Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Decisions made by state governments about which road contractor to use are often -- surprisingly -- made on the basis of who knows whom, rather than who will make the bestest, cheapest roads.
(eta: My source for this, btw, is Nicholas Lemann's The Promised Land.) [Actually, Lemann was my source for the point about the Robert Taylor homes -- re the roads, I was talking out of my ass, or something. -- t.s.]
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I can't remember where I read this, but apparently roads in Europe are better built because the contractor who built the road is the one that has to go back and fix it if it falls into disrepair. I think they have a twenty to thirty year warranty.
I imagine we'd have to amend the bankruptcy code again here if we wanted to do something like that. Here, the road's maintenance reverts to the public entity and the contractor walks away with cash and no strings attached.
One of the major problems with the roads in Houston is cable. New expensive concrete road would be laid out at much pain in the ass to the public, and then it'd be torn up again because some fly-by-night ethernet company wanted to lay cable. Someone tried to amend the law to say that cable companies had to put the roads back in the condition they were in when they tore them up, but I don't see evidence of that.
For those keeping track at home, last weekend equipment showed up to tear apart the brand new road at the corner of my block. I don't know what they fucked up when they built it over the summer, but this was not the same crew that wooed me for nine months in 2004.
