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Comment by AlexB138 | Hacker News Reader

So, this article has some valid criticisms, but why is this the case? Why does it seem like modern America can't manage any public works projects without them taking twice as long and costing twice as much as projected? Is it regulation? Lack of work ethic? Graft? It seems like a major problem.

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I don't know about the "taking twice as long" problem, but I can tell you why they cost twice as much: A long history of (a) rewarding underbidding and (b) bailing out under-bidders.

If I'm buying a widget costing $1 billion, and everyone in the widget industry knows I'm going to accept the lowest bid which will be about $0.5 billion, then I'll end up paying that bidder $1.5 billion... well, I'm going to end up accepting someone who responded rationally to the incentives I'm offering them.

If I had to guess it’s probably a result of vested interest opposing construction, and a reluctance to use eminent domain to buy up land. In the Bay Area there are powerful NIMBY groups that oppose train construction for the usual obvious reasons.

Maybe a better question is why are our estimates so unrealistically low? Bid processes choose the vendor who claims they can do it the cheapest, not the one who actually can.

Because you have actors/lawyers planning a vast complex project with input from voters who have no clue how to build anything at this scale. if it wasn't political, then it would be feasible. But thats not the world we live in.

We're all spread out really really far compared to the rest of the world.

That should be reflected in the projections, which it apparently isn't.

The Hoover dam was built on time and budget, along with numerous other public works projects of the early 20 century.

It’s as if nothing can get done now.

Over 100 workers died building it.

China built 17,000 miles of high-speed rail in 15 years.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China

There’s another 8000 on the way by 2025.

It's easy to do when you can just forcibly move people and don't have to listen to what the locals think before you start laying track

That’s a great excuse for getting right of ways.

However, that doesn’t explain how they can build 17,000 miles of track and we can’t build 800.

Um, the US government can do that too? I'm not aware of any government that doesn't hold eminent domain powers.

China's method of eminent domain is a bit more... forceful than you might be thinking.

Source: lived in China

Ah, does China go through the courts for every segment, taking months or years (including determining fair value for compensation)?

Dodger Stadium was built by razing a poor but cultural neighborhood and it is now considered to have been unethically done. But it was fast...

> Ah, does China go through the courts for every segment, taking months or years (including determining fair value for compensation)?

Which sounds like a very inefficient court system to me.

I'm not sure I want speedy government takeover of land.

But I want faster trials. If it fails, it should fail fast. If it succeeds, it should succeed fast.

I suppose I cannot argue with that. Many different slow things probably have this same root cause.

The UK government has to go through lengthy rounds of consulting with local citizens, groups, other interested parties in order to build anything like this. Building a new runway at Heathrow took so long because of years and years of consultations and negotiations.

China doesn't have to do that.

China also federally funds them. But God forbid if the US Federal govt spends some infrastructure money on the coastal elites. That will be blasphemy

There was also a world wide depression.

I kinda think that paying the minimum possible attracts low quality workers, which is ok, but sub optimal.

Making the pay competitive, like it was then, might reduce the total cost.

This is one rail line that would connect San Francisco and Los Angeles, the two most populous regions in the most populous state in the US. The fact that the entire country is sparsely populated does not affect the feasibility or utility of this project in particular.

A thing that becomes obvious when looking at the actual work being done is a lot of the central valley work is grade separation. The work is grade separating both the future high speed rail lines and existing freight rail lines. The whole project is filled with things like that. Work that already needs to be done irrespective of the HSR part. With that consideration the SF to LA feature is really about a 1/3 the total price tag.

I remember one time someone made the too spread out argument. I went and tried to do an estimate for a HSR line from Chicago to Denver. Via Kansans City and St louis. About 1000 miles.

Probably cost between 25-50 billion. Maybe less since for most of it the only things in the way are corn fields and cows.

Which seems like a lot of money, but then compare with the $2T spent on the 'war on terror' since 2001.

See:

http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/programs/construction/road_closur...

  the two most populous regions

Silicon Valley (even San Jose proper) is more populous than SF.

And San Diego is more populous than either.

While perhaps true, this doesn't actually address the question asked, which is why we are unable to create accurate projections and meet projected budgets. This is wholly unaffected by the density of the areas being connected, because presumable such density would simply be taken into account via whatever mathematical / economical modeling is being down.

California has as many people as all of Canada. There's _tons_ of people in this state to null your point. Maybe in the midwest your argument might hold true, however.

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