures. They describe the new build Hoover dam and Golden Gate bridge as technical wonders. This was in 1936. Then, even the Soviets were amazed by the USA. .
In NYC, unions are the worst. It’s no better in residential housing. You want to build a temporary wall to make a one bedroom into a convertible two , you must hire a union shop to do it and pay twice as much. What’s worse if you move out and the tenants after you want to keep the wall , they can’t. Per Union agreement , they have to tear it down and a rebuild a new one from scratch. Total waste of time and money. Apply this inefficient nightmare to large scale public works projects and it’s no wonder billions of dollars are wasted and move at a snail’s pace.
The big problems are the two major political parties who are beholden to their rich individual and corporate donors, and also are the NIMBYs who delay and drive up the costs of any project with their unreasonable demands and property owners who keep the land acquisition in court for years supposedly to get a better deal but sometimes are also NIMBYs who would prefer that nothing gets built.
I have to ask though, whats the logic of being stingy with funding your own public administrations, and then being apparently very liberal with funding for payments to consultants who charge you exorbitant prices for providing services that said public administration could've done itself for much cheaper?
It also has a lot to do with car-centric development. It’s more expensive, more costly to maintain, yet most Americans view it as the only way. Public opinion would much rather invest in $100M of expressway upgrades than $20M in any public transit.
America needs more unions, not less!
To be fair, we as Americans in general are not efficient either. Both of my cars get 20 MPG! (Minivan and RWD Sedan). Planning on getting hybrids for next vehicles, but current cars were a lot more affordable.
Would do is I would release some commercials and lots of lobbying for e-bikes and bike infrastructure to shifty American culture over to that. I feel like that is a lot of our reluctance
CORRECTION: The Maersk logo can be seen on hundreds of ships, not thousands. Maersk owns 740 ships, with contracts and joint ventures on about 300 more.
I always want California High-Speed Rail in California and I always love California High-Speed Rail in California.😮
If something gets bad enough, the private sector will usually handle it. That’s a good thing about America.
I'm glad you snuck it in at the very end, but it's probably worth reemphasizing: infrastructure issues are really bad in certain places (usually deep blue metropolises such as the Bay Area and NYC as mentioned), but there are a lot of places where things get done at somewhat less exorbanent rates.
I lived in the Bay Area for 6 years. There are so many social issues and irrational, ideologically driven policies in California (and especially the Bay), that it should be viewed more as a consistent outlier and worst case scenario. It's like talking about eastern Ukraine and concluding that all of Europe is actively getting shelled.
. . . Try to keep in mind property costs here are actually lower than in Europe. Now you get why Americans hate their government, disconnected regulatory boundaries of a federal system makes things incredibly difficult. when no one agrees on what should be done we waste a lot of time and money making sure the environment of heavily concrete structures is not disturbing local wildlife.
California's HSR that $128 bn is only good if we start NOW, and it is a vague estimate of how difficult it will be to tunnel through the mountains at the southern end of the Central Valley.
RE: Low voter turnout in municipal elections:
It's worse than that. Yes, 13% of voters turned out, but only about half of eligible people bother to register to vote, so the real turnout is more like 7%.
Anyone who lived in the US knows how inefficient and wasteful government contracts are. Every american I know make fun of how when you drive by any road construction, you will see 1 guy digging, and 5 other guys standing around him watching an# "supervising".
They’re either specialists of a certain procedure, or a safety watcher. The contractor would not pay for unnecessary labor, especially since they had to bid low to get awarded to begin with.
In my country when they start building some public stuff on first day you see 20 truck and bulldozers and many workers ,but already on 7th day you see one bulldozer only and few workers just walking around.
ITs becase every govermant has some "corupt deals" with some private building companies so they get most jobs,but they have limitet recourses so they get a money from govermant and then work little here little there.THey dont expand becase that cost them money and if govermant lose on next elections they want get many contracts
It's true, and the workers are not good, definitely far from the cream of the crop. I know because I am one. We are very dumb, and also overpaid, and our managers have no idea what we are doing. It's bad...
@@dzonikg
In my state the government has directly hired union workers, government employees. They purposely take forever on easy jobs because they are paid by the hour and there may not be another job right away. each job takes exactly as long as when the next one starts.
Ever done any digging?
It's like doing a weights session at the gym. Do you know anyone who does weights for 8 hours non-stop?
"Four cats"? Tell me you're Spanish without telling me lol
The city I live in has just built two walls and a roof over 840 m (A bit over half a mile) of an existing highway, at the bargain cost of 560 mio US$.
After a recent Road trip driving from NYC to Houston and back,. Things looking good and must say That I Saw a enormous amount of road construction all along the my trip.
The CA High Speed Rail will end up being Bakersfield to San Francisco 2040-2050. The Bakersfield to LA route will simply never exist.
Only 4 cats voted..? That's your issue over there, have all cats vote.
Edit: Not sure whether I heard it right... lol
It is a problem, but we are working on it. :-) We are considering enfranchising dogs, as well. The real problem is that the average dog or cat is smarter than the average govt official, but that seems pretty universal.
@@MrJdsenior
Make catnip great again! 😸
@@MrJdsenior Smarter than the average voter, too, and I think the US education system and how it's designed, its version of religion, its -propaganda- news media outlets, and its way of life all serve to make everyone dumb, even the smart people here.
Nice shot of Spokane! (About one minute in.)
Here is SC i know we have an about decade long plan to repave all roads. Plus we found +$1.5B state account we don't know who owns it... that the Gov said we my use towards bridges. But that was months ago
Lol, i get US got some problems but if you compare to china, or even much closer in Quebec where our roads are completelly F* up...
Depends on the type of infrastructure. China has some pretty good rail since everyone including their elites often use it. They almost executed their transit minister for their only fatal crash.
Meanwhile, their housing is pretty trash and unregulated, quality often very dependent on the region & municipality so probably not much incentive to build quality homes if your customers are lower class.
I am often in China and USA. Chineese infrastructure is much better than in USA.
@@ac1455 True, the rails are decent, but i can't go over the overpacking issue.
@@maritaschweizer1117 LOL. you mean the infrastructure that yearly allows cities to flood, killing tens of thousands, due to grates set into the grass, or are you speaking of the buildings and bridges that fall down, or roads where holes open up, swallowing vehicles on a routine basis? Thanks for the input from the America Bad Party. We will be sure to give it the credit it deserves. Chinese bots, they are hilarious.
@@llortaton2834There are so many videos of people comparing China vs US infrastructure. But China always wins
I live in upstate New York, saw my local government built park bathrooms, very rural, but costed I think 15,000, and is usually closed. I could build the same thing with marble floors and golden ceilings for under 3000, or out of wood, under 1000, but American labor is expensive, and I can only build cheap because I don't pay myself
Are you really telling me that the whole problem in the US is Unions? Get out of here!
Well thats why manufacturing is leaving US
@@okman9684 You want Bangladeshi-style sweatshops in the US?
@@VanillaMacaron551 It doesn't have to be quite that digital. Most businesses aren't unionized, and none of them that I know of run sweat shops, save maybe Amazon.
Yes I knew that (certain parts of) my nation can't build infrastructure because of their own stupidity and corruption. That's why I Live In Texas.
Depends on which state you're talking about. Some are up to date, some are just trash
I think your talk about uniobs is ... a tad off. Consider the profits made by "friends of the government Party" in both the US and the UK. Compare the railway projects you mention with the recently cancelled HS2 railway in the UK...
The problem is where they build the housing as here in my city they are now pushing the dirt bikers and four wheelers out by starting to build in the area where they are allowed to play. To make matters worse the city literally has no public shooting, archery etc ranges very few proper bike lanes not very walkable etc while being the gateway city to the biggest state park in the state it's very frustrating as all we have job wise is either the steel mill or retail.
Design & build:
If you design it, the next logical step is to build it. Otherwise, you're not a construction company, you're a picture book company 😂
The french national railways company (SNCF) was part of the California High Speed project. They leave it after qualifying the project and California government of "completly disfunctional" and they prefer to "go building railways in Morocco". The result, today California has no high speed railway and Morocco (a tiny african country) as brand new shiny 385Km new high speed line between Casablanca and Tangier.
The UK is definitely hot on the heels of the USA when it comes to an inefficient public sector for developing and maintaining the country’s infrastructure. You spend a lot of tax revenue and take generations to achieve very little.
Very interesting as well as depressing. Appreciate the information.
As a senior, I'd have to disagree with the connection between NIMBYism and "retired" folks... I immediately took offense (Ageism!). My experience with NIMBYism has often had more to do with those who have amassed huge amounts of wealth and don't want anyone to disrupt what they have. In the area I live in, that is frequently the young tech sector.
IMO, this is one of your best videos, thanks!!
American industry and infrastructure made the United States a global superpower that is over a century ago from the Industrial Revolution. To the Panama canal. To interstate Highway.
Allow the federal govt to create public works “companies” that travel from state to state building & fixing. Funnel all profits of that govt entity into social security & other programs or make it a nonprofit entity with strict caps on salaries of the top executives.
A public toilet has to be connected to a water main and a sanitary sewer. That calls for open trenches dug on grade to wherever the mains lie. So the engineering dept. & the construction crews have to get involved. Construction in warm, dry environments costs less also.