I've read various reports from them and I've not seen numbers that stand up. I'm not going to go through 5 more of them in detail to find the same thing. If any of them have actual numbers showing infrastructure eating up say 30% of the budget id be happy to look. But I can all but guarantee that they'll be the same story. Infrastructure at 10% or less with criminal justice, fire, and schools eating up the money.

But the point is they are not spending enough on infrastructure.

Only paying 10% on maintenance and then having perpetually potholed roads or a bridge collapse means the true cost is much higher.

Infrastructure has a lifetime and it needs big capital infusions to replace, of that money isn't being stored away for that date then that's just hiding the spending problem.

>Only paying 10% on maintenance and then having perpetually potholed roads or a bridge collapse means the true cost is much higher.

The numbers out there suggest that for 50-100% more spending we could fix everything. That means spending 20% or less of the budget instead of 10% or less. Even a worst case scenario is not the apocalypse Strong towns suggests.

And more to the point it ignores the things that are a threat. As an example, today Flint spends half the budget paying pensions for retired workers. Then there's things like Social Security, Health care costs, education costs, and housing costs. We have a lot of large and looming problems that defy a simple solution. Infrastructure is easy by comparuson.

Ah, the old "they only need to double the budget" approach.

So simple and straight forward.

What are they cutting to do that?

That's not really the point. A Ponzi scheme at some point blows up and everything falls apart. But their worst case is the suburbs have to fill <10% of their budget.

No, if the replacement cost is not being factored into to the ongoing costs then it isn't "they just need to double their infrastructure budget" to fix it. They needed to do that over 20 years, the entire lifetime of the infastructure. Every year where the 'true' cost is not being paid means even higher costs later.

> What are they cutting to do that?

False dichotomy.

You can cover a budget where you double a 10% entry by increasing taxes 10%.

Or increase taxes 5% and cut 5% over the remaining 95% budget.

Or a mix in between.

This isn't rocket science. It's politics. In a democracy it is literally nothing more than a matter of personal will by an elected official. Budgets are drafted every year.

Yes, and the history of municipalities raising taxes to actually cover the infrastructure/other costs is that residents that can move out to other municipalities still using the Growth Ponzi strategy to keep taxes low.

No, not really. That's just the strawman you've grabbed hold to. Quite literally every single government institution has its budget set each and every single year, and every single public institution has to allocate their resources to their programs. Even though it's politically easier to increase debt and spending, let's not fool ourselves into believing a fairytale about how no expenditure has ever been lowered ever.

> But the point is they are not spending enough on infrastructure.

OP said the point-- referenced in the article-- was that they are Ponzi schemes. If that is true then user treis is correct: we should see at least one municipality that went bankrupt from this problem.

The whole point of a Ponzi scheme is that it works, for a while.

Like I said, they are identifying an important problem that needs more discussion. But I do think think they're presenting the full picture, and either misattributing or distorting causes.

All these roads have been built by a society that has been poorer than ours. If they could afford that, so can we. It’s really as simple as that.

In some ways, we are poorer than our parents. Sure, we can buy TVs that are a ten times bigger for a fraction of the inflation adjusted price..

But we’re talking roads here, and roads are built with bitumen. The fact is that bitumen is getting scarcer and more expensive. Our cars are getting more fuel efficient and EVs don’t use fuel at all. But the cars still require the same amount of road, the same amount of bitumen, or maybe even more since cars are heavier and faster now.

We can’t extract oil just to make bitumen. That’s not economical. We primarily extract oil to get the fuel we need, and we get a certain amount of bitumen as a by-product.

Our parents generation was lucky that oil was practically pouring out of the ground..

Bitumen is such an insignificant portion of the price of a road that it can increase in price an order of magnitude with no noticable effect on the road price.

It would have an even smaller effect on road maintenance costs.

Schrodinger's Market Economy.

This is the most prosperous, generous, and advanced civilisation ever, with the largest number of billionaires.

But most people who are younger than Boomers are poorer than their parents, and public infrastructure and public services have somehow become unaffordable.

Let's use Carbocrete, made of co² sucked out of the air, powered by advanced high temperature fission or fusion. Mixed with remolten desert sand if need be, which is otherwise unusable.

That is not entirely true.

Try comparing how many minimum wage paychecks you needed to buy a house then and with how many you need now and what is took to build a house (including permits and land) and what it takes now.

It will be different form country to country and the tech level was lower but the majority of the young ones these days will neven own (paid morgage) a house by the time they are 35.

Alas, roads are not built by minimum wage workers chipping in a little bit from their meager salaries. They are built using tax funds, most of which is paid by upper middle class and the rich.

Which then percolate into the depths of the concrete mafia, developers, rent-seekers, to be washed, to minimize taxes.

That could be fixed.

While housing is extremely over priced right now, it is also important to note that a "standard home" has changed ALOT.

My Grandparents raised 4 children in a 2 bedroom 1 bath 900 square foot home, which was a "standard home" in the 40/50's

Today the standard home is 2x the size with more bathrooms, and larger lots. This is a source of alot of the problems as well. When developers build a subdivision they are not building small homes, they are building 4 bedroom, 3 bath, 2,000 square foot homes

Overall The World Is Becoming a Better Place [1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J5s6aZCPSg

To add to this: larger houses and plots hav the knock on effect of making under street piping need to be x3 or even x4 times longer to span the frontage, and have more complex outputs, and be larger with higher pressures - same but inverse for waste lines and their inputs.

Same for electric lines, and those lines have to carry _way_ more power. And Internet cabling, and road surface standards are higher, blah blah forever.

Size and modernity makes this not scale so linearly

The debt of modern development is higher than the debt of the previous cycles.

Really depends who you ask and where they live.

Home sizes in Paris haven’t changed much over the past 50 years.

Yet, prices have exploded. Heck, they’ve skyrocketed. For the exact same thing. Only a bit older.

New apartments, no bigger but built in the suburbs, far from the subway (and not close to the regional trains) cost the same as the old ones of the same size did in Paris 10 years ago (and they were already priced crazily).

With the same numbers of bathrooms but no job that could enable one to afford such a place less than 45 minutes away.

The 2.000sqft 3 bathrooms home with a lawn appears to be a very American thing.

All of that is true, my comment was based on US Housing trends as the context of this discussion is around the American Suburb.

Other nations have other issue, largely that they are locked in with limited amounts of land that can be repurposed for housing, thus this supply restraint is some of the cause of the price increases there. For example the nation of France is SMALLER in land area than the State of Texas yet has over 2x the number of people occupying that smaller land area

The US has TONS of underused land that is continually being developed for new suburban housing additions

I have nothing to say. Other than that I find it really pleasant to have the opportunity for some civil discourse with some civil people.

Thank you for that.

Poorer in absolute terms, sure. But take a random sample of 100 people from the city population and compare inflation (calculated including housing!) adjusted income and you'll see the opposite.

There is a machine on the road under my balcony right now, chugging and chewing asphalt 2 yards wide and spitting it up on a truck in-front of it.

Road maintenance must be so much easier today than in the 70s. It feel to me neglect is by choice not necessity.

But the demands on the roads are also higher. Cars have more horsepower, higher speed, more weight. In addition, the roads are usually poorly repaired, so you have to repair them more often. In addition, the contracts are often tendered for private companies and the cheapest company wins. Thanks to the poor quality, repairs then have to be carried out correspondingly often.

Isn't the vast majority of road damage done by trucks due to their much heavier loads per axle? There probably are more trucks on the roads today to serve our larger population, but at the same time we've also built more roads. No idea how to translate that into average wear over time though per road.

Highways need to be completely rebuilt every 10 years. Most countries can't do this hence potholes and non working lights.

> Highways need to be completely rebuilt every 10 years.

This is completely false. Even just repaving usually has longer schedule.

Wouldn't this vary, depending on load and climate?

> Cars have more … weight.

Really?

Thanks to the rise of SUVs.

And apparently not just that (as in more huge cars being bought). Even "small European cars" contribute.

Smallest trim/model 1999 F150 curb weight ~3900lbs

F150 2020 model ~4000lbs

(the F150 apparently can all go up to almost 5000 lbs)

VW Jetta 1991 ~2700 lbs

VW Jetta 2020 ~3200lbs

VW Golf 1992 ~2400lbs

VW Golf 2020 ~3000lbs

That's not how that works. Infrastructure is built with many years of a cities budget; they are maintained with the current years (and sometimes, the next 5 years) budget.

That infrastructure spend is too low. Steel and Concrete and buried utilities have a life. Many of the towns are up for significant capital investment beyond 10% maintenance. The spend is on 50s, 60s and 70s capex. It's getting old.

Surely, on the risk side the estimated repair and replacement costs for bridges alone could drive a truck through this?

What is your basis for saying 10% is too low?

I'm not suggesting that you are wrong, I just want to figure out how you would determine if the spend is too high or too low for any given town.

the potholes continued existence is probably an aspect

The delayed capital works. If 10% is normal, off the back of the Eisenhower era spend, the JFK spend, the LBJ spend on infrastructure, then capital works budgets have been lick-of-paint since. They're overdue for significant re investment.

The federal capital works improvement spending proposed as recovery intervention identifies 100 major bridges nationally, and another 10,000 worth investing in.[1]

Since then 10% can't stop, the likely spend has to be more. It's that simple.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

Your reply is useless, but I'll rephrase to clarify anyway: how would one determine what percentage is appropriate for planning long term? I.e. so that I don't see potholes in 10 years, would I need 12% or 18% or 44% or <>% ? What factors would this depend on? E.g. is it always above 10% or only if the town has a very low density?

Could it simply be that it's easier to cut costs at infrastructure than criminal justice, fire and schools? Maybe it's just 10% of current budget, but actually needed would be 30%. Hence the streets with potholes.

Bingo! Delayed maintenance is an easy way to shift spending. You can put off that road resurfacing another year (maybe spend 5% of budget on asphalt patches), but can you just cut 10% of your police force this year?

Their numbers not standing up is a pretty bold statement. Would be nice if you would back it up a bit more.

Cities ate receiving federal funds to fix their roads. Instead of going broke, it’s just become a situation in which we’re all paying for it.