Why We Can’t Figure Out Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive
A family member in the DOT told me this as but one of many tales of woe.<p>Several hundred miles of an interstate were going to be rehabbed.  There was a proven technique to redo the joints between the concrete slabs, which were in good shape.  A contractor was hired to do a small number of miles as a test, but they had a learning curve.  The first few joints that they redid were not done well, but they rapidly improved and the approach looked really good.<p>However, the state selected a different approach which required tearing up the road and redoing it.  The excuse was those first few bad joints.  There was also the unstated matter that the contractor favored by the state did not know how to do this technique.<p>The result was billions of wasted money to redo the road with an inferior material.  That material failed within a few years, and they now need to redo it again.<p>And this is not just a cost issue.  Its estimated that failure to adhere to known safer pavement designs is resulting in 10,000 - 15,000 unnecessary deaths a year.