It's interesting and sad to me (here in the UK) that both the US and UK seem to be so short-sighted when it comes to repairing/maintaining and improving critical infrastructure.
I get that they aren't big flashy projects but you would think that when you have infrastructure that affects the lives of literally millions of people we could do better.
The Victorians here celebrated public infrastructure projects so much that they often organised tours of new projects after completion, which is one of the reasons why when you go look at Victorian stuff (even sewage works) they are often so beautifully finished, it was infrastructure as both art and statement.
Also I can genuinely recommend http://thelondonphile.com/ I'm a Northerner in the North but it's a fascinating look at London and it's heritage, lots of places I want to visit.
The title is too clickbait for my tastes and I found it a tad too dismissive – but a lot of what it touches on paints a clear image of why things here feel increasingly bleak, and that's without the multiple crises currently wracking the country. And the sad thing is that a simple change of government won't try to fix it until it's impossible to fix because of how rooted some of these issues are.
A key example being HS2. How much taxpayers' money was wasted over HS2, buying up land & property over the last few decades only for it to be scrapped and for money to be spent on potholes instead[0]. Can't wait for people to cry out for high speed rail infrastructure in the next few decades for us to restart it, then scrap it when it becomes 'unaffordable'
A factor that isn't mentioned regarding infrastructure is Technological/Infrastructure Lock-in. Britain was a pioneer in industrial infrastructure, but being a pioneer means that you make the mistakes others learn from and avoid – and replacing the obsolete with better technology takes time and money.
I don't think it's just cycle infrastructure. In the UK we seem unable to do all infrastructure, it's not an engineering problem because as another comment has pointed out we have world class scientists and engineers, it must be a political and management problem. Compared to countries such as the Netherlands and Germany, we seem to just bodge our infrastructure rather than properly design it.
I think a large part of the problem comes from not having enough people with science/engineering backgrounds at high levels within politics, the civil service and local authorities. There is also the fact that science/engineering lacks respect and prestige in the UK.
A proven track record of local government incompetence and private-public fleecing makes large civil projects much less popular than they would be in a perfect world.
I think your right, however they don’t always pick the right projects to do. HS2 for example isn’t exactly thought of as the right place to spend a few 10s billion pounds.
As long as you ignore the fact the UK is not keeping up with the full costs of maintaining there roads as well as the value of all that land and all the past construction costs then it looks good. Because, maintaining an all that aging infrastructure is not that expensive but building it was. Don't forget £11.911 billion (56%) was capital expenditure when you might think most roads and bridges you want built have already been built.
Edit: By not keeping up with infrastructure I mean the average age of there infrastructure is increasing which is not really a bad thing as replacing things early wastes cash but depredation is a real cost.
I feel like we have quite a lot of big projects on the go. Crossrail, Thames Tideway, HS2 phase 1, Hinkley C, Hornsea and Dogger Bank offshore wind farms and likely Sizewell C and Heathrow expansion soon too. Plus there are a ton of smaller but still big projects going on up and down the country.
Obviously major projects often run into issues. Being that we're a democratic, densely populated country with a lot of history buried under our feet, we perhaps face more political issues than most. Nevertheless, I think saying we can't do big projects is a bit of an exaggeration.
That is my frustration with American infrastructure investment. We can never just invest in what exist and what works, on a consistent reliable basis. It always has to be some kind of ego project like this. It’s infurating because we waste so much money and make all of our lives harder for it, but the population at large seem to be suckers for it.
It's pretty much an unfixable problem at this point given that we also have lost the ability to do infrastructure projects with anything resembling a sane budget or time table.
The the UK really could do with some infrastructure investments [2013,2016] (dig the holes, don't fill em in again). I hope they use that Keynesian opportunity wisely, but I am afraid they won't. Having lived in the UK for a long time I then would despair at the crappy infrastructure compared to other norther European countries.
The infrastructure issue is very much true. In my former town they got permission to build 2500 new homes on a patch of greenbelt land. In doing this they added a roundabout to the busiest road in the city, which is already suffering as it's a former country lane that is still fairly narrow.
They didn't build anything to support the new development at all, so now all the local schools which were already struggling from being oversubscribed don't have any capacity, meaning there's now a daily (paid) coach service taking kids to the next town to go to school.
Flooding has become a major problem in the area, the former field had a ditch system at the bottom of it, which no longer exists. That main road has now been closed on several occasions, and the older houses that run on the opposite side of the road endured several feet of water running through their houses last year. The solution? Slap a couple more drains on the road - those residents already know they'll be flooded again come winter.
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