Jacob Shell
28.5K posts
Jacob Shell
@JacobAShell
Geographer. Prof at Temple University. Author of 2 books. Elephants. Maps. Archaeofuturist Transportation.
Philadelphia, USA 가입일 Aralık 2016
1.2K 팔로잉15.3K 팔로워
@JacobAShell I believe we may have found an explanation for the incredible cost….
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Price Creek overpass over I-90 in the Cascades mountain/earthquake region in WA was $6.2 million. To me that looks like a 6 lane highway w shoulders. 2-4 more lanes cause pricetag to go up 18x??
Launch! - Blue Haired Liberal@DBZYuYuYasha
@JacobAShell No. I'm saying they cost $50M+ if they ALSO cross 10 lanes of highway and are constructed without closing any lanes. I would have to look at the construction plan to determine more. Also, the article suggests there were change orders, which add a shit ton to cost.
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@DBZYuYuYasha Are you arguing that all wildlife bridges which are in a mountainous earthquake prone area -- e.g. elsewhere in CA, or in OR or WA, or in Italy, or in Japan or Qinghai China (etc etc etc) -- also cost 114 million dollars per bridge? Is that what you're arguing?
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@JacobAShell It's attached to mountainous terrain, it crosses 10 lanes of highway, it was built with all lanes remaining active, it is built in such a way to survive earthquakes, etc.
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I've seen defenders repeat this, that Annenberg Wildlife bridge is expensive because it's somehow "extra complicated and ambitious"...but defenders never explain what they mean, they just repeat these adjectives. In the proposal rendering it does not look that elaborate
California Natural Resources Agency@CalNatResources
Just last year, California completed four wildlife crossings with an average price tag of $16 million – and 37 more are in progress across the state at an average cost of $15 million. The Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is the most ambitious project of its kind in the world with a much larger scale – it does not represent the average cost of our work to build more wildlife connectivity.
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@winestainedlens @BenjiBacker Back to back rainy years doesnt explain why an infrastructure-type (wildlife overpass) which is normally in the 5-15 mil range is at 114 mil. And why did an overpass project require redoing underground utilities?
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@BenjiBacker Please tell me you’re not taking Rufo’s bullshit hit piece at face value. He couldn’t even be bothered to include Pratt’s actual response to his questions. So I’ll do it right here. 1/2
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Colorado built this wildlife overpass last year for $15 million. It’ll pay for itself within five years from the avoided collisions.
California spending $114 million on a failed wildlife overpass is absurd.
Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️@christopherrufo
EXCLUSIVE: Gavin Newsom promised to build a bridge for cougars and butterflies in the middle of Los Angeles. The project has turned into another boondoggle, with broken deadlines and costs exploding to $114 million. This is Newsom's bridge to nowhere. city-journal.org/article/califo…
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This is not a satisfactory explanation. Back-to-back rainy years shouldnt make costs go up by 10x, and if they do then there was something badly wrong with the project design in the first place.
Also, it's unclear to me why an *overpass* project required rerouting of *underground* utilities.
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@JacobAShell @CalNatResources This reply may help your understanding. But basically they had to redo work because of historic rains/flooding, there are two bridges instead of 1, and there was electrical, telephone, internet, and water infrastructure that needed to be done.
x.com/winestainedlen…
wine-stained lens@winestainedlens
@BenjiBacker Please tell me you’re not taking Rufo’s bullshit hit piece at face value. He couldn’t even be bothered to include Pratt’s actual response to his questions. So I’ll do it right here. 1/2
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Just last year, California completed four wildlife crossings with an average price tag of $16 million – and 37 more are in progress across the state at an average cost of $15 million.
The Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is the most ambitious project of its kind in the world with a much larger scale – it does not represent the average cost of our work to build more wildlife connectivity.
Benji Backer@BenjiBacker
Colorado built this wildlife overpass last year for $15 million. It’ll pay for itself within five years from the avoided collisions. California spending $114 million on a failed wildlife overpass is absurd.
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@barely_th3re But China tends to build HSR routes around the edges of cities, not right into the old downtowns. That's one reason theyve been able to build the system so quickly. Once you're building a new rail hub with new downtown, you might as well go big.
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maybe hot take but there's literally zero reason the station needs to be physically this large. the entire point of HSR is that you can compactly stick it in the city center without disrupting the urban fabric. this monstrosity is just a train airport
China in English@En_chinaNews
🇨🇳 China Hosts the World’s Largest High-Speed Train Station: Chongqing East
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@ben_a_goldfarb Uh. Could you say something more? From your bio it looks like you're an expert on this topic.
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We hate to see people who know jack-shit about nature attempt to write about it, folks.
Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️@christopherrufo
The craziest thing about Newsom's $100 million wildlife bridge is that it will allow cougars, an apex predator, direct access into a suburban neighborhood filled with pets, children, and the elderly. It's like the radical environmentalist version of The Purge.
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@christopherrufo At any rate many are stuck inside of the Gordian knot and can't find their way out.
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Abundance Bros have no solution for how to break the stranglehold of public sector unions and left-wing NGOs, or of persuading Democratic voters to elect leaders who will be "progressive" in the old sense of the word, meaning "building infrastructure on time and on budget," rendering their political project quixotic, at best.
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I understand why people on Blue Team dont like that this became a conservative-coded story, reported by City Journal, then NYPost, Rufo etc...but frankly that's because their own "Abundance" faction failed to find the story first and make it theirs.
Jacob Shell@JacobAShell
This is what the project defenders aren't getting (or maybe some of them get it all too well): negative press exposing egregious cost overruns for "Zeno's paradox" projects that never get completed is actually GOOD for real infrastructure-building.
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Whatever this infinite black hole of rent-seeking, patronage and graft is which makes it so astronomically expensive to build physical infrastructure in the US: it's important to shine light on it, because otherwise there will be no getting rid of it, ever.
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This is what the project defenders aren't getting (or maybe some of them get it all too well): negative press exposing egregious cost overruns for "Zeno's paradox" projects that never get completed is actually GOOD for real infrastructure-building.
Jacob Shell@JacobAShell
And it's worth noting that 114 million is simply the cost of CA's Annenberg Wildlife Crossing at the moment that some negative press finally kicked into gear! It was surely going to balloon a lot more if there had been no negative press. In theory, I could see a project as simple as an overpass swallowing up the entirety of California state GDP...and still never being completed.
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@BalderdashianLA @InlandCaGuy @InlandCaGuy's strongest case is that perhaps there's something going on with engineered water features on the CA bridge which explains the costs. Seems like a bad project addition but it would at least explain what makes this bridge different
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@InlandCaGuy @JacobAShell There's no reason to assume Wyoming doesn't also have problems with corruption.
Hundreds of overpasses are built every year, and they usually have to support the weight of vehicles, not animals.
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And it's worth noting that 114 million is simply the cost of CA's Annenberg Wildlife Crossing at the moment that some negative press finally kicked into gear! It was surely going to balloon a lot more if there had been no negative press. In theory, I could see a project as simple as an overpass swallowing up the entirety of California state GDP...and still never being completed.
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Boston's Big Dig highway tunnel project during 1990s-2000s -- widely criticized for cost overruns which ultimately gave the project a 16 billion dollar price tag -- would have cost over a trillion dollars if it had been 0.1 billion dollars per overpass.
Jacob Shell@JacobAShell
I've seen defenders repeat this, that Annenberg Wildlife bridge is expensive because it's somehow "extra complicated and ambitious"...but defenders never explain what they mean, they just repeat these adjectives. In the proposal rendering it does not look that elaborate
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@InlandCaGuy @BalderdashianLA Theyre all around this length! They go over highways and highways are around this wide. True in Europe too. The "longest in the world" excuse, as if this is some futuristic superbridge over the Pacific or something, is outrageous.
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@BalderdashianLA @JacobAShell Looks like $15 million. So you may be correct. I'd like to hear an actual engineer talk about these projects though. If I was a journalist like I used to be, that's what I would have done. But we never bother with this kind of thing anymore.
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Actually with infrastructure you're supposed to start getting economy of scale benefits once there's repetition. If the kind of things you're saying were true, the US would have no railroads, highways or airports. Bridges would only exist in luxury resorts. None of it would exist in the public realm, anywhere in the world. 0% of modernity would have happened.
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@JacobAShell It's a broader issue of thinking the costs of expanding a project are linear and they aren't. It doesn't matter if it's a bridge or anything else. You are just building a whole concept of engineering based on your politics. And for what? The CAHSR exists no matter what...
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Like you, I can't tell exactly what the path/rock features are for. Unlike you I am not assuming theyre what turned what should have been a 10 mil project into a 114 mil project.
If you're right then they were an insane feature and taxpayers ought to be upset. Might as well have made the bridge out of solid gold or something.
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@JacobAShell I can't find a better one at work but you can see the water course and rocks for drainage. If they assume there will be water (stagnant or running) this will require a lot more reinforcement and work.
If this was a project change that nearly guarantees a budget blowout
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@InlandCaGuy Wait a minute, this is assuming a single span dude. The CA wildlife bridge is not a single span! Come on. Use AI only once you've used your head a bit first
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@JacobAShell Oh no, absolutely not. I know very little about engineering but even I know that your premise here is badly wrong.
Here I let AI take a crack at explaining why:
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