Any of you guys watchin' this program, I came in probably in the middle, and of course it is probably old news...but it is something I used to do, till the state money ran out. Then it was shovel ready (milling and paving), make it look like something is being done. Showing the Tapenzee right now over the Hudson, near NYC...I did a whole bunch of surveying for where their new design was supposed to "LAND" on the West side of the river, little place called Nyack. Check it out on the different views you have...15 billion bucks, and you know what most of what I have surveyed has taken 10 years to get to construction. I guarantee you that there is no NY state money to fix the bridges I have seen from down below them. I have had to set an umbrella up over the instrument to keep the rust chunks from hittin' it when a vehicle drove over.
That show is about a year and a half old. That didn't matter to me, because I watched it again anyway. Unfortunately our infrastructure is now crumbling because the EPA is causing highway costs to be escalated and we'd rather spend money on everyone's healthcare.
Blame anyone or anything you want
The fact is infrastructure soes not build itself, or maintain itself. The only way it gets built is if WE put up the money to build it. The only way it gets maintained is if WE put up the money to fix. BTW while we are doing this or not doing it we still have to PROTECT the enviornment. It is not wise to go back to the good old days when folks thought it was okey dokey to fill in the LOVE CANAL with toxic waste.
No free lunch, you want a world class world power..... gotta pay for it
you wanna 3rd world sink hole with no highways, bridges, airports then end all taxes and we will be driving on dirt roads again....
There's a lot of reasons why our infrastructure is crumbling, but those are two reasons that are not even remotely near the top of the list. The main reason infrastructure is crumbling is not because of the feds, but because STATES have been dropping the ball. Not to mention, the pussyfooting around with the revenue model. 18-wheelers pay a bigger share, but still, we end up subsidizing them at the expense of rail freight or other models. There are a whole lot of things wrong with the system which come well before whining about healthcare and other nonsense.
I've worked on a hell of a lot of highway projects and have only seen the EPA cause a handful of projects increase in cost - and then, only because the corrupt local politicians were involved and wanted the road built in a certain place that happened to be the wrong place (one of their buddies owned the land) and that triggered NEPA and other stuff because of the environmental impacts, which otherwise could have been avoided. Rather than accept any number of much easier, low-cost alternatives the corrupt political hacks kept on trying to ramrod their plan through. Of course, they didn't care, because the taxpayers were footing the bill and their buddies were getting hundreds of millions for the right-of-way.
The problems of corruption, mismanagement and violation of the public trust at the federal level are nothing compared to the problems at the state and local level.
Let me give you a couple of examples on how environmnental rules are running up the costs of highway construction.
1. We laid out about 2.5 miles of new two lane construction about 2 miles from our office. The entire construction contract was $8 million. Before the job was even complete, the contractor had spent $800,000 on rip rap and sod for temporary erosion control. Now mind you, this wasn't the permanent stuff that would be there after the job was complete, all of this would be ripped out by that time.
2. For years in Tennessee, the length of box culverts on the plans have been incorrect. That's ok though, because the inspectors always wanted the contractors to size the length to fit the slopes. No big deal there. That's an obvious answer. Well, on a recent job the culvert was 30' too long. The contractor planned on shortening it by that 30 feet to save the state money, and to avoid a ridiculous looking culvert sticking out the side of the fill. DOT refused and told the contractor to build it that way. Why? Because to revise the SWPPP that the Department of Environment and Conservation was requiring would have cost untold thousands of dollars and delayed the project for several weeks.
I would agree about the revenue problem. The feds need to put all of the gas tax in the highway fund, and the states need to all jack up their gas taxes.
tommy do you have numbers
You are correct that is a lot of money and it seems wasted. But, what is the cost for not doing it? It was a lot cheaper to dump toxic waste into the Love canal. Or was it in the final figuring?
Top soil run off is no where near the problem of Love canal, but it IS a problem.
You know it is much cheaper to dump untreated sewage into nearby creeks and rivers, till the health issues start to mount. This was a common practice, till we figured out the short term saving were just no worth it.
tommy do you have numbers
> You are correct that is a lot of money and it seems wasted. But, what is the cost for not doing it? It was a lot cheaper to dump toxic waste into the Love canal. Or was it in the final figuring?
>
> Top soil run off is no where near the problem of Love canal, but it IS a problem.
>
> You know it is much cheaper to dump untreated sewage into nearby creeks and rivers, till the health issues start to mount. This was a common practice, till we figured out the short term saving were just no worth it.
We're not talking about toxic waste here. We're talking about temporary erosion control measures and excessive red tape and delays with shortening a culvert.
Well that is one opinion
Too much nitrogen in storm water creates a toxic situation for fish.
Well that is one opinion
If we were concerned about the fish, we'd do something about that huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, a situation we are exacerbating by subsizing ethanol. Corn requires lots of Nitrogen. Guess where the excess ends up?
No, I'm mostly talking about erosion control measures on highway jobs. If these expensive measures were preventing chemicals from polluting the water, that would be one thing. However, all they're doing is stopping dirt. Yes we don't want the streams silted in, but come on, 10% of the construction costs on a highway being for temporary erosion control? That's more than a little extreme.
