Why California's Infrastructure is Failing
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- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2024
- California is the most populated state in America the third largest by land mass. With a population of nearly 40 million people, the state's infrastructure is essential to the state's residents, but there is one main problem. Over the past few decades, California's infrastructure has began to deuterate. Even after billions of dollars have been invested, the infrastructure is still failing.
It had seemed that nothing could be done to fix the infrastructure, but in late 2021 the US government signed the $1.2 Trillion Dollar Infrastructure Plan. This allowed California to receive nearly $40 billion dollars in funding over the next few years to fix its infrastructure. Each year the state will receive billions of dollars to fix specific infrastructure related problems. By 2030, most of California's infrastructure may be fixed if all goes to plan and they receive all the funding from the US government.
Why California's Infrastructure is Failing
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#California #infrastructure #maps
California is one of the 50 states in America. Its home to nearly 40 million people and located along the west coast of the United States. © 2023 Arkive Productions LLC
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Good video buddy 😁
Can you make a video about Vatican City and it's building and stuff. Btw good video bro
Bro btw if you divide parts in between like 'what California could do in this situation' 'what's the problem' etc. It will be more focused but still this was a good video and this was a long video so good job
Hi arkive i am ur biggest fan. Im 10 foot
Reaction Soviet micro distrik
Its just a though but what if you start building denser like NYC with public transport in mind. Eliminating the requirement to own a car thus having to stop spending billions on highways? Wouldn’t that solve like 70% of the problem?
Yes
Yes, but Southern California and the Central Valley are built around driving. So unless we demolish like 70% of those areas, we're gonna have to densify them and put policies that make it easier to get around without a car and even discourage car use/ownership.
This would be the ideal solution, yes. It can start by changing the zoning laws in cities and its suburbs.
@@portibolivia this is what’s so strong, so many issues can be solved without spending a dime but yet we resort to just throwing cash in the automobile toilet
Yes. LA has been trying for decades to build out its rail system and has more recently started trying to reform its zoning laws precisely to this end. But along the way they’ve had to fight NIMBY after NIMBY group and deal with the extremely limited amount of federal money available for public transit projects. So it’s not all LA’s fault
That's what happens when you design everything around cars and sprawl. It's not affordable. They're just finding that out now.
Yes
Texas didn't get the memo, they're like California on steroids.
@@night6724 Yes.
@@night6724 Yes
@@night6724 Why not? Are you against the idea that no matter your income or financial situation that people have access to all the same kinds or high quality transit in a small walking distance and one that's not car dependent? Public transportation will always be cheaper than Car
I'm no civil engineer but it seems that Cali has thrown all of their infrastructure money at roadway capacity in an attempt to alleviate traffic while ignoring every other aspect of infrastructure, crucially train and bus lines, so people have no other option than to drive. If they instead put a good chunk of this $40bn they're going to be receiving over the next few years into creating a top of the line train and bus network that makes travel quicker and cheaper, it would give an alternative to driving everywhere and alleviate traffic, getting rid of the need for greater capacity
Honestly up to this point in my 1 hr 40 min commute experience I would even settle for the train taking the same amount of time. I would love to take the train, sadly Cali hasn't done enough in that regard.
Adding roadway capacity doesn't improve traffic. It gives something called "induced demand" which is the opposite problem. More lanes attracts more traffic. While also taking thousands of acres of taxable land off the books.
Any "Cities Skylines" player can tell you that you need to use all forms of public transit to fix traffix. (The game has limitations that make its traffic worse and better, no car accidents is good, idiot drivers is bad)
Cali needs to build enough transit capacity (walking and biking are included in this) to soak up all of the "latent demand" that would fill up any spaces opened on the highway as people start to take the train, and only then will the traffic get noticably better.
And ignoring traffic concerns, transit is way more compact and efficient so its also better for the environment and land use efficiency. (Also safety, by alot)
California is known for having the highest taxes with the taxpayers seeing no benefits from it. Incompetent and corrupt government has lead to the exodus.
Plus the drought has takin its toll on California for several years now
"We've thrown a ton of money at the problem, and there has been no improvement. Now we have identified the problem. It needs more money"
Yes? You think they can solve those problems for free? Lol
@@infinitedeathloop5517 i think the issue is that they're still just throwing money at the wrong things. The plan does not really attempt to fix the issues, just put a bandage over them
@@infinitedeathloop5517 The video didn't say what the problem was though, it literally said that the money was wasted and then proceeded to suggest that a lack of funding was the issue all along
The most American solution
@@rcm926 cause the money went into corrupt politicans' pockets.
Civil Engineer here. The problem in California is the cars, the pavement area is totally unsustainable, and it is an issue of mathematical nature. More area means more to fix in two dimensions, everywhere. The only way to fix the problem is to get rid of the cars completely, reclaim the land and make walking into stores a reality, by building commerce centers at every station, not empty… park lots surrounded by grass and nothingness. To create public transportation alternatives that are so frequent, widespread, cheap, and secure that nobody would choose to drive a car in their right mind. Right now, public transportation in California is just a ‘token’. It is there just for looks, to prove that the city has them. And this is what you get, empty buses and trains that pass every who knows when, dangerous, and expensive.
radical environmentalists have infiltrated our institutes of higher learning, civil engineering studies included
I tottally agree with you. Just look at London. Driving there is a nightmare so I take the train.
@@Juan-hv9bi no they just don’t have any other option
True..
Same thing for New Jersey...
One simple ratio can tell you the reason for these problems...
Compare the mileage per inhabitant with other countries for the main infrastructure items: road, sewage, electricity, gas, water.
You will find that the length of infrastructure each inhabitant has to maintain, is much longer.
So, in order to make the situation worse, Californians should build their houses even further apart and increase their resistance against paying state taxes.
100%. It's a simple mathematical impossibility suburbanites can't seem to grasp. If the average cost of infrastructure per person exceeds the average productivity per person (that's being generous cause obviously most of a person's productivity needs to go to other things) then you're in the negative. But the only options are stop funding the overbuilt infrastructure which is politically untenable or massively urbanise enough of the population in net positive communities that the country is in the positive on average. But that wouldn't really solve the problem entirely, cause it's still a massive drag for urban economies to spend a huge chunk of their output subsidising unproductive ones, and any gain in productivity would likely be swallowed by parasitic suburban electorates. The US is lucky to have mass immigration and relatively high birthrates cause even then it might only narrowly escape an eternal decline.
@@Freshbott2 Part of that is the fault of cities. There are cities in the USA that REQUIRE/MANDATE that the people use city water services and city sewage services even when some folks already have their own wells or their own septic systems and they live further away from the city center. If they just let the folks further away have the wells and septic systems, then the city wouldn't have to subsidize building the lines out so far. It's not like the folks living further away want to pay for the city services anyhow. Those services are more costly. A city nearby mine sued homeowners who had their own septic systems because they wanted to force them onto city sewage because they extended the lines out to them but the people there didn't want to hook up. The city didn't even ask the homeowners if they wanted to be on city sewage. The homeowners lost and were forced onto the city sewage.
@@laurie7689 how far out are you talking? Past a certain point in number and density bores allow exploitation of the shared water table, and too many sceptics in an area cna poison the water table. For rural/semi rural areas I totally agree. But that’s not 80% of the population and it’s not 99.9% of the inhabited land area. I agree with you in principle, and I reckon the same about roads. When you ask people to pay for their own roads and car parks it’s funny how quickly they don’t. But the public nature of roads and how everyone should put into more of them at all costs is a staple of most left leaning communities and all right leaning ones. It’s beyond criticism. Meanwhile driving in the US is the most subsidised activity in all of history. Charles Marohn calculated up the cost/benefit of urban interstate systems in the US and found if you avoid all the lies firms and politicians use to justify benefit, the US would be better off having a hurricane Katrina and hurricane Irma every year instead.
@@Freshbott2 The area that was sued and lost was semi-rural.
@@laurie7689 lol well short of this one semi rural area that lost in this one case about septic tanks the point still stands that suburbanites have stretched their cities too thin and no amount of nostalgia or blame or anxious hate for their own neighbours which they dress up s as patriotism, can change the financial reality. If you spend more than you make, you go broke. That’s the fault of people who destroy cities.
This video might have passed 5-6 years ago, but these days US style infrastructure and urban planning (auto-dependent suburban-sprawl) content has progressed far beyond "not enough spending".
People can hate on us all they want, but at least we don't have a society that revolves around cars like America does. The vast majority of Pyongyang residents travel by bike, tram, or the Metro. And might I add, it's a very beautiful metro that we built before Seoul built theirs....the NYC Subway is a symbol of American infrastructure, crumbling to the ground gasping for help.
I live on the Central Coast. Just to give you all from out of state an idea of how slowly infrastructure moves... The 101 through Santa Barbara had its last traffic light removed in 1991 and the 101 was widened from four to six lanes for about 15 miles to meet the growing traffic demand of the residents and those who commute from neighboring LA suburbs like Ventura & Oxnard but since about 1993 or 1994, the widened section of the freeway was already at capacity and plans to widen the Highway further to meet with the already widened section of the 101 near Ventura have still not fully completed. At this rate, it looks like the project will be finished by 2030 and by then I'm sure that section of the freeway would already be at capacity. It will never end.
Well in the UK our infrastructure projects move fairly slow as well; but road widening is definitely not the answer to traffic problems! Our cities function fine without massive highways crisscrossing the landscape.
@@unblubby7139 Agreed.
How many lanes can you really add to the M25? lol
Another lane will fix it, for real. Just add one more lane
6 lanes as in 3 each way? Thats standard for any urban highway, shocking it took so long!
In fact it’s optimal, 4 lanes for any more than easing exits and entries is excess. Cleaning up gridlock prone intersections and planning highway exits so as to avoid backing up goes way farther than adding a 4th lane.
From every available articles online , I am updated that the US policy makers focused little to none on their internal matters since the last 50-60 years . Every sector needs rebuilding and huge efforts from all the Americans . USA in the 1960’s , 1970, 1980 was enjoying its glorious days .
Now ,
1.the manufacturing sector has already lost its game to China ,
2.Infrastructure is old and crumbling and cannot support the current population & its requirements ,
3.housing became the privilege only the rich class can afford,
4.many cities are now ghost towns and deserted Like the Gary indiana
5.Homicides and gun violence are at record no’s than any other country in the world
6.student debt crisis
8.unnecessary Military spending than the next 5 countries combined although the us has never been invaded in its history and there is no real threat to The USA.
9.highest cost of healthcare while comparing with other western countries.
10. Highest taxed ( individual and corporate)
Economy and not so business friendly govt policies.
Did I miss something 🤔
like it or not , this is the ‘real American dream’
Americans, Please tell me if if you are okay and happy with all these or do you feel you really need a change ?
Few issues with your points: Firstly, american tax rates are some of the lowest among OECD countries, the US is the second most economically competitive country on earth, and disposable income is the highest on earth.
Secondly, developed countries in general have much larger tertiary sectors than manufacturing sectors, and most if not all high income, developed countries, have outsourced manufacturing to less developed nations like China. It's basic economics.
Thirdly, the homicide and crime rate in the US has been decreasing continuously for the past 3 decades.
Lastly, the median family income in 2019 was 1.59 times greater than the income needed to purchase a single family home.
The big military is something that might be reduced in the future, though that will come as a detriment to the world economy at large. There's a reason why there's almost no pirates today. And it is because more then half of the worlds aircraft carriers are owned by an empire that dedicated itself to enable free trade globally. When this is going to change we will experience rising costs of living and more power play by other upcoming powers like india, china, South africa and so on and so on.
Not happy and need a real change. I am going into urban planning and trust me we have a lot of catching up to do.
The U.S has been invaded by Japan (Pearl Harbor)
@@Adumzzinthehouse Pearl Harbor is not on us mainland . And Pearl Harbor was an offense launched during ww2 . Invasion is different, its what we did in Afghanistan and iraq for the past 10+ years .
Ah yes, lack of funding is the problem, let's throw even more money at it and it'll solve itself...it's the same energy as abuelas saying VapoRub is the solution to every problem. 💀
I'm glad you mentioned the financial mismanagement but my goodness for the longest time the gas tax that was supposed to pay for the roads and other infrastructure projects, but insteadthey put to the general fund and spend it on other things.
Let's take the Oroville dam for a minute maintenance was deferred for years on it, hence why it failed, the Bay bridge you had in your picture it was cheaper to rebuild the Old Bay bridge in retrofitted but it had to look pretty, so they built a new one that cost way more. The way this state pisses money away on stupid projects and stuff makes a drunken sailor blush.
Its so hard to drive in California, all the roads are so confusing, and in LA its death, my LS400 got wrecked because of someone who doesnt know how to drive.
NOO not the ls😞😞
@@Hiighmeow 😔
I feel so much safer driving when I moved out of california
@@soupdrinker yeah when me and my family went to Arizona, it was way less packed and just so fun and easy to drive.
Thats because at a certain capacity/demand threshold its time to get higher orders of transit. (A road is the lowest capacity in terms of max people per hour per lane, busses are 20-30 times better than a car and can share its infrastructure, and a train/rail is just insane in terms of capacity per 1 way rail line) walking/biking is the king of short distance transit.
I despise driving on the interstate, its either mind numbing or a near death experience, but crossing the Addirondacks on low roads is genuinely enjoyable and significantly safer. (Unless its winter, then black ice or regular ice and hills is a big concern)
I don't understand why the US doesn't focus on sustainable public transport system? Considering their budget and financial condition.
Because of demand. What's the point in having a brand new transport system that nobody will use. Then, you have the high cost of building said transport sustem. Trams and highspeed rail are very expensive, the bus is the less costly but then again, buses are part of car suburbia too.
@@alfredo12345neo that wouldn't have been the case if the govt wasn't sold out to auto giants from the beginning
@@sumit55468 They sold to car companies because of the high demand for vehicles. You have to take into account that 'we the people' are part of the problem too. In my city there is a bus transportation system that is free and nobody uses. People prefer to pay an uber to get to their destination rather than using the bus.
Because, public transport has been destroyed and so limited or absent it has became frowned upon in the US. Taking a bus, train, tram or bike, or even walking, makes people think that a person is a bum who can't afford a car. It's a status symbol now. Can you believe it?
…it’s a nationwide issue.
Coming from someone who lives in California and has traveled nationwide, California actually has it WAY better in terms of infrastructure
Oh for sure
@@ragglefraggle9111 100% if you wanna see bad infracsture take a drive through Louisiana lol
@@ragglefraggle9111 It's still not as good as North Eastern states, Southern states for sure have garbage infrastructure because they're still stuck in the car mind
@@squidwardo7074 pshttt, Mississippi I went to college there, it's beyond rough...
Not sure I follow the point. You say that the issue is lack of funding, which I buy, but is 4.2 billion gonna fix the issue if 102 billion couldn't?
I think California, like everyone else, needs to start to ask: why is our infrastructure so expensive to maintain? Strong Towns has been saying for a while that the issue is that car infrastructure is too expensive and can never really be "fixed". The federal government should instead be funding new, public transit infrastructure all throughout the country.
If we fix every bridge and highway in the country today, we're gonna find ourselves in the same exact spot 50 years from now.
Right on, exactly. Your point is very well taken.
Public transit has the same issue as well. The issue is too much infrastructure, not enough. Infrastructure needs to be right sized to reflect that supportable by the locality. Infrastructure proposals needs to conduct a total ROI analysis that reflects its total maintenance/replacement cost. If it doesn't generate sufficient revenue to maintain/replace it, then it shouldn't get approved.
@@taoliu3949 Honestly, no matter how many classes I have taken or articles read I have never been able to comprehend economic issues very well, at all. For me, understanding the cost benefit (ROI) analysis of infrastructure is more difficult than getting my head around cosmology or philosophy.
However, transportation of goods and people is a huge economic driver. Without which society stagnates. We all want improvements but at what cost and who bares the burden. An example could be private vehicular transportation vs. public trains.
Perhaps technology will result in more remote working and less commuting and thus reduce certain future infrastructure needs. Rarely can public transportation directly pay for itself otherwise it would be private. This is an interesting topic, isn't it?
@@davidjackson7281 But is the growth in economy sufficient to cover the costs of the improved infrastructure? If the cost of building/maintaining the improvement exceeds the economic benefits, then society just gets poorer as a result. In other words, it would be better to simply not build the improvements.
And yes, you can build infrastructure that is sustainable. That's literally how major infrastructure projects in the US used to be built. Governments and private companies would sell bonds to build a road, rail tracks, bridge etc and pay off the bonds over time. Revenue would either be raised via tolls and/or supplementated with secondary revenue streams such as taxes or rent. The issue with major infrastructure projects in the US today is that there's no check on basically what seems to be limitless Federal funding unlike in the old days local governments had to be very cognicent of how much debt they can take on to fund a project. As a result states and local governments keep putting themselves in debt so they can get "free" money from the Federal government. The checks aren't there to prevent this, and incentives aren't properly aligned to discourage it.
And yes, public transit can be profitable. Historically it was all "private" and was profitable until the government started building a bunch of roads making them unable to compete.
@@taoliu3949 Excellent point, very well taken. Have a nice week.
Thats a great opportunity to replace (LA) highways with boulevards, replace multi-level ramps with intersections and add light-rail systems to these boulevards.
Am I the only one who thinks that these budgets are tiny?
No.
. People aren't really understanding the numbers that need to be used to get us good infrastructure. It cost over one billion dollars to repave Interstate 80 between Sacramento and Reno. That was just 1 project that needed to be done.
All civil engineers from this point forward should be required to play city skylines as part of their coursework.
With the traffic manager mod and traffic despawning off for max realism. You learn real quick that transit and walk/bike path shortcuts fix so much traffic because its basic geometry. (A bus takes up the space of 3 cars and holds 60 people vs the 3 in those cars, ≈80% of cars are single occupancy. A walker takes up like 4sqft total and has no pollution impact, and noise impact is a per person issue. A train takes up roughly the space of a road but is massively more efficient in all regards and quieter.)
People vote to spend the money. If they don’t approve it, it won’t get built. We’ve tried for years to get enough spent for a rail line and only recent has it gotten thru the legislative process. Its not solely the govt’s call.
I lived in cali for 11 years and never knew this. It also has a problem of fires like constant fire
Then maybe they should get off there ass and fix them.. Stop blaming the people for using the roads..But a lot are using the roads to leave California..
I'm from California, I have no hope anythings going to change.
It's failing because taxes are not high enough to support the very expensive suburbia. The suburban experiment has been deemed a failure, yet laws prevent any other type of housing to be built in almost all areas.
Kinda hard to pay for all that road when most of the cities are single-story bungalows. Funding issues like this are a good example of why mass sub-urbanization is a failure. Spreading everything out, forcing everyone to drive, wearing down the roads even faster while at the same time providing woefully inadequate public transit. The tax base can't pay for all of this.
build a massive, car-dependent, concrete sprawl, and pay the costs down the line when the roads and bridges begin to crumble.
california should use this opportunity to introduce more cost-effective forms of mass transit.
The answer to the California infrastructure problem is old and obvious: past California state governments like most state governments has failed to properly manage the money by NOT putting money aside to replace the infrastructure or maintain it. Most of them waste a lot of the money they collect and get and hope the federal government will bail them out later.
The problem in California is made worse by the state government failure to adequately deal with unlawful migrants, especially those involved in criminal activities.
As to how wealthy California is, I wonder how well their economy would go if they did not get all of the resources they take from the neighbouring states as much of their economy is dependent on the water they pipe in from their neighbors. Loss of those water supplies would also have serious effects on their big cities as they dry up.
I wonder what happens in the near future, when US states realize they simply do not have the resources for maintaining the enourmous car infrastructure.
it won't be a problem unless our economy dwindles.
They're slowly tearing it down, just as Rochester, they turned their car dependent inner city into a nice walkable, bikable place
@@Racko. And there's nothing wrong with that. Foot traffic is becoming more important then car traffic.
@@seanbrummfield448 That's what im saying, Im not saying it's wrong, its the right way forward, ppl are sick of giant roads with noise and car dependency is what im saying, Amsterdam is what comes to mind when it think of one of the best urban area, it's insanely well done
@@alfredo12345neo That's what I think too. America makes a lot of money and feels like it can afford to ignore its problems at times. The most change occurs when something really bad happens if you're not proactive enough so the economy will have to take a hit caused by car infrastructure before people really start to question it.
When a city is built around cars and people wonder why traffic in California is so terrible. For some reason America refuses to spend money on public transit as seen with NYC's 100 year old trains. When you have 50 people on one vehicle rather than 50 individual cars, traffic is a lot better.
Yup!!
NEW YORK STAY WINNING
See my comment above
New York has just has horrid infrastructure. It just has less people then California that’s all.
New york is great and better than California, but still has issues and should build more housing, especially denser housing in the suburbs and improve public transportation.
@@greenmachine5600 there’s no means of measuring how much greater one is over the other. This is América it all sucks lol
This is why I miss singapore ever since i moved here to the US, it just felt more convenient there when it comes to getting around lol
Same with me. I came from a small Native village in Alaska. You can get to anywhere just by walking. But, in Cincinnati, I literally have to get in the car, because if I want to drive to downtown, it would take me the whole day to get there.
California is the most beautiful state in the country. Its worth the cost
Drive on a West Virginia road
Horrible
Belgium infrastructure 💀
Louisiana roads too
@@edwardmiessner6502 never been to Louisiana
Here's the problem: Central Planning. It has its benefits for sure, but California has grown too large to make it feasible. What needs to happen is infrastructure plannning and execution needs to be carried out at a local level instead of a state level.
I am not optimistic that throwing money at the issue is going to fix what is a corruption issue.
People in metropolitan areas are too afraid of roaming the streets let alone take public transportation. They rather drive
As someone who lives in Manitoba, Canada, 100% of the roads are in extremely poor condition.
So where is the comparison with NY????
Funny thing is that California is one of the most highly urbanized states, yet it's horrendously car dependent.
we have the worst system: high density and car dependent
Thank big oil and the auto industry for that.
CA has highly urbanized spots but most of the state is actually rural. Between LA and SF, there's a lot of empty space and farmland. However, you are right about it being too car-dependent. Cities here, especially in Socal just aren't built right. I live in San Diego and for me to take public transportation to the next freeway exit one mile away takes an hour and a half due to the way the routes go. Because of the way the roads are, walking to that street one mile away isn't possible.
San Francisco has good public transportation idk what you people are talking about.
Cities like SF do have great transit though, just not outside the city, which is car depend, and in defense of that, nobody is willing to take a bus and be in it for hours to nowhere
4:10 after 102 billion dollars (2000-2010) and little no no improvement to show for... the problem is not FUNDING... is wasterful spending
If the money is being wasted, no amount of budget will do.
The extra money of the infrastructure bill will also be wasted
The solution is less tax, and more private roads, bridges and services.
Is that billions of dollars going to fix all the traffic jams? Nope. The whole system needs re-engineered.
I Feel most people are misconstruing the reasons the US infrastructure is failing, its a mix of several factors 1. Mismanaged funds causing cost overruns and lower cost materials 2. Extensive Urban Sprawl increasing the need for public transport and car ownership 3. Scale the US is the 3rd largest country by land area 4. Disuse of Cost Efficient cargo transportation the US has the largest Rail Network in the world however it is misused due to the low cost of Trucking on public infrastructure 5. Poor Zoning laws Forcing Horizontal rather than vertical expansion, If we compressed Residential and Commercial Zoning into a mixed zoning area with public transportation to industrial sectors it would drastically reduce the need for Road infrastructure
Your work us really good. I am really Keene to know how old are you and how much money you have made(revenue &net profit)from this channel?
Here comes the Not Just Bikes / Alan Fisher crowd, thinking they're experts in urbanism after hearing the words "walkability" and "stroads" once. Had you all listened to the video, the infrastructure issues mentionned are state-wide, not just limited to cities. Pretty much all major population centers in the US (and many other countries in Europe too) are facing massive infrastructure challenges, and that includes areas with dense, walkable, transit oriented cities.
Lots of infrastructure was built decades ago during the economic boom, and is nearing the end of its lifespan. Funding was not well prepared for it due to political short-sightedness. For the most part it's as simple as that. Of course car-oriented city design brings financial problems that dense cities don't, but you guys are keen to ignore all the direct and indirect revenue that cars bring and could bring in the future.
and yet half of those problems would be less or solved if only there are less roads to maintain as roads take up so much space because of cars. and the revenue you love so much could be spent on other infrastructure instead, the same way car owners could spend their money more on other things other than gas/cars
@@전브렌트 So you're suggesting we fund infrastructure projects meant to reduce car traffic using revenue from car usage? Do you seriously not see the problem with this?
The car industry as a whole is an economic powerhouse to any country that has a decent one. That's true for America, but also China, India, Germany, or France. I'm not sure people buying even more bullshit from Asia will be able to replace that. And before you tell me it's unethical to say people should empty their wallets on their cars, don't forget that the market is meant to trick people into spending every cent they have regardless of what they buy : be it their car, bike, phone, or kitchen appliances. This is exactly why for many people, bad things always come up when they manage to put a little money on the side.
@@saltyalex2035 The thing that people don’t seem to understand is that you can have both. If you lived in a walkable area you can still have a car. But the key is to have options, in the United States there is no option the majority of the cases than to own a car. Look at Japan, they’re the biggest car manufacturers in the world yet their infrastructure in terms of walkability is so much better than the US. Its not like the auto industry disappears because there is infrastructure better suiting for walking. Things need to change, whether it be through funding infrastructure projects or changing zoning. You have to realize things need to change.
@@andrewgonzales5363 Japanese car manufacturers are among the biggest because the vast majority of their sales and profits are made outside of Japan. Most notably... the United States. It's a terrible example.
No you can't have both. Either people use their cars and spend money on them, or they don't. The car industry is a whole lot more than just the manufacture and sale of new vehicles, that's just the tip of the iceberg and it's a common mistake to forget that: insurance, road maintenance, fuel manufacture, gas stations, mechanic shops, parts manufacturers, parts sellers, used cars sellers, car washes, accessories, racing, media, specialized journalists, ... all these things represent the majority of the car industry and completely depend on people driving their cars.
I'm not even getting into all the unrelated jobs induced by these activities. In France, direct, indirect, and induced jobs from the car industry represent 9% of the entire workforce.
I'm not against giving people options, and I 100% agree that american urban design is not sustainable (though I personally like it but that's another story). What I can't stand is amateur "urbanists" using every chance they get to blame everything on cars, and oversimplistic dumbasses thinking all our problems would disappear if people just went to work by bike and transit. There is no such thing as a simple solution when it comes to such complex issues.
@@saltyalex2035 Insurance, fuel, maintenance, and car payments are all cost burdens on those who own cars. The vast majority of Americans would be much better off if they had $600 to spend on other living expenses, it's not like that money would disappear from the economy it'd still go somewhere.
You mention in France the auto industry represents 9% of their workforce. That's proof that you CAN have both good urbanism and booming auto industry. France's urban development is much more walkable-oriented than the US, yet the percentage of Americans with jobs in the auto industry is less than 9%.
You can like the design of the suburbs, that's fine. But it's not like they will suddenly disappear because there are zoning changes and infrastructure to accommodate those that aren't driving. We need to enact these changes now so the country would be better off in 30 years when you can actually see these changes.
And yeah, the short-handed thinking that some people have when they think a bike lane will solve everything is annoying, but they're on the right path of thinking. As you said it's a complex issue, and it won't be solved immediately. I'm glad more and more people are starting to see how fucked up America was built, though.
Since, Infra is failing in US, I think it is high time for US govt to focus on public transport. It will save a lot of money, CO2 etc...
We are 13th on quality of infrastructure out of 100 studied countries by statista. I think we are exagerating a tiny bit.
California has a 97 billion dollar budget surplus this year.
this guy trusts our government to not waste money this time because of the fact we have a need. damn.
well it all comes down to poor city planning, if there were a way to delete and rebuild califonia from groundup like city skyline pretty much would turn out for the better with less highway plaguing the city
Don’t bail them out. Let them fix their own mess
Still better than most southern states I've been to.
La infraestructura de nueva York me recuerda a mis primeras ciudades en city Skyline
It's almost like car-dependent planning necessitates mind boggling amounts of infrastructure that cannot be financed without egregous taxation.
Also note that California is going down the drain. The productive middle class is leaving, including my family as soon as my wife retires. 200,000 people have left in the last 2 years. It's a social change of epic proportions.
Why do you want to leave California? Like, genuinely asking because i'm curious to know as someone from outside the US who wants to move to the US and specifically Cali in the future
@@ronben-ezer8373 I am also a foreigner. I was born and raised in Sweden and lived there for 32 years. I've now spent 23 years in California. This state is run by extreme left-wing Democrats. Their policies have created a dystopian hell. They refuse to build more dams to save our precious water, because there's always some little obscure species who might be disturbed. 80% of our water runs straight out into the Pacific Ocean and without that problem we wouldn't have a drought. We have a drought 29 years out of 30. Taxes are incredibly high, but very little is spent on necessities. California is a sanctuary State and the population of illegals is growing exponentially every year. This mostly generates uneducated and unskilled people who end up on welfare rolls. It is the opinion of my state government that homeless people should not be getting help. Instead they're allowed to spread out everywhere and there are literally tent cities in every mid-size and major city. The sidewalks of Los Angeles and San Francisco are full of these people. They could be getting help with drug and alcohol counseling and mental health services for fraction of the cost.
It's just thing after thing after thing that is insane here. California is turning into a new feudal society, with a few very rich people and impoverished masses. It's ironic, considering that the Democrats style themselves as a party for the poor. Most people don't have the strength and the money to stay and fight, especially because of electoral practices that makes it very easy for the state government to cheat. I understand it sounds weird that it could happen in the world's only superpower, but there you go.
Diversity ruined the state. Let's be honest about the situation. By middle class you mean white people.
Sounds like most of that is problems in southern Cali compared to northern
Great vid! Thought it looked and sounded professional, but it seemed a bit drawn out towards the end, repeating a lot of stuff.
Isn't traffic WORSE in NY?
it's almost like building everything for cars is horribly expensive and will always fail. who couldve known
The problem isn’t cars (or not just cars). It’s the people who choose to use cars. For more people to ditch their cars, there must be a greater awareness of the disadvantages of car travel (especially the personal ones). Most people don’t realize these problems because it doesn’t affect them on a personal level. In their minds they can just take a car everywhere because it’s more “convenient” and they have more control and they don’t realize how much of a strain it is for the environment and the people that have to maintain the infrastructure to help to keep their car-dependent lifestyle going. The car-dependent lifestyle in California and America won’t change simply because people have to want it to change, and they just don’t want to change it.
One can just summarize any of the videos as, city good, suburbs bad. Everyone should live in cities and it solves everything. It's beating a dead horse.
When a government is in charge of a project, billions of dollars are budgeted...but for some reason, there are little results...If a private company were in charge, the money would HAVE to result in progress, lest the company would lose it's contract...and another company would step in...The word is incentive...A government usually has little incentive to make huge progress in these situations, because , especially in California, they will vote in the same democrat legislators they always have...so therefore, no incentive...
This is good new for Civil Engineering degree.
Too damn many people...too many people coming into the US and California. Too many people coming to California on assistance, sold off jobs overseas...gap between middle class and rich is wider and those that make the rules or demand the rules don't pay their share.
Car centric infrastructure can not be maintained. They need to look at the Netherlands on how to solve the infrastructure crisis.
Are highways really costing the state government that much money? Can we pweeze toll highways 👉👈 and invest most of the money being spent on highway expansion and renovation projects on improving passenger rail and urban mass transit
YES I AGREE!
Nope
@@dougc190 Ok, let me put it like this. Just like how I pay my for my fare to ride a bus or train, shouldn't the car owner also pay theirs when they drive into an interstate or any other controlled access highway?
@@AlexCab_49 we do. In CA we have the gas tax but also a sale tax on top, and the federal tax( that has not been raise in a long long time). Some of our Car registration go"s it too. Electric cars ( this has been awhile so it might be out if date) only have a surcharge.
@@dougc190 Gas tax here in California still isn't much. For example here in LA I pay $1.75 for buses or trains. I pay $12 round trip on Metrolink to DTLA. Freeways are still free and heavily subsidized by taxpayer money with some of the funds being made up for with gas taxes, which while high compared to national average, still isn't much. I think if we toll (controlled access) highways and add highway fees, it would improve their quality and actually reduce traffic since some ppl will choose a cheaper option like transit and with reduced traffic, this should benefit ppl who truly need to drive like delivery, truck drivers and ppl who need vehicles to carry tools or equipment.
It’s not a funding issue. California just announced a $97.5 Billion surplus in its state budget. Then there’s the federal funding mentioned in the video.
If you believe they have a surplus, I have a bridge to sell you in England. I know they said they did, but they are a bunch of known liars, and numbers are very easy to fudge when you are the one in charge of the records in the first place.
Suburban sprawl is unsustainable. And California IS suburban sprawl.
California needs to wake up and stop voting for the wrong people
...and it's gone!
What?
The money's gone.
But what about the bridges?
What about them?
They're not fixed.
You need money to fix them.
Right, that's what the money was for.
Like I said, the money is gone...
...welcome to California.
After they piss away the first $1T, they're gonna ask for a second helping.
wow I learned absolutely nothing.
I know it would be expensive and a huge undertaking but I say we claim our roads back from cars.
It's almost as if designing a city based solely around one type of transportation just doesn't work in the long run! Who knew!
The US needs to get rid of most of the single family zoning and improve public transport. The oil and car industry is literally keeping Americans poor cause for the most part youre doomed without a car in these suburbs
Funny how in the thumbnail California's side was a pic of an intersection of two highways as if we don't have that in NYC.
The biggest idea I am trying to express is tunneling aqueducts from the coast, in this case the west coast of the USA inland to feed combination geothermal power and sea water desalination plants. The idea seems to be so big that no one has considered it possible but I believe it is not only possible but it is necessary. For over a century the fossil water contained in aquifers has been pumped out to feed agriculture, industry and municipal water needs. The natural water cycle cant refill fossil water deposits that were filled 10,000 years ago when the glaciers melted after the last ice age. Without refilling these aquifers there is not much of a future for the region of the United states. As a result ground levels in some areas of the San Joaquin Valley have subsided by more than 30 feet. Similar fossil water depletion is happening in other regions all around the world. TBM and tunneling technology has matured and further developments in the industry are poised to speed up the tunneling process and it's these tunnels that are the only way to move large volumes of water from the ocean inland. The water is moved inland to areas where it can be desalinated in geothermal plants producing clean water and power. In many cases the water will recharge surface reservoirs where it will be used first to make more hydro power before being released into rivers and canal systems. It's very important however to not stop tunneling at these first stops but to continue several legs until the water has traveled from the ocean under mountain ranges to interior states. Along the way water will flow down grade through tunnels and rise in geothermal loops to fill mountain top pumped hydro batteries several times before eventually recharging several major aquifers. What I am proposing is essentially reversing the flow of the Colorado River Compact. Bringing water from the coast of California first to mountaintop reservoirs then to the deserts of Nevada and Arizona and on to Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming. This big idea looks past any individual city or states problems and looks at the whole and by using first principles identifies the actual problem and only solution. Political will is the biggest hurdle to accomplishing big projects. Especially in California and after blowing $100 billion on a high speed train to nowhere. I think it is obvious to most people that something drastic needs to be done to solve the water problem and that conservation only goes so fare. I would propose to fund the tunneling part of this solution with a system similar to the Permanent Wyoming Mineral Trust Fund is a type of permanent fund called a sovereign wealth fund (SWF). SWFs are typical government funding tools. They consist of investments and assets that the government is not allowed to cash out or deplete. However, while it can't touch the principal, the government normally has the right to spend any revenue these investments generate on appropriate functions and expenses. Each state, California, Nevada and Arizona and on to Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and of course Wyoming could place a small 2% tax on the energy sector and use those funds to invest in Geothermal energy projects and eventually the aqueduct can link up to those projects. There are already over 800 geothermal energy projects in California alone. The equation for my big solution is (ocean water brought inland through large underground aqueducts + combination geothermal and desalination plants = clean water and clean energy).
What did they spend those 100 bilion on? I mean, how could it make no improvement? I don't understand it.
It's failing because of democratic policy..
i dont feel like this video told me anything other then they are getting money and their infratructure is bad
So what's the point of putting New York in your thumbnail?
I put New York in the thumbnail to represent how its not just California that is suffering from failing infrastructure. While most of California's infrastructure problems are bridges, New York has many problems with city streets.
You can learn more about New York's street infrastructure here: bit.ly/3yiRgwK
you can't spend your way out of corruption and bad leadership/management.
It seems like you kinda avoided the root causes and actual solutions to these infrastructure issues. You were close to it when you mentioned just how much of these issues come from the extreme level of car dependence in the country. This is something that the state needs to move away from and fix if it ever wishes to make its infrastructure sustainable both financially and environmentally.
The logic is flying all over the place. If you spent 100 billion in ten years still ending up where you are, how's 40 billion more in coming years going to solve all the problems?
This is only part of the problem
throwing money at the problem won't fix it, seeing the track record of their past projects like their high speed rail system, any and all of the money needs to be accountable.
Dang good thing I don’t live there
In this video, you idenfity that one of California's issues was the mismanagement -- of funds, of projects, of time -- and yet you seem to hope that the same people who were in charge back then would act differently now. I mean, California has received how many billions to develop a high-speed rail line? How long ago it begun? What is its current status?
Why California got such a massive amount of aid compared to the other states in the Bill? Because of politics; Pelosi (D-CA, Speaker of the House) submitted the Bill. Of course it favored California.
One of the biggest issues for the high speed rail is that they promised part of the budget was going to be federally funded, and then the federal funding never came through. The entire design was inept made by people who had no understanding of rail design.
@@agonzgonzalez7748 RealLifeLore has recently uploaded a video about this very topic (ruclips.net/video/fjUeSAhG37o/видео.html).
Some of the reasons are that propositions that were decided by the ballot, can only be amended by the ballot. And one of the requirements are that the train will travel *at* 130 mph/210 km/h. Not "up to," but "at," and with the winding course of the line (SF to Central Valley to L.A.) that's physically impossible.
An Accurate Representation of America Attempting to build its infrastructure :
We want to build a High Speed Rail Line from LA to San Francisco!
*10 Years and 150 Billion USD later*
Elon Musk built a 3/4 Mile Test Tube in the desert and a single lane underground tesla-taxi across an intersection. WITH COOL LIGHTS!
How many times did he say California in this video?
The report car shows that California's infrastructure is actually rated better than the country as a whole. This is a US problem, not just a California problem.
I love California
I still do to. However, we haven't built a new dam in 50 years to smooth out drought years and provide hydro-electricity. Also, no safe micro-nuclear plants are being built. Sad.
This is what happens when incompetence and corruption get ahold of local governments. Things don't get fixed because the people spending the money have no idea what they are doing.
Looks like Ca is the only problem of the nation , thats what happens when u r # 1 , everyone is after u , never seen any bridge collapsing here , no sewage water in the taps like other states , power grids don't fail here like it happens in some states , public transport is not that bad when compared to most states , yes there is room for improvement like any other states , all over .
At 7:22 ...then why are so many Californian moving to Arizona and Texas???????
California hyper focusing on cars and boom sticks but not on anything else, on another note imagine how bad their roads would be if it snowed there
oooff let california be hit with a 5 inch blizzard
The problem is Left Liberalism!
I feel your videos are really lacking. For one, your New York California thumbnail seems basically like clickbait, because it’s suggesting the grid format of New York is better when you don’t talk about it. Also you rarely say “why”. I understand the kind of videos you’re trying to do but it’s just not working.
Thanks for the feedback. I will work to improve my videos in the future.
@@ArkiveYT Great to hear? Perhaps I was a bit harsh. It’s always great to have a open mind about criticism. As for what I meant, I mean you sort of have to tackle “why” effectively, maybe it’s poorly designed, or that people of power decided the better idea was not to invest in transport but in more and more roads, or some system of maintenance where contracts are given to the people who do it quick and cheap and not others, etc.
Water is more important
people who play cities skylines probably would disagree with the thumbnail
Look no further than California's own population and their habits and you will see why the state is failing. The beaches, stadiums concert venues and bars are filled with partygoers while the people who actually make things work are few in number. When you have just a few providing for millions doing nothing except maybe making videos complaining about everything this is what you get.
Where is all of this "failing infrastructure" at? Videos like this shitting on California says how bad it is without giving one example of a failing infrastructure. There is one project alone in southern California on Interstate 5 that is only about 2 miles long that is a multi billion dollar project. I think most of the problems that do happen are in smaller rural areas of the state that may not have the usage that flag it as quick as a freeway that has 300,000+ vehicles a day volume. Rural smaller areas of California are usually the conservative areas that bitch and cry about everything because they are not getting what they feel the deserve. Yet here in central California they are working at upgrading 99 into interstate standards and there are still people bitching and crying about how slow the progress is going. Another thing is the volume of traffic in areas usually tear the roads up faster and get attention faster because they are so vital.