Ezra Klein says the public has lost faith in the ability of the government to build big things:
A key failure of liberalism in this era is the inability to build in a way that inspires confidence in more building. Infrastructure comes in over budget and late, if it comes in at all. There aren't enough homes, enough rapid tests, even enough good government web sites.
....There's both a political and a substantive problem here. The political problem is if people keep watching the government fail to build things well, they won't believe the government can build things well. So they won't trust it to build....The substantive problem, of course, is that we need government to build things, and solve big problems. If it's so hard to build parklets, how do you think that multi-trillion dollar, breakneck investment in energy infrastructure is going to go?
Ezra naturally wants to solve this problem, since building big things is a key part of the liberal project. But first, it's worth taking a look at whether it's really a problem in the first place. Here is spending on public construction projects:
There's no sign of a decline in public construction. Here's a look at municipal bonds:
Muni bonds are used to fund public works, and the supply of these bonds has been steady over the past ten years. IHS Market estimates that $28.7 billion worth of muni bonds were on ballots in last month's election, about average for the past decade, and that 65% of them were approved.
This is just a couple of pieces of evidence, but it's enough to make me think it's at least worth investigating whether the public really has lost faith in the ability of government to build things. I suspect not.
If I'm right, it exposes an odd paradox: As we know, trust in government is way down, but trust in the ability of government to build stuff is perfectly steady. My own county is an example of this. Orange County is famously skeptical of big government, but in 1990 we approved a half-cent sales tax increase to fund transportation projects. In 2006, a whopping 70% of voters re-approved it. OC voters might be skeptical of government in general, but the one thing they do approve of is spending money on asphalt and concrete in ways they can see with their own eyes.
There are always big-ticket fiascoes around to grab the headlines. In California we have our bullet train to nowhere. In New York City, the Second Avenue subway is a long-running punch line. But consider the real lesson of these projects: even though they are gigantic disasters, the public continues to support them. Isn't that remarkable? As long as the project is something people actually want, they are willing to put up with almost anything.
On the other hand, if it's something they don't want, they will find an endless barrage of excuses not to allow it.
I suspect that this is the real lesson to be learned. Trust in government to build things hasn't changed. The only thing that's changed is what liberals want to build. If we can convince the public that our ideas are good ones, they'll support paying for them. If not, they won't. Maybe that sounds too simple to be true, but not every problem has to be complicated.
I think a big part of the problem is that SPENDING is steady, but the visible "projects that deliver value" completed seems to be going down. And I'm not sure the 90's are the right comparison, either--what a lot of people are mentally comparing to is the 50's and 60's, when a whole lot of roads and bridges got built in years, not decades.
# of cars on the road in the 50s was far FAR less than today.
The Interstate Highway System's first phase of construction wasn't finished until 1992.
1950s projects weren't done any quicker than today's, even without all the unnecessary, jobkilling regulatory reviews.
It seems the often touted high speed train from LA to Vegas is getting traction once again.
Spending is not a good measure of successful major infrastructure. Particularly since one of the big problems Ezra has identified is the exorbitant cost of infrastructure in the US vs other countries and historical costs here.
I may be wrong but I think starting in the 90's is the wrong time frame.
I would be curious to see public spending going back 100 years, or at least back to the 50's.
Gov't did "good" building back when it was building out the interstate system.
We don't have that today. Or we do, but most of the building is either hidden from view or rebuilding what we have already.
Sewage treatment plants? Have been remarkably effective in cleaning up the environment--but most people don't notice it, except maybe as an increase in their sewer/water bill.
New bridges? Replacing spans so they don't fall is essential, but people notice the traffic jams construction causes.
We'll hear about problems with housing projects. We'll see reports from across the nation about problems with large transportation projects, e.g. Big Dig. If something does work, it's not really news.
I don't think it's just that people don't notice: it's the time and cost that seem really high.
Just to pick an example of a small, local project: the Willimansett Bridge was originally built in a year or two (construction began in 1891, the record isn't clear whether it opening in 1892 or 1893)
https://historicbridges.org/massachusetts/willimansett/inventory.pdf
Repairing it--no improvements, just replacing and repainting--took four years--2011-2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willimansett_Bridge
One problem is that maintenance costs and improvements aren't sexy. DC's Metro has reduced service now because of subway cars wheelsets being too wide.
The other problem is NIMBY--it's always easier to argue against change than for it
It isn’t just that they are too wide, but that the wheels are not staying in place on the axles…
Whenever people are complaining that the US doesn't build big things anymore they always forget about NASA.
We have these astonishing space probes heading off to all parts of the solar system all the time.
No one does it bigger.
No, that's all Glibertarian Superman Elon Musk.
But I would have said the primary problem most people have, though they never actually think about it, is that design of US infrastructure and large buildings, is almost unbearably ugly. There are new bridges that go massively over budget and are delayed for years and then they look like something from 1962. Buildings that look a clump the least interested people on Earth all agreed was cheap enough, like what they replaced the World Trade Center with. Public gardens planted where no on will ever use them or see them, and if they did they're stupidly small and right between two highways and sewage factory. And then there's the halfwits version of Dodge City look wingnuts think will wow the public.
Compare US public design to Tokyo, or Singapore, or Chongqing, or Paris or any place you can think of you'd want to be and the US is a stupid, grotesque embarrassment.
Infrastructure spending should probably be normalized by nominal GDP, not just prices. We should expect to get more and better stuff over time, even stuff for common use. If public spending is only going up with prices, this is an indication of how GDP growth is going to upper incomes.
Well, the problems are institutional as to why we can't have nice things.
1. Since we haven't been building much, local and state authority does not have the institutional memory of how to manage such projects
2. State and Local authorities charged with over seeing project are massively and chronically understaffed.
3. Power follows the money, Contractors and Suppliers have the money, Local staff has none...and so lose in the contracting cost wars.
**********
As a former City Planner and Code Enforcement Head....(before the beginning of time...lol), I was offered bribes for this or that...it is a terrible project to hold Contractors feet to the fire....(we had a single city attorney, Contractors had the best LA could buy).
In any case...there are two very recent articles on this problem, both approachable and easy to understand;
Bloomberg and Vox...Great Reads!
"On a per mile basis, America’s transit rail projects are some of the most expensive in the world. In New York, the Second Avenue Subway cost $2.6 billion per mile, in San Francisco the Central Subway cost $920 million per mile, in Los Angeles the Purple Line cost $800 million per mile.
In contrast, Copenhagen built a project at just $323 million per mile, and Paris and Madrid did their projects for $160 million and $320 million per mile, respectively. These are massive differences in cost."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/why-building-roads-and-transit-costs-more-in-the-u-s?sref=MIcoSLsi
https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs-america
Traveller
So, in inflation adjusted dollars, public spending on infrastructure has been flat for a decade. Fine. And how about as a percentage of public spending overall?
People need to come and study how we do things here in Minnesota. Rebuilding the I-35W bridge was done early, and under budget.
Of course, that hasn't helped to convince large parts of the state that government can build things on time and at budget.
Thats a great story Meclancholy
But keep in mind that the bridge itself was the ONLY thing being built. All approaches to and from the bridge remained intact did they not?
We have a lift bridge as the main entryway into Wilmington. The Cape Fear Memorial Bridge CFMB for short. Opened in 1969. No one at that time saw the growth of the two counties is connected - New Hanover on the Wilmington side and Brunswick county which to this day remains as one of the 10 fastest growing counties in the United States.
Because the CFMB is only a 4 laner = they need to augment it with another, high rise stationary bridge that would need to be located further down river. Now they will need to build new access roads on both sides. The 6 lane project has a base cost of over $1B. We need it. Now we have 2 other bridges besides the CFMB. The Isabelle Holmes bridge is a drawbridge - 4 lanes. To the north of that we have the I-140 bypass bridge, again 4 lanes.
The problem for NC DOT is that what they thought would happen when they opened the I-140 bridge didn't happen. They thought it would take traffic off the CFMB, It did no such thing. Oh people use the new bridge, but growth in the area kept MORE people coming over the CFMB right into Wilmington.
They have talked about replacing the CFMB "in place" but never came up with a cost because they just couldn't bring themselves to shut it down it is so heavily travelled.
But kudos to you guys for getting it done early and under budget. We can just wish that would happen here
I used to have a weekly commute that included a stretch of I-84 from Connecticut into New York State, where they replaced two overpasses, east- and west-bound. Each roadway was closed for only 20 hours. See it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sVQvCqHPbQ
That was all T-Paw, baby!
Sensible conservatism in action.
The problem is that it is relatively easy to get money for something NEW - but not for maintenance/replacement
The way that we (NZ) fixed that was to have the organizations responsible for the infrastructure report on its average AGE
If you are maintaining/replacing enough then the average AGE does not increase
So if you took office in 2018 and your assets were an average of 20 years old then you would have to spend enough so that when you were up for re-election in 2022 the average age would still be 20 years
If you let the average age increase then you are simply storing up problems for the future
Its NOT perfect but overall it has worked
Lefty pundits need some excuse for the lack of support for their policy preferences. It’s time to admit that no one cares about any of this stuff democrats campaign on. And Mr. Drum can provide the charts proving it.
Ultimately, then, democrats don’t need to run the government at all. Isn’t that the message?
The first mistake was assuming Ezra Klein (or Matt Yglesias or Nate Cohn or Matt Bruenig or Nate Silver or Dave Weigel or Kevin Drum, et. al.) is a liberal.
There are two questions that are interesting and you've skipped one.
Our infrastructure builds are as much as 5x more than comparables in places like Paris or Berlin. Why? Big mystery. Some ideas here:
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/03/03/why-american-costs-are-so-high-work-in-progress/
In addition my guess is that liberals would get more support overall if our infrastructure projects could deliver anything comparable. It's tragic