I feel like some of the issue/reason is because the government has to cover every single possible scenario. “Time to make a road. We better do a three year environmental study to make sure this doesn’t hurt the native turtles.”
I’m all for taking care of the environment, but it feels like there’s a lot more “let’s get community and environmental input” than we had in the past (for better and for worse).
The article/video addresses this. You have to be careful that images of past efficiency aren't just examples of externalizing costs.
> There is no perfect project that makes everyone happy. So, you end up making compromises and adding features to allay all the new stakeholders. This may seem like a bunch of added red tape, but it really is a good thing in a lot of ways. There was a time when major infrastructure projects didn’t consider all the stakeholders or the environmental impacts, and, sure, the projects probably got done more quickly, efficiently, and at a lower cost (on the surface). But the reality is that those costs just got externalized to populations of people who had little say in the process and to the environment. I’m not saying we’re perfect now, but we’re definitely more thoughtful about the impacts projects have, and we pay the cost for those impacts more directly than we used to. But, often, those costs weren’t anticipated during the planning phase. They show up later in design when more people get involved, and that drives the total project cost upward.
This is a huge time sink for transit projects. For example, the sepulveda rail project in LA has like 6 alternatives right now going from heavy rail, monorail, above and below grade, a few different routings. Each requires careful study as if you were going to commit 100% to it, millions of dollars probably in expensive engineering labor, even though realistically only 1 alternative (the heavy rail offering the fastest end to end time) is rumored to be considered. Still, the agency got proposed by this monorail maker, so to act in good faith they have to claim they did their due diligence and came up with these plans showing that yes, in fact, the monorail is inferior to the heavy rail alignment. If you have any community groups opposing any aspect of the project, prepare to spend 2 years refining further useless alternatives to satisfy each and every nitpick. Both community groups (and these are not representative of the community, but more the loudest and angriest with the most time to spare of the community) and companies exploit this good faith planning to extend timelines, increase costs, and often dilute the end product to the detriment of the public that this "community engagement" process is supposed to protect.
I’m all for taking care of the environment, but it feels like there’s a lot more “let’s get community and environmental input” than we had in the past (for better and for worse).