Wikipedia, incidentally, seems to support the shorter timeline:
“The official start of construction took place on March 8, 1942, after hundreds of pieces of construction equipment were moved on priority trains by the Northern Alberta Railways to the northeastern part of British Columbia near Mile 0 at Dawson Creek. Construction accelerated through the spring as the winter weather faded away and crews were able to work from both the northern and southern ends; they were spurred on after reports of the Japanese invasion of Kiska Island and Attu Island in the Aleutians. During construction the road was nicknamed the "oil can highway" by the work crews due to the large number of discarded oil cans and fuel drums that marked the road's progress.[9] On September 24, 1942, crews from both directions met at Mile 588 at what became named Contact Creek,[10] at the British Columbia-Yukon border at the 60th parallel; the entire route was completed October 28, 1942, with the northern linkup at Mile 1202, Beaver Creek, and the highway was dedicated on November 20, 1942, at Soldier's Summit.”
It's a huge achievement - something like 10,000 soldiers were involved in its construction.
But I worry that when most people think highway they think of the interstate system - straight lines, gentle grades, paved, multiple lanes.
This is more akin to the army setting up camp and building accomodations for thousands - we wouldn't say they built 1000 houses, they put up tents. Still an impressive logistical feat, but... different.
IMO, extrapolations like this are not very useful unless it also means it can actually be executed at that cost in 2019.
Is that really the case here?
I traveled it before was paved, and it was, and is, a true engineering marvel.
While the costs are higher- so are the benefits
I realize San Francisco is a microcosm, but in my experience the focus has been on extracting money via corruption and building the bare minimum you can without getting sued.
You could argue the money is going towards greater safety for workers, but I see no plausible argument that it's resulting in higher quality work.
On a 8 hour work day on federal minimum wage that's only 52 workers being able to work on the entire project ignoring all machine and material costs.
Too right it couldn't be done today. Or there were a lot of costs accumulated by the project that were not assigned to the project.
Still the reported cost of the road at the tune excludes machinery and labour costs, it was purely material costs.
I rode it on a motorcycle in 2015. The days of a “I survived the AlCan” being a meaningful t-shirt are well behind us. It’s a little rough, mostly paved, but not what they built in 243 days.
(Note that I'm not saying that it should happen or that it would be a good thing necessarily.)
I think this example along with what I just randomly know about the other examples, gives the impression that this list is essentially meaningless.
I recall the "Marin Ships" being indeed constructed quickly but of very poor quality and in no way equivalent to constructing real navel ships quickly, just "we can put X amount of metal into the water and hope it doesn't sink too quickly".
And so forth, for significant number of these examples. Some of the examples, that I know nothing of, might be more "real" or more significant examples time-efficiency, but the list doesn't seem a credit to them. Lots of these are "yeah, we can put a stake in the ground quickly" and that's it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinship
My dad went to the European theater on a Liberty. He had the top bunk in the hold and spent the voyage looking at the truly awful welding that had been done in the shipyard. But they didn't have to last longer than a few years, so lots of corners were cut.
Those wide empty roads going 55 feels like 30mph.
I grew up in Dawson Creek. Our claim to fame: "Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway starts here!"
The Alaska Highway as built in 1942 is nothing like a highway that most people would envision. It wasn't paved, for example. It was good enough for military vehicles with crews of soldiers who could make ad hoc repairs to the road as needed while they transited through, who had extensive survival skills, and could literally radio for assistance if needed.
It wasn't opened to the public until 1948 -- so perhaps 6 years, not 6 months, is a better estimate of its time.
It's also shrunk by almost 20% as it has been continually rebuilt to make it passable by passenger vehicles.
It's an accomplishment, no doubt, but I feel like omitting these significant caveats is meaningful.