Current Events > Infrastructure projects take forever because of inefficient government

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http://www.commongood.org/blog/entry/why-it-takes-so-long-to-build-a-bridge-in-america

The WSJ article is behind a paywall, so you can't read all of it without paying. But this post extracted the key elements from the article. It's a few years old but I thought it was a very interesting read. Building better bridges, roads, and other infrastructure takes forever because of the unreasonable and insanely long approval process. Canada and Germany spend much less time in that process than we do.

Our problem isn't a lack of funding for infrastructure spending - there's plenty of money to do the actual work. The problem is the bureaucracy and regulation that grinds the process down to a halt.
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meingott posted...

Canada and Germany spend much less time in that process than we do

Lol that's a god damned lie

Source: I grew up in Canada
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Doom_Art posted...

meingott posted...

Canada and Germany spend much less time in that process than we do

Lol that's a god damned lie

Source: I grew up in Canada

That don't mean you really know brah come on
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Even Michigan? Some of the roads are so bad you're better off driving on dirt

Burgess posted...

That don't mean you really know brah come on

There was a bridge near my high school

Part way through 11th grade the bridge closed down for construction.



By the time I graduated they had one lane open
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Asherlee10 posted...

meingott posted...

The problem is the bureaucracy and regulation that grinds the process down to a halt.

Is it 100% a bad thing, though? My grandfather owned (sold a few years back) a rather large utility and road construction company. The regulations and halts almost always had to do with safety issues (at least the ones he told me about).

e.g. water mains were old and could burst, unknown cave discovered below construction site

Are Canada's or Germany's bridges falling apart? Are their water mains bursting?
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Asherlee10 posted...

meingott posted...

Asherlee10 posted...

meingott posted...

The problem is the bureaucracy and regulation that grinds the process down to a halt.

Is it 100% a bad thing, though? My grandfather owned (sold a few years back) a rather large utility and road construction company. The regulations and halts almost always had to do with safety issues (at least the ones he told me about).

e.g. water mains were old and could burst, unknown cave discovered below construction site

Are Canada's or Germany's bridges falling apart? Are their water mains bursting?

I'm not sure I follow you. I can only speak about the area my grandfather worked in (geographically), but there are so many "things" that have to be taken care of that it's almost impossible to keep up with it all. The pipes that were old, were old because they hadn't reached the cycle of being replaced yet. The cycle is so large because there are so many.

None of that justifies waiting 10 years to get approval to build a fucking bridge. There's a difference between taking the time to regulate the process so that it's safe...and getting stuck in a bureaucratic trap so that nothing gets built.

Funny how people are concerned with safety and thereby justify this extremely inefficient process...while roads and bridges are literally collapsing all over the country since no one can build new ones due to the process.
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