XPost: alt.california, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: sac.politics, alt.politics.homosexuality   
   From: X@Y.com   
      
   Red states are shithole states because rightwing ideology and rightists are   
   inferior.   
      
      
   Some right wing shithole states don't have paved roads.   Ever been to   
   Mississippi or anywhere in Texas outside of a city?   
      
      
   Red State Building Blues   
      
   Excessive infrastructure costs plague freeway construction in conservative   
   areas   
      
   High infrastructure construction costs in many American cities, which have   
   made headlines for several years, are now being formally studied by a team   
   of New York University researchers. Since much of the work so far has   
   examined rail infrastructure in dense cities such as New York and Boston,   
   some Americans may be tempted to write off the issue as simply another   
   example of blue-state corruption. But a look at some recent freeway   
   projects in conservative states with a reputation for low costs and   
   generally good governance suggests that infrastructure cost problems in   
   the United States may be far more widespread.   
      
   Any analysis should first establish a baseline of typical freeway costs in   
   continental Europe. A contributor to the forum skyscrapercity.com has made   
   a large compilation of recently completed or planned projects. My own   
   attempts to find costs for some of the larger projects on this list,   
   though admittedly unsystematic, suggest that in Europe, a new four-lane   
   expressway in an undeveloped area without unusual terrain difficulties   
   should cost about $10 million to $20 million per mile in round numbers,   
   with some outliers on the high end.   
      
   Let’s start by looking at Spain, a nation with some of the world’s lowest   
   infrastructure costs. A news report from the province of Castilla y León   
   in 2021 reported on several projects in progress. Among the largest: a new   
   four-lane freeway segment parallel to an existing road between the towns   
   of Santiuste and Venta Nueva, already 77 percent completed, was estimated   
   to cost 86.7 million euros for 16.2 kilometers—roughly $9.3 million per   
   mile, using a euro-to-dollar conversion rate of 1.1. Another completed   
   project in the same region, between the towns San Esteban de Gormaz and   
   Langa de Duero, cost 66.96 million euros for 12.8 kilometers, or about   
   $9.1 million per mile.   
      
   Similar price tags are seen in other European countries with cheap   
   infrastructure, such as Scandinavia. One of the largest recently finished   
   freeway projects in Sweden, for instance, is a segment of Riksväg 40, a   
   road connecting the cities of Gothenburg and Jönköping that is gradually   
   being upgraded to a four-lane freeway. Seventeen kilometers of this   
   upgraded road, through hilly terrain near the town of Ulricehamn, opened   
   in 2015. Veidekke, the contractor for the most complex seven-kilometer   
   subsegment of this road—including six bridges and a quarter-mile twin-bore   
   tunnel—claims that this subsegment cost 570 million Swedish kronor, or   
   roughly $13 million per mile. In Denmark, the Holstebromotorvej, a 39-   
   kilometer freeway between the small cities of Herning and Holstebro, was   
   completed in 2018 for 2.85 billion Danish kroner, a quarter less than the   
   originally projected price and about $17 million per mile. In Norway, a   
   four-lane freeway running 23 kilometers between the towns of Tvedestrand   
   and Arendal on the nation’s southeast coast opened in 2019. The project   
   includes 27 bridges, four short tunnels, and extensive cuttings through   
   rocky terrain, and cost just over 3 billion Norwegian kroner, or about $22   
   million per mile—quite a low price considering the geological challenges   
   and Norway’s high labor costs.   
      
   European countries with more expensive rail infrastructure, such as   
   Germany and the Netherlands, tend to have similar or somewhat higher   
   freeway costs. In Germany, a recent 14-kilometer expressway segment   
   through the hills of the Rhineland–Palatinate, opened in 2019, cost only   
   112 million euros—about $14 million per mile. A large expansion of   
   Bundesautobahn 14, with several segments already completed, will cost a   
   planned 1.7 billion euros for 155 kilometers, or about $19 million per   
   mile. (To be fair, Germany does have more expensive projects, such as a   
   short urban bypass in the northern part of the country that cost 231.7   
   million euros for 9.5 kilometers, or $42 million per mile—though this   
   expense may owe to the freeway’s proximity to a dense urban area,   
   requiring many overpasses and extensive noise mitigation.) The most   
   expensive large European project that does not involve considerable   
   tunneling or pass through a dense city may be the Buitenring Parkstad   
   Limburg in the Netherlands: a 26-kilometer beltway around a dense urban   
   agglomeration that had a final bill of 446 million euros, or about $30   
   million per mile. This sum was enough to provoke a substantial scandal, as   
   it more than tripled the original budget.   
      
   Many routine freeway projects in the U.S., in states with low labor costs   
   and reputations for good governance, have far exceeded these European   
   projects for no apparent reason. Consider an in-progress segment of   
   Interstate 69 in Indiana, running from the Indianapolis beltway to the   
   town of Martinsville 26 miles to the southwest. In 2018, the expenditure   
   for the project was estimated at $1.6 billion, or about $62 million per   
   mile—far above any European project that I know of that does not run   
   through a dense city or require tunneling. Unlike the European projects   
   discussed in this essay, moreover, I-69 is not actually a new road. It is   
   an upgrade of the existing State Route 37, already a four-lane divided   
   highway, to eliminate some at-grade intersections, widen shoulders, and   
   otherwise improve the road to Interstate design standards—significantly   
   less work than a new freeway would be.   
      
   Why should this project require three times as much money as wholly new   
   European freeways? One partial excuse might be the larger number of road   
   crossings on the project—one source claims that it will involve   
   reconstruction of 35 overpasses and construction of 39 new ones. But   
   overpasses are not expensive enough to account fully for the difference.   
   The Federal Highway Administration reports that outside a few especially   
   expensive regions such as the Northeast, bridges over freeways cost (in   
   round numbers) roughly between $100 and $250 per square foot in the United   
   States—meaning that a 20-foot-wide bridge over a 200-foot-wide freeway   
   could be expected to require about $1 million in spending.   
      
   Another example, in the Midwest: the Wisconsin DOT recently widened a 45-   
   mile segment of Interstate 39/90 from Madison to the border with Illinois,   
   adding an additional lane in each direction and reconfiguring a few   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)