Read on Twitter
Am I going to need to take a week or two to write an outline for how to do it and actually get infrastructure out of it rather than reports? https://twitter.com/samjmintz/status/1313855312986869761
I'm going to know in more detail in a year, but what looks important right now is the following set of changes.
1. Staff up public planning. This means hiring people at state agencies, or a federal one that acts as a monopoly consultant.
(The monopoly is important - saying no to extras reduces *construction* costs but not *planning* cost, esp. not in political capital.)
Ugh, had to catch up on something.
2. The Northeastern states, and maybe IL/WI/IN, must set up a collaborative body for schedule planning.
2. The Northeastern states, and maybe IL/WI/IN, must set up a collaborative body for schedule planning.
3. The feds need to be firm about deadlines. Plans for what to build need to be in place by the end of 2021 or so.
4. The FTA and FRA must also staff up with specific concerns for cost control and project management, and reject expensive proposals.
5. Most likely, the entire suite of laws empowering non-state actors (e.g. NEPA) must be repealed, and the feds should also preempt CEQA.
Endless lawsuits exist also in Germany, but a) our costs are high by non-Anglo standards, and b) infrastructure takes forever to build.
If people complain about noise during construction, then tough shit, the TBM only goes under your house for 1-2 days. Deal.
6. Preempt design-build procurement laws. Design-build should be banned and not mandated. Hire design review people and do design-bid-build.
7. Always aim to work fast, e.g. 24/7 construction. Spain and Turkey both believe in working fast to cut costs.
8. 100% public-sector risk assumption. Do not ever offload risks to private contractors; they'll react by bidding higher.
9. Simplify procurement: shorter RFPs, technical scoring (remember to staff up design review!) rather than exact specs, etc.
10. You may need to bust some unions (almost certainly the sandhogs in NY, but probably not the others), so learn to love Scabby the Rat.
11. Remove managers who refuse to acquire fluency in foreign engineering and planning practices; replace them with foreigners.
This is a list geared more toward timeliness and certainty than pure cost, but I suspect a list about costs would overlap. /end
