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Some of you may remember this commercial:

Now, I was watching a show this weekend when I saw the latest from Audi, talking about how America’s infrastructure is crumbling so that you should buy an Audi which has the unique ability to handle it.

Would have been nice if they put up this chart.

Infrastructure Spending is Higher Than at Any Time Since 1981

Note that real spending on infrastructure is only up 50% over 10 years – that’s like, you know, 50 times higher than median income has grown.

I cannot say it enough. Among the core functions of government it is argued is to provide the basic public goods such as defense, public health and infrastructure. What does it say about the government when they themselves argue that not only are they not doing a good job at infrastructure, but that it is crumbling and failing miserably? Repeat it folks – over $6.5 trillion per year in government spending and they cannot fix a pothole.

And what about the stupid American Jobs Act that has $50 billion in infrastructure spending in it? Last week I saw a news story here in Rochester discussing a plan to install a new bridge and highway entrance/exit at the I-390/I-490 intersection over in Gates, west of the downtown area. It was by any means a small project. And their timeline to get it started?  THREE YEARS. How’s that for shovel ready?

5 Responses to “First it Was the Green Police”

  1. pjt says:

    Is the price of red tape processes included in this infrastructure spending?

    Have have the inkling that like in most Western developed countries, in the US the cost of a construction project is going more and more into planning and legal processes, appeals, challenges and overall bureaucracy, and less of it is going to people who actually wield a shovel, or operate a digger.

    So the overall spending may be more, but less of it is for doing the actual work.

  2. jb says:

    right. And how much of the delay and lousy results are due to “prevailing wage” requirements?

  3. Harry says:

    Right on , jb. Not only does the prevailing wage come into play, but also the glacial schedule that accompanies the seven men watching while, when the bridge is near completion, one guy spreads out grass seed over the soil that was spread by two guys a week before, and then two guys spread straw, and they have coffee before they get in their pickups at 3pm to get back to the yard to clock off. I personally have observed this “work” on two bridges near my home, a total distance of about as long as a par four and two par fives.

    The people working on the bridges were contractors working for the state, and I assume they got the low bid, but it probably was for about a half a million more or more per bridge than one might build a bridge, even if you had to pay some government inspector to do an impact study on the impact of the bog turtle

    Five idle people working on a two-year job is a waste. The waste is compounded by prevailing wage.

    These two bridges that were replaced, by the way, were sound bridges that may have to be widened maybe twenty years or maybe more from now. They got on the schedule for political reasons.

  4. John Getty says:

    Yeah the Interstate highway system was built without an environmental impact statement and no job training programs. I don’t remember the exact year but it was sometime in the mid 60’s. I worked for a company that set the paving record. We poured 2.63 miles of Interstate concrete in one day.

  5. Rod says:

    Recently a contractor who had taken over a bankrupt construction project had to build a bridge that was part of the extortion deal the original developers had worked out with the township. Instead of letting it out for bids and making it a prevailing wage/union job, the contractor said he’d build the bridge himself, and he began work in early September. Today all that remains to be done is the final course of blacktop over the bridge span, something they will do when the weather is fit. So two months instead of two years. Hooray for the new contractor.

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