this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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Giant infrastructure projects are a weakness of democracies. It's tough to get everyone to agree and pay for huge projects that take long term vision and planning.
Or you could call it a strength because it's stable and can't be changed too fast by one guy with a short term bad idea.
Mainly in the US, though. The automobile lobby successfully undermined many attempts at mass transit infrastructure. And the existing rail network is privatized into oblivion.
Roosevelt showed that there is a way of tackling infrastructure in the US. Only his approach has a minute slither of what can be framed to be socialist, so it'll never happen again..
snek president
see NEOM
It's an unbelievably stupid idea that's really going to happen. The prince of Saudi Arabia knows that their oil economy is going to wither away soon, so he's trying to make SA appealing to people with money and have them move there. How? By building a city that's a line 160 km (110 mi) long and 200 m (660 ft) wide...in the middle of fucking nowhere. The whole idea is based on technology that we don't have and is just terrible city planning. Look into it to get a laugh.
Hahaha yes you're right. This is an example of ill-advised big infrastructure.
No, you don't get it.
It's blessed by god so it'll be good no matter what. God is good to his faithful. Lamborghini Akbar.
At least the rail line serving it can be a rail line
Pronounced "neeeeeee...... yyoooommmm"
Did you completely ignore the US highway system built in the 50s, that created a car dependant infrastructure?
Cool and what has been done lately? Infrastructure seems to just be crumbling cause nobody wants to pay to fix anything.
Infrastructure is crumbling because highways and roads are fucking expensive to maintain and suburban sprawl doesn't bring in the tax revenue to fund it.
Look up the growth ponzi scheme by Strong Towns. North Americans were duped and scammed into an untenable situation and we're going to spend the next half century reversing all the damage done.
Nobody does maintenance in authoritarian regimes, either. It's not a priority under any governance system
Highways were constructed in regions with sparse populations or in urban areas with little political power (primarily black and Latino neighborhoods). Basically, areas where democracy didn't have to function because there was no democratic power to block it. Whereas nowadays, with higher levels of democracy (unequivocally good) and local control (more of a mixed bag), massive infrastructure projects are harder to accomplish. Plus, the 50s had the benefit of a booming postwar economy and the national cohesion (at least among enfranchised Americans).
Ain't that the truth. The UKs HS2 project has just collapsed. Was supposed to a big Y shaped "network" linking London (and Europe) to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and a laughably out the way part of the East Midlands, with a new high capacity rail link.
Now it's been whittled away to just "I suppose we can link London to Birmingham then", and only then because they'd already started work on it.
I always suspected the second part would be cancelled because we never do anything that might benefit the North.
Got to be honest, after 3 years of working from home, I'd rather have faster internet than faster trains. Shame there's no timetable for that either...
I bet they managed to spend all the money that was allotted despite not actually getting anything much built though. They are fucking pros at "spending" money on stuff that either never materialises, or ends up requiring double the amount of money initially quoted to actually end up in a finished state. There should be so many more investigations into where all the public money is going in these kinds of situations.
I think it has more to do with the lack of democracy, especially in the US. I guarantee you could get 100 regular Joes in a room to come up with a high speed rail project. You could never get that to happen with politicians at the mercy of the ruling class.
German train network? US Highways?
Lack of education is a weakness.
You can do it through democracies. Taiwan has two sets of high speed rail systems.
Are they expensive to maintain? Absolutely. In fact they bankrupted 2+ companies until the government decided to step in and foot part of the bill. But then again, if the government isn't willing to pay for basic infrastructure, what are taxes for?
(Also as a tangent, the Taiwan high speed rail bentos are to die for. I had it 5+ years back and I still remember it. Super cheap meal in a disposable bamboo lunch box. Usually there are 1-2 choices per day. I had chicken thighs, pickled veggies, steamed pumpkin, and half a marinated tea egg. The bottom half of the lunch box was filled with rice. 10/10 would eat at a busy train station during rush hour again)
I go to China for business fairly often and there is this one area where the government decided a new subway line should be installed, so I watched it get built over several trips. The property owners in the way were, as far as I understand it, booted off the land but compensated. And boom. A year later the subway line was done and hooked up to the rest of the existing subway infrastructure with completed stations, entries/exits, and even retail shops in the stations. It blew my mind.
The city definitely needed the subway line, but I was amazed at the efficiency. In my American home town that idea's been debated for decades and is yet to be finished because at first it was getting voted against and then finally after the public supported and approved it, the NIMBY experience began and it took a decade of land use planning to choose the route. If it actually runs efficiently before the 2020's are finished I'll be impressed.
iirc. in China property is not owned but leased from the state. That makes it easier legally to get people away.
On the other hand in the alledgly property protecting and valueing democracies in Europe it is no problem to kick people off their land to build highways and expand lignite mines.
Not quite. The way property is leased is such that you can indefinitely renew it for free until you are dead. The standard base lease is 70 years so you'll probably never run into problems. Even if you do exceed it it's simply showing up at an administrative location and talking to a clerk.
This came up about a decade ago since a bunch of people were panicking about their properties due to some older houses having only 20 years leases. The government then clarified that the difference is the management of the property (e.g. apartment complex) goes from the developer to the government at the end of the lease. Nothing else can force individual buyers out (except for "illegal" housing modifications).
In reality, when public works require demolishion, the government usually provides substitute housing instead of money. My understanding is that most people take the new house/apartment since they are actually new (less than 3 years old), in nice locations (most I've seen are near bus stops/subway stations with reasonable school districts and nearby supermarkets), and worth more than their old place. That being said Asian societal pressure definitely is a thing. So even if you don't want the new property you'll probably take it just to avoid the side eye.
Source: lived in Shanghai for 16 years. Still have my name on a deed somewhere.
I see this in Thailand too. Lived in the bay for a decade. There's posters in every bart showing the future and expansion of it. Afaik, none ever happened.
In Bangkok I see a few new stations open every year basically.
Other examples with well known high speed rail might be Japan, or many EU countries
Meanwhile here in the US, we have Acela, which is higher speed than we have before, is continually (very slowly) improving, so it may eventually become high speed rail
No one is saying that you can't do it, just that it's a lot more difficult and contentious and time consuming.
Has no one on Lemmy ever taken an intro political science course? This is really basic stuff.
How do you explain the highways scarring every major north American city that isn't named Vancouver? How do you explain the billions of dollars spent on highway expansions every year? Rail isn't hard it just doesn't benefit the right people.
What about the high-speed networks in France, Japan, Spain and Germany?
France is smaller than Texas. Every nation you mention was not a democracy during most of their rail construction. It is vastly easier to engage in large construction projects in authoritarian states because you don't have to care about a voting populace.
Sorry to bust your bubble but first high speed line in Spain started in 1992. Democracy in Spain started in 1977. And in Germany or France I'm pretty sure high speed trains where made when they were also democracies.
Normal speed rail can handle high speed. They have to build new ones.
All of them were democracies when they built their high speed rail networks.
Id argue that people have no concept of how much money we waste arguing about what to do and how to do it.
In my city they wanted to cut down 10 huge and really old trees in a park in the center of town. They were constantly clogging the drains, tearing up footpaths with their roots, clogging the drains with their roots, dropped big fucking branches during storms and a few other minor issues. Sure they were pretty and allCutting down the trees, fixing the sidewalks and all was estimated at half a million. Well once they stalled on the project because of the protests and the money spent answering legal challenges from well meaning hippies, hiring security and fencing them off so nobody could climb up one and chain themselves there then finally got the trees cut down the city spent 3.1 million.
Couldn't you guys have just... Trimmed the roots?
I know a guy who works for the council, I wasnt involved. I know the numbers because one of his projects got axed to help cover the costs.
But they did make a huge fucking mess. Point is that 2.6 million dollars is about the annual cost of 25 council employees and 1000 replacement trees.
Did you replace the trees with concrete?
I wasnt involved, I know a guy who works for the council. They actually did a great job, the park doesnt look any worse for it and has more usable space.
The fact is they could have planted thousands of replacement trees or built another park with the cost difference between just cutting them down and cutting them down with all the back and forth that you have to have in a democracy.
What exactly do you think the Interstate project was?
The Interstate system was sold as a means to allow rapid military deployment. This allowed tapping of infinite defense resources to make it happen.
That's exactly it. That's also why US interstates are so wide compared to major highways in most other countries. They were originally built so that they could also be used as makeshift runways durring any potential invasion scenario. Of course that hasn't been a consideration since the cold war so newer or reworked sections don't necissarily have as much open space around them.
It's not about the democracy it's the fact that the "democratically elected" officials prefer to funnel taxpayer money towards fascists.