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Comment by jorblumesea | Hacker News Reader

+1, a better question to ask would be, how does Europe keep their infrastructure up to date? A better model, given the age of the US infrastructure.

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I don't think Europe's infrastructure is exactly the envy of the world. Sure, they've got a decent train network. That's because it's much more densely populated than the US.

Infrastructure in Paris or Madrid isn't much different than in New York or Boston. And infrastructure in the middle of nowhere Romania isn't that much different than infrastructure in North Dakota.

I've never been to New York and Boston, so I cannot compare.

I've been multiple times to San Francisco and Seattle though, which I still consider to be first-tier US cities and their overall infrastructure* is certainly no match for Western EU's first-tier cities.

IMHO, one area where US infrastructure is markedly superior is the financial infrastructure (availability of capital, legal system) which is on the intangible side of things.

* Roads, Rail, Power Grid, Water Grid, Fiber networks, Public transport, Schools, Hospitals, Police, Fire Departments

SF and Seattle have populations under 1 million in the city proper. London and NY are something like 8 and 9 million respectively. So I suspect population size matters (and density too).

That is itself a major issue with many American cities. There doesn't seem to be a way to force amalgamation, leaving the core city to handle more of the cost, and increasing the difficulty and overhead of regional infrastructure like public transit.

It'd be interesting to include things like how expensive it is to open a factory consuming a couple megawatts, rather than whether power lines are visible or not.

https://lpi.worldbank.org/international/global?order=Infrast...

Europe's a big place, infrastructure development varies widely. Global top 10 according to the World Bank:

   Germany 4.37
   Japan 4.25
   Sweden 4.24
   Netherlands 4.21
   Austria 4.18
   Singapore 4.06
   U. States 4.05
   U. Kingdom 4.03
   Switzerland 4.02
   U.A.E. 4.02

China is #20, just behind Spain. I'd have to average EU, and European data to compare Europe as a whole with China and the US. (But which European nations should I include?)

I have lived in the UK, US and Sweden, and travel a lot to the Netherlands. There is an awful lot of difference in the 0.2 in those numbers. Just saying this, as it can be deceptive. Sweden’s and Netherland’s infrastructure are certainly more developed than what we see in the UK and the US.

I think that China, the US, and the EU, even though they are often compared to each other are each of them such a vast and differentiated geographical entity that often times general statements fail to hit their mark.

Like if I average the EU28 total I get 3.48 which is just below China and well below the US because there is the infrastructure of Bulgaria and Lithuania (on offence guys!) at the low end and Germany and Sweden at the high end. I am sure the infrastructure of Western China is a night-and-day difference to the coastal South and East. I imagine the US is a lot more uniform.

I was about to say something like this. I can't speak to the accuracy of these numbers, but they feel off. Every time I go to Germany, I am deeply disappointed by the quality of the roads. I know the roads aren't the only thing measured here, but it just feels off.

So the whole/average of the US infrastructure is superior to that of HongKong? Sorry, I don't buy that. Unless they are counting personal cars?

Here are a few things Hong Kong is superior: Cashless payments, extensive metro/train network, efficient/big airport, high speed internet.

New York is not even as good/efficient as Hong Kong. Now the case can be made that you make more money working in New York than in HK but the comparison is about infrastructure.

The NY subway is one of the shittiest I have tried (and it seems like it breaks often).

Actually infrastructure in Romania’s western Carpatian mountains (the “middle of nowhere”) is an excellent case study. In the mid-century, under communism, an impressive network of dams was built at huge cost. Some of them underground to withstand bombardment. Sadly I didn’t take a picture of a map of the hydro network I saw there recently but here it is low res on Street View [1]. The infrastructure today is in terrible disrepair and I believe much has been shut down as dependence on foreign electricity has grown [2].

Surely a lot of the troubles are Romania’s own fault managing the transition post communism, but I think the interesting part is how does the global market for energy, in this case, decentivize a country to maintain its own infrastructure?

[1]https://goo.gl/maps/t7H6UFuJiMS2

[2]https://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=ro&v=83

Europe had the “advantage” of being carpet bombed in the mid-20th century. Planning out the infrastructure you would like to have in the absence of competing concerns and American support to do it is relatively straightforward.

I think it is easier for developing countries in general.

Japan continued its huge infrastructure build postwar but even by the 1970s (Narita airport) it was more difficult.

The next iteration of their high speed rail (SC Maglev) has been in development since the 1970s, with a test track built in 1990. It is under construction now and isn’t planned to be fully operational until 2037.

Compare that with the bullet train, which began development in 1939, construction in the 1950s, and was done in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.

My friend I completely concur.

A trackway eats up a massive amount of land and cuts through many different county lines and property boundaries. Even the guy who planned out Market Street in San Francisco had to flee across the Golden Gate on a Ferry once large property owners got wind of his enormous boulevard cutting diagonally across the city.

No matter what you build, or when you build it, people are going to object. I think what changes is the denser your body of law, the easier it is for people to drag projects into the court room, even many different times, for many seemingly legitimate objections. Maybe you don’t stop a project legally, but you halt progress long enough that the costs go up substantially, in a labour market which is already quite expensive and unions fairly common.

If you could easily steamroll any objections, seize the property you want to use without going to court, didn’t have to face environmental concerns, didn’t have to hire unionized labor, and essentially didn’t have to answer to anybody, I imagine the CAHSR would have been built 5 years ago, ahead of time, under budget, and already planning extensions to Redding, Las Vegas and up the Golden Gate Bridge through the Sonoma Valley and up the North Coast with long term (10 year) plans to run a line from San Diego to New Orleans. Alas, we have the Rule of Law, and the Law is very thick.

E.g. Switzerland and Sweden weren’t, I still find the infrastructure there way better than in the West Coast at least.

By spending money on upgrading it, astonishingly. The problem with US infrastructure is very simple. Money. There’s no magic secret that everyone else has.

Except that it costs astronomically more to build advanced infrastructure in the US. Same problem with health care too. Too many people taking a cut? Structural profiteering?

I think that's partially economies of scale and experience; the US does not, as a rule, build modern infrastructure, so there's naturally going to be a learning curve when it tries.

The cost per km of the proposed California high-speed line is somewhat greater than similar lines in European countries, say, but you'd expect this, because no-one's ever built one in the US before (except for small sections of the Acela one).

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