No, I don't think the laws are most of the reason why it's rare. It's probably more that other municipalities have seen the huge fights put up by the incumbents that tie the projects up in legal battles for years that have had a chilling effect on it. Citizens know that it's going to cost a lot for the infrastructure, and then probably a lot more for the legal fights.
Sadly, many of them don't seem to see what a success most of it is.
It's my understanding that it's the local municipalities who don't let them build, fearing traffic congestion and losses in land value, generally being wrong on both accounts.
this is unfortunately true - however in this case it might be a municipal metro area body that comprises of one or more counties and multiple cities
the process of awarding projects to developers by government entities is very flawed and seems to guarantee substandard results and cost overruns.
edit: still having said this - it shouldn't be a reason to not try - we desperately need (and imo deserve) these improvements to our cities (as well as better municipal spending oversight as well as better planning)
This is New York State, not NYC, and at least the article seems to focus on rural communities. That could make some things easier considering the NYC ground is notoriously chaotic already. Then again, the lower density could make it more expensive, and many more jurisdictions will be involved.
Governments actually have a pretty good track record with larger projects, either equal to and, in some cases, outperforming private companies. What works against them is their tendency to oversell to get approval in the first place, leading to news stories of cost overruns. And, of course, that you rarely hear about projects working as expected, or private projects going wrong.
What is the bigger barrier to getting things done - regulations or politics with locals? I grew up learning that regulations were the reason things would take so long, but the older I get the more I realize its just a bunch of really loud NIMBYs.
I think in many cases zoning and the way land taxes are done are a big problem holding cities back. It's not legal in many cities to make things walkable, bikeable, transit friendly due to laws like single use zoning and parking minimums.
Its so bad that some wealthy municipalities spend a significant fraction of their budgets lobbying or fighting development in court. The government of South Pasadena, for example, a town of about 25,000, spends millions of dollars a year in legal fees to block the 710 freeway expansion. This expansion would break a huge bottleneck in the area and LA county went as far as coming up with an underground freeway plan costing a billion dollars a mile (paid for by the state and TARP!) but even that was shot down. I think they finally gave up after decades of court battles and all of the houses bought along the planned expansion are being sold by the state.
Meanwhile, the school district cuts millions from its budget every few years (from five schools), road and other infrastructure maintenance is years behind at best (roads are crumbling and El Nino took it up another level), and the emergency services have turned to donations to meet their stagnant budgets.
There's always opportunity. However: the space is, to be frank, kind of boring (mostly just CRUD apps) and has to deal with the government procurement process. Which is why I think no one has come up against Tyler yet. I'm sure someone determined enough could easily eat their lunch but most disruptor types aren't in the municipal CRUD app business.
Municipalities operate about 20 years behind everyone else. For example: asking for AI to determine when grass needs to be cut in medians is just unrealistic when most municipalities don't have the expertise or budget to even produce a functioning mobile platform for their base website.
I disagree with the sibling comment about the data export problem. I worked for a city and getting data in and out, while a hassle, isn't really too tough. Tyler and many other vendors are very lazy with their protections (as clearly evidenced by subject line) and with a bit of know how even very early on in my career I had no issues getting the keys to the city.
Thank you for perfectly encapsulating a large part of why municipalities can't get anything done for a reasonable price these days.
There's a lot of "copy paste engineering" that anyone with a little care can do with an acceptable success rate but we prevent them from doing "because liability".
I agree that it requires political will and good governance. Bus lanes aren’t easy most places. However, I don’t think one should ever generalize about municipalities from examples set by San Francisco.
Small or midsize towns don't generally have the political will - or budget - to massively rework lots of basic infrastructure. Larger ones definitely don't, and the political history of ramming through such projects is often pretty ugly.
So time, effort, and treasure is spent on changes that can be politically accomplished instead.
It's also not always quite that simple. My city is trying to pass a moratorium on residential building permits because the infrastructure is simply not built out enough to handle all the people moving to town. Yeah, yeah, public transportation, etc... but all of that takes time and money to build.
The 2 lane road leading to my house is already overloaded and a builder is wanting to build another 2000 houses at the end of the road. Instead of waiting and relying on the state to improve the road, maybe we should do a better job at shifting the infrastructure costs to the builder when they put up a new apartment building or neighborhood.
But there are reasons for municipalities to do that. Namely infrastructure. The city next to mine allowed uncontrolled building of housing and that city is a shitshow right now. The roads are clogged and often gridlocked. They deal with all kinds of failure modes in their utilities due to high usage. No.
My town is being more strategic about it. They allowed businesses to come in first and expanded out the robustness of the local coop's electric grid and only then did they allow appartments and they are doing them in stages to make sure the area can handle it. This is important in an area where not everyone is even hooked up to the city's water supply or has access to city sewage.
It's worth pointing out that, in some of those points, even "urban" and "suburban" communities are net-negative in their infrastructure planning. Let's not lay into rural areas but not insolvent municipalities. More details about these issues at https://www.strongtowns.org/.
The key is putting tax money where your mouth is, prioritizing projects with high impact over projects that cater to the voter base that you need to get reelected, and using eminent domain to get the best route against the interest of some individual people.
It's a two-way street. People like to look at it and be amazed, while most wouldn't be prepared to follow through on it given the drawbacks and their own principles of how governments should work.
Yes. I think that its most of the reason why major cities just can't build proper infrastructure. Because it's virtually impossible to get the space for it. Yes moving house is a major annoyance and the government should compensate you for that (some % over market rate). But the annoyance the entire state suffers for decades if the infrastructure isn't built is many orders of magnitude greater.
A single person shouldn't be able to block an airport that will serve millions. I get HN is very supportive of private property above all else, but not everyone thinks the individual comes before the millions of others involved.
For example: Google looked at Seattle's NIMBY laws regarding utility boxes on sidewalks (each requiring a lengthy community approval process) and said, "Nope!"
Seattle's new mayor is now looking how to streamline the process to make the city more Google friendly, should the opportunity arise again.
Sadly, many of them don't seem to see what a success most of it is.
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