<story><title>So You Want to Do an Infrastructure Package [pdf]</title><url>https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/levy-infastructure.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>legitster</author><text>From the paper:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Overdesign: American infrastructure is often overbuilt, not out of higher quality but out of agency turf battles, obsolete standards like NFPA 130 that have better foreign replacements, or scope creep.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Poor procurement practices: there is improper supervision of private contractors, and things are getting worse as public agencies offload more risk to the private sector, which responds by bidding higher to hedge against the risk; there are also some one-bid contracts, for example the 7 extension in New York, leading to even higher costs.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Poor project management: design review teams are usually understaffed and cannot respond to contractors fast, so there is little institutional capacity to build big projects. Wages for office workers are below market rate and hiring
is difficult.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Labor: in New York, the productivity of construction labor seems unusually low and wages high.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;NIMBYism: the United States makes it easy to sue, for example NEPA is enforced by lawsuit, whereas its Italian equivalent is enforced by the administrative state. Lawsuits in the US and other lawsuit-happy countries like Germany rarely win, but do delay projects, so there is defensive design, including unnecessary scope in order to buy off political support. Leah Brooks and Zachary Liscow have a paper on the growth in Interstate construction costs over the decades, blaming citizen voice lawsuits for the increase.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Politicization of projects: the civil service is weak compared with both elected politicians and their unelected political appointees, and there is not much continuity in design.&lt;p&gt;One thing I think they missed, environmental impact studies (that aren&amp;#x27;t even associated with reduced environmental impact!) I remember Seattle&amp;#x27;s light rail project included 8 years of environmental impact review of a light rail extensions along routes that were planned along existing rail corridors!&lt;p&gt;Also, relating to overdesign, I think younger generations suffer from a cult of perfectionism. But perfect is the enemy of good. A streetcar might seem so much cooler, but a dedicated rapid bus can do more with less money!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wahern</author><text>&amp;gt; One thing I think they missed, environmental impact studies (that aren&amp;#x27;t even associated with reduced environmental impact!)&lt;p&gt;That wasn&amp;#x27;t missed. That&amp;#x27;s what NEPA is implicitly referring to. Environmental protection legislation is usually structured to first require the developer to create an environmental impact report (EIR). Thereafter almost everything revolves around the EIR, including the regulatory agency review as well as the lawsuits. Environmental lawsuits invariably challenge the accuracy of the EIR, or the application of regulatory agency rules to an EIR.&lt;p&gt;An EIR is to environmental regulation what construction blueprints are to the building code. You need the paperwork, otherwise you just have a bunch of people shouting and pointing fingers and making wild claims.&lt;p&gt;The issue with EIRs is who gets to challenge the accuracy of an EIR. Imagine if any old interest group could challenge construction blueprints for accuracy in court. It&amp;#x27;d be a nightmare. Well, in some jurisdictions, like California, pretty much anybody can challenge an EIR in court. By contrast, under the Federal NEPA and most state regulations, the parties with a right to challenge an EIR are few--e.g. usually just the government agency in charge of approving it and maybe any adjacent landowners potentially impacted.&lt;p&gt;I know somebody who is a low-income housing developer in California. According to her, the cost of compiling and getting approval of an EIR under NEPA is de minimis, with very low-risk if the reviewing contractor doesn&amp;#x27;t uncover any serious problems. By contrast, because almost anybody can challenge the EIR submitted under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and do so without any risk of punishment for frivolous or vexatious challenges, one of her biggest risks and costs is dealing with CEQA. (Because nobody wants low-income housing near them, any remotely nearby upper-income neighborhood will instinctively challenge her EIR, causing mult-year, even multi-decade delays. And this is even when zoning boards and every other government agency are 100% behind a project.)</text></comment>
<story><title>So You Want to Do an Infrastructure Package [pdf]</title><url>https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/levy-infastructure.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>legitster</author><text>From the paper:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Overdesign: American infrastructure is often overbuilt, not out of higher quality but out of agency turf battles, obsolete standards like NFPA 130 that have better foreign replacements, or scope creep.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Poor procurement practices: there is improper supervision of private contractors, and things are getting worse as public agencies offload more risk to the private sector, which responds by bidding higher to hedge against the risk; there are also some one-bid contracts, for example the 7 extension in New York, leading to even higher costs.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Poor project management: design review teams are usually understaffed and cannot respond to contractors fast, so there is little institutional capacity to build big projects. Wages for office workers are below market rate and hiring
is difficult.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Labor: in New York, the productivity of construction labor seems unusually low and wages high.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;NIMBYism: the United States makes it easy to sue, for example NEPA is enforced by lawsuit, whereas its Italian equivalent is enforced by the administrative state. Lawsuits in the US and other lawsuit-happy countries like Germany rarely win, but do delay projects, so there is defensive design, including unnecessary scope in order to buy off political support. Leah Brooks and Zachary Liscow have a paper on the growth in Interstate construction costs over the decades, blaming citizen voice lawsuits for the increase.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Politicization of projects: the civil service is weak compared with both elected politicians and their unelected political appointees, and there is not much continuity in design.&lt;p&gt;One thing I think they missed, environmental impact studies (that aren&amp;#x27;t even associated with reduced environmental impact!) I remember Seattle&amp;#x27;s light rail project included 8 years of environmental impact review of a light rail extensions along routes that were planned along existing rail corridors!&lt;p&gt;Also, relating to overdesign, I think younger generations suffer from a cult of perfectionism. But perfect is the enemy of good. A streetcar might seem so much cooler, but a dedicated rapid bus can do more with less money!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>Maybe this is an additional component to NIMBYism, but I&amp;#x27;ve often noticed how public works projects get derailed from a myriad of busybodies coming out of the woodwork to halt the project based on some hitherto unknown concern. I can&amp;#x27;t help but think our public works projects are too public and it&amp;#x27;s too easy for some random Joe&amp;#x2F;Jane to have an outsized impact on the project planning.</text></comment>