The Problem of Infrastructure in the US
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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
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'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 The techniques used by construction companies were outdated by half a century, public authorities didn't know what they were doing and designers used old standards, fearing innovation in case there was a lawsuit.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).
@@nkristianschmidt china is far far ahead in infrastructure though
@@sunay72 All china needs to do now is work out how to halt its disastrous population decline.
$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.
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.
How many Americans does it take to change a light bulb? Seven. One to change the bulb, and six to write the Environmental Impact Statement.
@@christianlibertarian5488 If it is true (I don't know), it is not "too much government", it is "too incompetent a governement". And why is that? Because hardcore capitalism doesn't like governement and don't pay attention about its quality. If governement is a burden for capitalists, it is capitalists fault (and they want you to pay for it when they say "less governement !")
>high speed train
>going 30 miles per hour
That's already a joke on its own.
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. TH-camr 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!
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?
That “environmental study” was just a guy putting stamp on some papers for 2 million.
Its okay because the lrt is perfectly reliable..
@@Kaede-Sasakithe builders probably are the environmental study group? Nice business model lol
@@lalithrockz- “builders are probably the environmental study group” - likely, they both vote for the same political party, indirect corruption.
One word: corruption.
We just saw a SCOTUS official accepting vacations and a home for a relative. And nobody had a problem with it.
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
Isn't there a law that government can not provide competitive price? So it isn't "pushing out private companies".
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...
@@NickSteffen Not at all -- US city budgets are famous for being relatively self-dependent. We get far, far, less money from federal funds than European and even Chinese counterparts.
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 US railway "network" is a disgrace.
US Airport terminals are shockingly awful to anyone from outside the US.
The airports bit isn’t true. A few new ones in Asia and ME top them all, but the rest? Nah
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
That’s the exclusive reason they’re reluctant to manufacture here. The fact it’s cheaper is the only benefit. Otherwise the downsides are risks to losing cargo in transit via ship, waiting for export/import customs and investigations, dealing with complex global tax stringencies, dealing with international politics and tariffs, needing to think about massive time zone differences with manufacturers and distributors that could have you on a work call at 11pm instead of somewhere between 0-3 hours, dealing with cultural differences and language barriers, and that’s just a short list of the downsides. I could name 100 if I didn’t have anything better to do.
Massive corruption
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.
"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).
@@tstcikhthys bro, the false grammar in question was mouthed by a British person, not an American
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).
Yes I remember visiting a small city in Canada (Calgary). I was shocked to see they had a light rail system.
Many US cities that size or bigger don't have anything close.
I think this article looked at NYC and the West Coast as examples of why the Mass transit sucks, but NYC is probably the best in the US..
I think Middle America investments would be cheaper cost wise but I guess the lack of investment initiative is the bigger reasons there. But I think some better investments in those cities would create some huge economic booms in those regions.
@@jsmacks11 Calgary is a megapolis, it's not a small city.
all the places you mentioned were better are also highly unionized. it is not the unions it is the politicians and buraucrats.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
2. Is probably related to too much Red tape than anything.
Regulations, Opposing citizens, compliance with different groups would make managing these projects a nightmare. Also there hasn't been many successful projects to go by in the US. Once someone does a few, the latter ones get easier, there probably would even be less NIMBYs and more PIMBYs once they see the benefits of having better transit.
“Other countries” have labor unions and there costs are still lower and projects get complete faster
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.
the NYC Subway is not the most famous subway in the world, the London Underground is (lets not get pendantic over the term subway)
Which is more dangerous?
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?
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.
LOL they took 10 mins to get to the point of the video.
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
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.
What website did you use to track that 7? Here in Pennsylvania we’ve got plenty of chargers.
Long in a short, 10 people trying to screw in 1 light bulb. Roll credits!!
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
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
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.
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.
@@ChristiaanHW
Point of order regarding roads at least. Roads are almost exclusively funded by fuel tax with a small portion of local funding coming from local option sales tax and specific segments funded by tolls. They are not really subsidized by anything.
Crumbling 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 😅
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.
How much does it cost to build that tunnel under the Thames and when will it be complete?
The sign inside the subway that said "ride and stay alive"😂
One day in history books we will laugh and think ''how in the world could country like that ever exist''
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.
Its not just infrastructure that is lagging we have major manufacturers that supply components for military, aviation, and shopping that are in a disturbing levels of disrepair.
"Four cats"? Tell me you're Spanish without telling me lol
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.
1:05 hahahaha spokane got featured as aging infrastructure intro lol
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
I’m pretty sure that restroom is being built by the USACE 😂
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".
Canada has the same Problem
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$.
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.
You had me until the end when you said TEXAS was much better, it is NOT. Arizona also has issues too.
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.
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
Im curious if US knows that enormous cost of those projects or enormous cost of health care or education are part of they "wealth"
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
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.
Showing Birkenstock (a german company) when talking about large US multi nationals is quite funny.
Nice shot of Spokane! (About one minute in.)
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
we spent $300,000 on a garage with amenities for a fire department.
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.
IMO, this is one of your best videos, thanks!!
Bit of a caveat here for the HSR: work is ongoing for it! I'm not sure how much track has been laid, but it is under construction. I was even offered to work on the Fresno/Bakersfield run with Dragados/Flatiron
If you drive through the CV of CA you can definitely see it, and it's impressive! Doesnt absolve the issues of it ofc, but it is happening!
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.
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. .
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.
California High-Speed Rail Authority and California High-Speed Rail in California.😮
This is so backwards, their system needs a major reset
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.
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.
WC is also a term that is Literally almost never used Stateside and nobody will understand what it is.
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.
Crane operator with $500k salary...DAMMMNNN!!!
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 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...
Just using bidet DAMN IT 😂😂😂
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!
Someone was probably getting kickbacks somewhere. The Buddy System taken up to 11.
0:45 to the Juicero!
I've seen small water system projects cost over $100,000 that included less than $2,000 in materials and took over 5 years to build. I joked that I would have done it for $50,000 over the weekend. A few weekend jobs like that, and I could take the rest of the year off.
Most consulting engineers will charge whatever the cap is on engineering expenses. If the funding source will pay up to $500,000, that is the exact amount the engineer will say it cost them to design the project. Quite the coincidence.
Finally, the government employees that go to work in these construction firms and engineering firms are usually there to help guide the project through all of the government red tape. Projects that should be done in a couple of weeks take 3 to 5 years to complete if they are funded by the state or federal government.
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
City of Eskişehir in Turkey needed mass transport badly. Old town was founded on hill skirts and by he river and traffic was horrendous. Due to some political tension between the government and city council, they didn't get budget for the works. So they just bought some trams from Netherlands, financed it through Dutch banks and spend what little money they had on tracks and stops. Tram line paid for itself despite dirt cheap ticket prices, also paid for a major expansion. More people started using it since tram network encompasses the whole city and almost always faster than driving. In less than 20 years a whole tram network and whole neighborhoods came to life. Previously neglected neighborhoods started flourishing since students and young workforce can reside there and go to work/school. Population density in city center didn't skyrocket and old town beside the hill is transformed from a backwater to a gathering place for local arts, cafes, museums and NGO headquarters. Riverside of the old town transformed into a hangout place for youth, instead of city only place of commerce. Lightened traffic load and poor students combination gave rise to bicycle use and with it, came bike shops and stores. Really fascinating what a small tram line could do.
The US is a strange place where there are people complaining about public hand outs on one side and then are completely okay with spending billions on private companies for little return
America needs more unions, not less!
We are crumbling in many other ways
There's a simple reason behind why all this crap costs so much compared to how it used to, even after accounting for inflation. We have injected so much bureaucracy into every major construction and repair project that after it gets done passing through the many different systems and hands we consider "necessary", the end cost is enormous and completely unnecessary to the actual project itself. Some of those different hands include the lobbying or activist groups that might oppose its construction, multiple different consulting firms that might be hired on, or even just exaggerated budgets so those at the top can get a nice big cut. Not to mention our issue of allowing construction companies to take as long as they can to create something in order to milk as much budget as possible. All of these things contribute to a super inflated cost where even half that amount shouldn't be necessary to build the infrastructure.
I always want California High-Speed Rail in California and I always love California High-Speed Rail in California.😮
The same thing is now happening in the UK as a consequence of the current economic crisis in the UK.
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 😂
Its the chap from the ford diesel compensation ads
CAHSR hasn't laid any track but they've been prioritizing the more difficult viaducts and tunnels. Contrast to Brightline West creaming off the Vegas run but single-tracking through the Interstate median and only going to Rancho Cucamunga which has "Minimum Viable Product" written all over it.
Wait, they're only building a single track along the I-15 median?
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
The reason this stuff is so expensive is so that politicians can dole out public funds to their donors, cronies and friends. The famous bathroom in California didn't really cost $12million (or whatever it was). That's just how much the govt "paid" for it.
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!
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.
Im not convinced with the fallout of Texas rail.
If something gets bad enough, the private sector will usually handle it. That’s a good thing about America.
The CA High Speed Rail will end up being Bakersfield to San Francisco 2040-2050. The Bakersfield to LA route will simply never exist.
Depends on which state you're talking about. Some are up to date, some are just trash