It’s structurally impossible. The half of the political coalition that contains virtually all the people who want to build any sort of urban infrastructure is too fractured into groups that each have their own distinct priorities unrelated to infrastructure or good governance. And of course the other half of the polity hates the government.
If you’re a democrat in california, where does infrastructure fall on your list of priorities? What big voting bloc does it get you?
Here in Maryland, we’ve been building a 16 mile above ground, mostly non-grade-separated light rail for a decade already and it’s nowhere near done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Line_(Maryland). I don’t know a single person other than myself who is motivated to make it happen. Nobody is agitating to get our miserable commuter rail system to run more timely. Road construction is the only thing that ever penetrates into the public consciousness. Making anything better is very low on everyone’s list of priorities.
> If you’re a democrat in california, where does infrastructure fall on your list of priorities? What big voting bloc does it get you?
As of now, nothing because everything takes forever to build. The authors of Abundance talk about how rural broadband is gummed up in bureaucratic processes. Same with CHIPS. Biden couldn’t point to it as an accomplishment because…it wasn’t accomplished yet.
Right but to waive environmental review, pass laws which push back against frivolous lawsuits, and allow city and state budgets to allocate money to transit you need a coalition that cares. rayiner is very right here, the problem is very few coalitions care. Urbanist/YIMBY groups are coming up that do care and they've taken politics by storm over the last 10 years, but they're still a small coalition.
I do transit and multimodal advocacy in the Bay Area and transit is just a ball that everyone passes one. Low income advocacy groups want stops in low income areas, high income homeowners want high frequency routes, some riders want more police presence, anti-policing advocates hate the police, some residents think it's ableist to have a bike lane take up what could be a bus priority lane, anyone who uses any parking spot that will be decreased protests, disability advocates want transit to have level boarding and pro-accessiblity options on the bus, some folks want free fares, other folks want to meter by distance; I could go on and on. I have talked to activists and members of the public each with these positions.
Getting the actual thing built is the last priority on everyone's list. Sure they all want it. But they only want it if their pet concession is on the list. That's the problem.
This seems like self-perpetuating dysfunction. If people knew that the government would eventually meet everyone's needs, then it would be more sensible to not have to meet everyone's needs right away. But as it is, we build nothing, which meets nobodies needs, and creates a kind of zero-sum game of thrones for anything that has the potential to be built.
"Nowhere near done" seems like a bit of an exaggeration, given that the link at the top of your linked page suggests that it's over 3/4ths done[1].
It's also, to my understanding, not grade-separated in various important places. I was in College Park two weeks ago and saw lots of at-grade development on the line, which presumably gets bogged down by Route 1 and the other high-traffic roads nearby.
(This isn't to imply that the construction isn't slow or inefficient; it's almost certainly both of those things.)
If you’re a democrat in california, where does infrastructure fall on your list of priorities? What big voting bloc does it get you?
Here in Maryland, we’ve been building a 16 mile above ground, mostly non-grade-separated light rail for a decade already and it’s nowhere near done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Line_(Maryland). I don’t know a single person other than myself who is motivated to make it happen. Nobody is agitating to get our miserable commuter rail system to run more timely. Road construction is the only thing that ever penetrates into the public consciousness. Making anything better is very low on everyone’s list of priorities.