Quote (Black XistenZ @ Feb 18 2021 04:29pm)
You have to keep in mind that the United States are a very young and rapidly growing country. Not even 50 years ago, places like Texas had one fifth to one quarter of their current population, and were very rural and not particularly wealthy. Population density also plays a huge role. In places like Massachusetts or NYC, infrastructure is better. The amount of required grids and roads per capita is much higher in rural and suburban America than it is in the densely populated middle of Europe.
The Netherlands in particular have been densely populated and among the wealthiest places in the entire world for the past 500 or so years. Building a resilient, solidified infrastructure which is able to withstand natural disasters or decades of neglect is a task that takes generations.
Our infrastructure pre-WWII and even after that, pre-80's was pretty horrendous compared to today.
Quote (thesnipa @ Feb 18 2021 03:11pm)
infrastructure repairs are the most missed out on bipartisan effort in the last few decades and perhaps the greatest victim to the polarization in local, state, and national government.
The right wing supports the workers, construction and the like, and is largely supported by the unions that operate such workers. but spending on these types of upgrades can be painted as fiscally irresponsible.
The left knows these unions arent going to support them, and that blue collar workers generally arent supporting them, and so chooses to divert funds to social programs rather than infrastructure upgrades over and over.
in an apolitical sense also, the system of bidding for contracts has led to 2 issues. exorbitant price gauging that makes upgrades untenable, and unmet timelines which leaves towns and states unwilling to greenlight projects in fear that upgrades may drag on for an unbelievable time.
i know many people in the trade, and its not uncommon for companies to move workers around from project to project after "cleaning up time". essentially leaving roads in poor shape, rather than finishing the job, in a scheme to run up job hours on open ended contracts. scrape away the road one day, one day of clean up, move to next site. repeat. return to job site 1, black top, clean up, move to job site 2. repeat. return to job site 1, lay curb cement, clean up, repeat repeat repeat. as well as short handing crews to make jobs take more hours as workers are doing multiple tasks rather than clearing a job site in 1 sweep, and pushing beyond 8 hours to run up overtime costs.
its well known to anyone who works in the trade that foreman and bidders play this game with the publics money.
Our projects also often turn out far more expensive, but they have hammered in completion of works. Projects are generally continued until finished, it's only very rarely that a project does not get completed. Also, because roads and stuff are very busy, planning is tight. Efficiency is maximized cause people stuck in traffic = lost productivity.
Good example: