It took a year to build the Empire State Building, and 5 years to build the Hoover Dam yet current estimates for the Francis Scott Key bridge rebuild are near 10 years. Why is this? Have we regressed?
In: Engineering
The biggest reason that large infrastructure projects get slowed down is the National Environmental Policy Act.
The law, signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1969, requires environmental impact statement for all federally-funded infrastructure projects.
The reason that the law slows down projects is that it gives nearly anyone the right to sue to stop a project.
Sometimes it’s also weaponized as well. For example, a union might use sue to slow down a project because there’s not enough of their members working on the project.
Usually, the objections are not consolidated either — which means if five groups of people file suit, there are five different lawsuits to resolve.
After the National Environmental Policy Act, workplace safety is probably the next biggest slowdown. Large projects had a predicted and expected number of deaths. While they tracked the deaths fairly well, they likely had decent numbers of maimed and disabled workers as well. Most large projects now don’t have any deaths, maimed workers, or disabled workers.
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