
U.S. Agencies Agree to Slash Approval Times for Infrastructure Projects - gok
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-09/agencies-said-to-sign-memo-to-speed-up-public-works-approvals
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pzone
It sounds to me like this is about the minimizing redundency, and switching to
concurrent rather than sequential review. The environmental protection laws
underpinning these reviews are unchanged. It seems like an honest attempt to
improve the functioning of government, independent of ideology.

~~~
oftenwrong
We can't even say it will improve the functioning of the government; it will
just make the government faster. Faster at doing good things, or faster at
doing bad things.

The US government doesn't always make good choices when it comes to
infrastructure investments. For example:
[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/2/five-ways-
feder...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/2/five-ways-federal-
infrastructure-spending-makes-cities-poorer)

~~~
burlesona
My 2 cents is that a faster approvals cycle will lead to more private sector
activity which should help increase the productivity of investments. Even for
public sector stuff, in many cases the cost is greatly inflated by the
regulatory delay.

Or to put it another way, I’m pretty wary of federal infra projects in general
but I don’t think there’s a compelling argument in favor of slower regulatory
review.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Well said.

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forapurpose
Before you tear down a fence, learn why it was built in the first place. The
real question is, why were approvals processed in serial? It's very possible
that the input for some reviews requires the output from others, for example.
Think of an analogy: If someone said 'we'll speed up X software by running it
concurrently', you'd have a lot of questions before you believed it.

I've seen this mistake before. For example, when the F-35 was being planned
people had lots of similarly 'obvious' cost-saving and time-saving ideas:
Instead of all these different services and countries buying different planes,
why not all buy a common plane and get enormous economy of scale in
production, maintenance, training, etc.? Instead of doing the waterfall method
and locking in all the specs and developing all the tech before production,
why not do it more iteratively, save time and get other benefits? We learned
the answers: 1. It's hard enough to meet the demanding (existential)
requirements and bleeding edge tech development needs of one service; building
one solution to please 3 services and a dozen countries is impossible. 2. That
works for software, not $100 million hardware.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea; I'm saying that we don't know and that the
reason for the fence is the interesting, valuable information.

~~~
throwaway84742
I bet that if powers that be decided not to unify F35, we’d end up with 3
specialized stealth fighter projects costing $1T each, and without the ability
to stockpile just one set of parts for sustained maintenance.

~~~
philwelch
The Air Force and Navy both need (or want) a light, stealthy fighter-bomber.
Historically, there's no good reason not to just make the Air Force use the
same planes the Navy does. They just never actually agree on which plane they
want and it's easier to let both services have their own way.

The only tricky part is that the Marines need a STOVL close-air-support bomber
to replace the Harrier, and the Royal Navy needs a STOVL fighter-bomber to
replace the Harrier since they don't have full-sized carriers. There's some
commonality between those requirements and the Navy/Air Force requirements--
there's some rationale for stealthy CAS planes, and your STOVL plane needs to
be a full-featured fighter-bomber for the Brits to want it anyway--but STOVL
is a lot more complex than normal horizontal flight.

~~~
paulmd
> The Air Force and Navy both need (or want) a light, stealthy fighter-bomber.
> Historically, there's no good reason not to just make the Air Force use the
> same planes the Navy does.

This is not actually true. The Navy needs a heavy chassis that can withstand
repeated 4G+ carrier takeoffs and landings, the Air Force wants a lighter
chassis that leaves more room for payload and allows more maneuverability. The
Navy wants dual-engine configurations for reliability for over-water flight,
the Air Force prefers single-engine for greater simplicity and weight
efficiency.

You can _make_ something like the Tomcat or Hornet work, but it's not as agile
as a dedicated interceptor, can't carry as much weight as a dedicated strike
aircraft, and is heavier than a dedicated light-multirole aircraft. It's also
more maintenance-intensive and has higher fuel consumption/shorter range than
all of these. Money is no object for the US military, we get the best aircraft
for the role, period. You can disagree about whether that _should_ be the
policy, but it is.

The Marines' STOVL requirement is a third set of requirements that is totally
disjoint to the other services, agreed. I don't know enough about it other
than a general sense that it's possibly the complex task to engineer out of
all of these. Airplanes go forward, not up and down. From a financial
perspective, we might be better off just telling the Marines to fly helos
instead and operate light strike aircraft off improved strips once we have a
beachhead, but again, money is noobject, so they get a rube-goldberg airplane
that can go up and down and land on their pipsqueak carriers.

~~~
philwelch
That’s the theory, but are the differences between, for instance, the F-16 and
F/A-18 really enough to make any difference in any conceivable threat
environment? It’s already a hard sell having dedicated fighters in the first
place, since the US military hasn’t operated without air supremacy since the
first weeks of the Gulf War. Is there a realistic threat model where the
increased maneuverability of a single-engine light fighter provides any
benefit whatsoever?

~~~
forapurpose
The U.S. military publicly agreed with your argument until a few years ago. To
bomb primitive foes like ISIL or the Taliban, they don't even need F-16s; low-
end planes or drones can do the job. Sec Def Bob Gates canceled several high-
end weapons programs planned in the Cold War for that reason.

But now the U.S. military expects to compete with 'near-peer' enemies such as
China and Russia, and that is what they are preparing for. In that threat
environment, any advantage or disadvantage can be significant.

~~~
philwelch
Direct, conventional war between the US and another major nuclear power isn’t
a likely threat model. As soon as one side starts losing, the nukes are gonna
come out and conventional forces become irrelevant.

So it doesn’t matter if the USAF can go toe-to-toe with the Russian Air Force
or the Chinese. What does matter is whether Ukraine or Poland or Turkey or
Japan or Korea can effectively resist Russian or Chinese conventional warfare.
As long as they can, then we only have to worry about being able to stomp
countries like Iran, and in that environment, Super Hornets are plenty.

~~~
forapurpose
> Direct, conventional war between the US and another major nuclear power
> isn’t a likely threat model. As soon as one side starts losing, the nukes
> are gonna come out and conventional forces become irrelevant.

A few thoughts:

1\. You may be correct.

2\. But 'not likely' isn't sufficient odds when it comes to survival of the
U.S. and its allies. The U.S. has to be prepared for unlikely and even very
unlikely threats when they are existential.

3\. The U.S. government believes it must prepare for near-peer warfare; it's
unchallenged consensus in national security circles AFAICT. That doesn't make
it correct, but that does have some weight.

4\. The Russians explicitly disagree. Look up their 'escalate to de-escalate'
tactics, which includes use of nuclear weapons in limited warfare.

5\. Some hawks in China believe they can, through a fast, aggressive strike,
drive the U.S. out of certain strategic areas and intimidate the U.S. into
substantially withdrawing from East Asia.

6\. Strong conventional forces can deter Russian and Chinese hawks from doing
something crazy.

~~~
philwelch
OK, those are some fair points.

I'm still not convinced that the marginal difference between specialized naval
and terrestrial fighter-bombers is the most cost-effective way to move the
needle, though. Even against near-peer adversaries, the US and its allies have
substantial naval and air superiority. Wouldn't it make more sense to focus on
pressing those advantages? (Of course, we kind of foreclosed on that by
shutting down the F-22 and doubling down on the F-35...)

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verandaguy_alt
Is it appropriate to be concerned that this will result in infrastructure
being approved without sufficient review, potentially resulting in dangerous
infrastructure?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
No.

The same processes that were run in serial will be run in parallel.

~~~
cle
That's honestly not very reassuring at face value. Concurrency is hard...

~~~
pg_bot
Our entire economy is based on people being able to tasks while other people
do other tasks. Concurrency is everywhere and we seem to manage just fine.

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fallingfrog
This is a great idea. Improve latency without affecting throughput (much).

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chiefalchemist
If the improvement is aiming for 2 years, what is it now? I understand that
some of these things are broad and / complex, but dragging it out only dates
the discovery process. At the very least, phase the projects.

That said, what about completion time? Can that be effected in some positive
way? Or will it continue to be bid low and just keep tacking on the overuns?

------
adventured
Speaking of infrastructure. Does anyone know the current status of the "dig
once" rule (contained in the Ray Baum Act) as it pertains to the US Senate?

It passed through the House in early March. I can't seem to locate any
information about it after that. Supposedly it was due to easily sail through
the Senate.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/dig-once-rule-
re...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/dig-once-rule-requiring-
fiber-deployment-is-finally-set-to-become-us-law/)

[https://eshoo.house.gov/issues/telecommunications/eshoo-
appl...](https://eshoo.house.gov/issues/telecommunications/eshoo-applauds-
passage-of-ray-baums-act/)

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kup0
Making the agencies do their reviews in parallel seems like a safe way to
speed up the approval/review process. I know we tend to be cynical about any
change like this in government processes, but I'm trying to have some (IMHO
reasonable) hope here.

I tend to skew very left politically, but I'm having a hard time seeing
Democrats/Enviro groups' opposition to this as anything but strictly
political. They often champion the idea that government can work and do so
efficiently. For once I'd like to see them support an effort to do just that.

------
ChuckMcM
I wonder if this will help unblock federal funding for the California High
Speed Rail project.

~~~
DrScump
What Federal funding are you referring to?

~~~
ChuckMcM
See
[http://atrn.assembly.ca.gov/sites/atrn.assembly.ca.gov/files...](http://atrn.assembly.ca.gov/sites/atrn.assembly.ca.gov/files/HSR%20Funding%20Chart%20FINAL.pdf)
for a map of their funding. I was looking at the Silicon Valley to Bakersfield
leg which is dependent on $2.9B in federal funds which, to date, congress has
been opposed to.

I believe that a working high speed rail system will help make working in
California more affordable if it is practical to live outside the metro areas
of the Bay Area and LA and still work there. I also expect it will cut down on
traffic fatalities on I-5.

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kristianp
Requires registration to read.

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pasbesoin
This may be a bit meta.

Everything I've read about Trump's infrastructure initiative leads me to
believe it is planned as a largely unfunded mandate cum strong outsourcing and
privatization initiative.

The Federal government isn't going to pay for much of anything. They're
telling states to "get it done" and pushing strongly for privatization of
public resources as a means of paying for this.

(Think Illinois' Skyway, other toll roads that never met their schedules for
shutting down payments to investors and going public, Chicago's public parking
garages and parking meters, and many examples farther afield.)

While public projects aren't perfect, this inserts (even more of) a profit
motive into overall management, and in practice often ends up providing "less
for more". Rather than some supposedly more efficient management, such
privatization initiatives seem more often to merely introduce another middle-
man -- one having unprecedented control and no competition.

There's a lot of money sloshing around the investment world, looking for
"tangible assets" with strong and highly predictable and controllable rates of
return. Hedge funds are moving into real estate and rentals. Sovereign wealth
funds have wanted a piece of Chicago's infrastructure-based revenue streams.
Canadian and other housing prices exploding with foreign investment.

As for "rushing things along", we have a prime example of this and perhaps
forerunner of this Federal initiative, with FoxConn in Wisconsin. Things
already seem to be going significantly wrong:

[http://beltmag.com/blighted-by-foxconn/](http://beltmag.com/blighted-by-
foxconn/)

So, I don't really see this initiative as an honest effort to improve
efficiencies while maintaining current regulation -- regulation that, for its
sometimes faults, was usually put into place for good reason and is better
than the alternative it replaced.

I see it as an initiative to expedite the enrichment of large private
interests who have the current administration's ear -- as well as those of
many state and some local governments. (Local is sometimes harder, because
you're dealing with people who will directly have to live with the
consequences. Once they realize that the people who are on board are selling
the rest out.)

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plussed_reader
I'm sure eliminating environmental surveys will greatly speed up project
approval time.

Pruitt can do it!

~~~
lainga
Where is eliminating (not streamlining) any of the approval steps mentioned in
the article?

~~~
jadedhacker
If you expect the current administration to deliver anything you can expect it
to do it with less thinking and more impulse. Trump has said he regards
infrastructure as a very popular sweetner. You should be extremely skeptical
and watch for the thing it's sweetening.

