DOT and their proven, reliable contractor had experience with a certain method of rehabbing the joints between concrete slabs. A new technique was tried, and the first few attempts were not done well. The new technique showed promise, but there was a concern that if the new technique failed, there would be consequences to the state for trying a new technique rather than the tried-and-true method. To reduce the risk to themselves, the DOT went with the old method.

IME, DOT and transit agencies often shy away from new methods/techniques because they are raked over the coals whenever the new approach doesn't work out (see SF Bay Bridge, or the Big Dig [0]). That makes them risk averse to trying or sticking with innovative methods.

[0] I'm not saying that cost problems with those projects are completely due to new methods/processes, but significant chunks were.

I would watch a nightly news show called "Infrastructure Tonight" if it existed.

Maybe news is more important than just supplying entertainment and should the world take notice of UK's model with the BBC.

There are lots of high quality subscriber news agencies struggling because their services aren’t that important to most people. Using the state to force people to subsidize that won’t make them care more.

States make their own choices, though. The DOT can only cajole them by dangling money. If the only competency in a state DOT is to cut a check, and there is not going to be any price to be paid for putting in a road that is unsafe or that does not last or that costs too much, then it is more likely that too much money will be spent.

Another related story is this relative went to Germany to confer with counterparts over there and compare notes. The Germans were laughing at them because they use the US research, but the US doesn't. We have great research spanning multiple decades, but political concerns are what end up determining how roads are built.

And I get that - in fact I live it. I'm a government contractor that works on transportation projects and it's frustrating when a particular agency doesn't want to use an innovative technique or design that has literally been successful on another project that's only a few miles away but project managers don't want to be testifying in front of their state legislatures about wasting tax payer money with a new fangled approach when the tried and true could have been used. Magazines like Engineering News-Record and ASME/ASCE journals bang the drum for concepts like "state of good repair" and ROI, but as long as the public will hang a politician or project manager out to try for an unsuccessful project (or worse, a new technique that kills someone), project managers will route around risk.

Again, I'm not saying this is why US projects are so expensive, but there is often a rational through process behind seemingly irrational decisions.

(yes, there are times where incompetency and/or corruption are also to blame, but IME it's much less often than portrayed in this thread).

So e.g. here, by choosing an inferior but established method over a superior but new one, the DOT was routing the risk in the form of "they might rake us over the coals" away from themselves, and dumping it onto taxpayers in the form of "we'll pay more for it now, and even more when it breaks in a couple of years".

So, yeah, there is a LOT of corruption and incompetence out there. But we've figured out a lot about soils/rocks/dirt in the last 40 years or so too. It's that there is this deep perception in most people that dirt is well ... dirt. Like, it's dirt, it doesn't change or move.

So, you get issues where they pave the road-bed over just after a rain. And then the road dries out over 2 years and the entire road just breaks apart. Or you get the problem where the the pH of the soil wasn't tested, so the rebar in the concrete will corrode faster. Or they build another thing nearby and change the drainage patterns around your dam. It's not simple stuff to make a house or a 70mph highway that will last for 50 years without a lot of issues.

Honestly, it does take a PhD these days.

We have had an unusually wet year and a chunk of roadway collapsed. Fortunately, it was slow enough that the road was closed well in advance of being a danger to motorists. The blame game is extra-complex since this is a toll road and a public/private partnership. The article goes into good detail.

I’m gonna bet this was the deciding factor.

Here in Montreal, it's well known that the mob runs the construction industry and quite frankly you're not allowed to even bid on contracts without their say so, otherwise you'll get visited for a very frank chat.

So I can't speak for why infrastructure is expensive elsewhere, but atleast here in Quebec (& likely RoC) it's simply because of corruption. See the recent woes of SNC Lavalin.

>He used to carry a briefcase stuffed with money and a gun

One of the articles [2] touched briefly on the corruption related to the building and concrete industry.

I assure you, these mafias exist in a lot of places. Odebrecht has entangled governments of Peru and Brazil with corruption here in South America. I would be interested where else has this happened.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/series/guardian-concrete-...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/25/concrete-the-...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/28/lafarge-charge...

This may be hard to believe if your knowledge of American society is limited to certain strata, but it's absolutely true. If you spend some time on Reddit, on places like /r/AmITheAsshole, you'll find that a vast proportion of people outright justifies theft, shoplifting, cheating and many other sorts of unethical behavior.

I wouldn't and it has nothing to do with hand-wavy culture.

The reason I would not touch the unlocked bicycle is because I know it is registered with the police. If I got stopped on that bicycle and they looked up the frame number then I would have some explaining to do. Even if I claimed it was mine I could still be prosecuted for not registering 'the change of ownership' with the police. You could imagine the lying, language difficulties and the situation spiralling out of control to end up with time spent in the cells and a few million yen in fines. Could happen.

Note that in America a bicycle is a toy. It has only survived as a vehicle that can be used on the highway by fate, there have been plenty of efforts to fully ban the bicycle from the road and to denigrate it as a toy.

To extrapolate from the bicycle theft situation in Japan to assume that Japanese people are Not Like Us and therefore don't steal is wishful thinking. Personally I believe that Americans are exceptionally unlikely to steal your stuff. I am actually sure that if I did go on a round the world tour that I would find this matter of being honest to be a near universal human trait.

Your personal belief that Americans are exceptionally unlikely to steal your stuff is your belief to have. But I would still not leave my bike out for the Americans who do steal to take it and then have the other Americans who don't steal victim shame me "Oh, well why did you leave your bike out?"

It's just totally different man, culture is a hell of a drug. Maybe generally, if you're a lucky person, most people are honest, but A LOT aren't, and I'm not gonna be the one to drop my guard in America. I'll leave that to you and others.

I guess the people who stole my former startup's hardware prototypes and thousands of dollars of equipment didn't get the memo, nor did the professionals who broke into the bike lockers at a previous residence and stole thousands of dollars of bicycles.

Sorry to hear you have been a victim of crime, but are you sure the culprits were American?

Why blame a local when politicians always present an omnipotent and omnipresent foreign enemy?

The thieves could have been drug smuggling rapists that weren't stopped by a wall at the border. Or they could have been from Liverpool, where a sense of pride exists for being light fingered. I doubt they were true Scotsmen though.

Personal anecdote: I saw a drunk Japanese businessman vomit on the sidewalk outside a bar in Tokyo, who then went back into the bar and collected napkins in order to clean up said puke. After cleaning up the puke, he then walked into a neighboring lamppost and collapsed to the ground, and an onlooker then went to his aid.

And I am not surprised vandalism and graffiti occurs in Brazil, India, and Paris by the way. I would group those places in the same realm as the U.S.

I find it really odd how some people will say good things about other place's cultures, but then deny that culture is a factor when discussing the bad parts about a place. Culture is a real thing, it really does exist, and it isn't always good.

And this has been studied. The reason is simple. The pave mix uses used car engine oil instead of new bitum/oil. This leads to surface crumbling at much higher rate.

Yet everything is blamed on the winter and salt.

Is there a realistic approach to this that doesn't require changing a fundamental aspect of humanity?

e.g. we want a road that will be X feet wide and will last Y years provided no earthquakes. Maintenance cost + Z dollars per day closed comes from insurance.

Want to use old boring tech - you insurance cost is lower. Want to try something new and shiny. Your insurance rate is higher at first, but may go down in the future.

That seems unlikely, if this was in a single state, considering only about 35k people die each year on the roads in the entire country.

It would be good to see a source.

It is a truism that government agencies lack competition, and thus can be less efficient and/or innovative compared to private enterprise. However, as we know, private enterprise's goal is profit, and profit only requires efficiency in the face of competition and price sensitivity of the consumer. While there can be competition and price sensitivity during contract bidding process, this can be corrupted through back door dealings, political donations, etc. Perhaps even more dire, is that government agencies may be bad at keeping contractors to the terms of their contract, being responsible for cost over-runs, etc, who actively wish to get the government to pay as much as possible. I think that infrastructure would be much cheaper if it were designed and built by government employees of the relevant agencies, because although they might not have extreme efficiency, they have no profit motive to swindle an inattentive government consumer. It is my opinion anyway. I do not have the resources to find the relevant data to see if there is a correlation in cost and private vs public employee construction. I'd like to see some empirical meat on my hunch. I did find several articles:

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/us/13contractor.html https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/09/18/do-private-...

It's a very strong claim, and I don't believe it. Total deaths in US for road accidents is ~37,000 per year. [0]. I find it hard to believe that 30-40% of it is caused just by inferior pavement design.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

So in the end the contractor knew how to do it properly but decided not to fix the initial burnt batch? Is it really a surprise that they were not hired?

the actual planning and execution are either completely neglected over politicized that its almost impossible to build something efficiently. not to mention building such projects in large cities is extremely complicated and requires tons of focus and experience. doing it the way our government structures projects is almost impossible.