The larger issue, of course, is that eccentric individuals and niche special-interest groups are able to use the planning process and the legal system to jam up all sorts of infrastructure projects in America, from simple turn lanes all the way to high-speed rail. This is not the only reason America has trouble building infrastructure, but it is an important reason. See Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson‘s new book Abundance for a long-form analysis of this… or for a contrast with the US’s “lawyerly society” (and, of course, the disadvantages of leaning too much in the other direction) Dan Wang’s Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future that just came out.
Both are excellent books and will probably appeal to a lot of Hacker News folks with an engineering/builder mindset.
Freakonomics interviewed Dan Wang about his book Breakneck back in September, see episode #647. It's a very interesting lens through which to view both societies, worth a listen!
Among the many reasons that stretch of 26 is dangerous is that the approach from Portland is essentially a freeway from Gresham through Sandy, and then turns into a rural highway until it begins the climb up to Hood. This is because of a remnant of the Mount Hood Freeway construction, which resulted in a lot of little oddities that linger in Portland to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hood_Freeway
In the picture the stone pillars look like a decorative feature marking a neighborhood entrance. Does anybody know their origin? I assume if they were installed in the past 100 years there would be some evidence to counter Mr Jones’ claims.
Four lane roads like this, in any context, or any part of America, are an absolute disaster of civil engineering. I get that in the 60s or whenever they were built you had a situation where some cars could barely accelerate up an incline but by the 70s they should have all been reworked.
I don't believe I've been on that stretch of road, but it seems to me that if the concern is safety there are other alternatives to adding a turn lane, the most obvious of which being a reduction in the speed limit.
Actually many of the residents were in favor of changing the road. One person decided to fight the entire project on the basis of a cairn of rocks that 5 or 6 archaeologists agreed had no cultural significance.
The issue isn't people going too fast, it's people turning left. 26 basically connects Portland on one end and Mt Hood recreation stuff on the other, and it used to be that there wasn't that much in between. Over the last few decades, a lot of development has gone up, meaning a lot more businesses and neighborhoods along both sides of 26, plus the highway has gotten a lot busier.
I clicked through looking for some novel civil engineering because I assumed a rhododendron is a geometric shape I hadn’t heard of. The actual story was a good read too.
<sigh/> At what point do you assume that the still-objecting NIMBY's either have personality disorders, or are motivated by malicious self-aggrandizement?
Both are excellent books and will probably appeal to a lot of Hacker News folks with an engineering/builder mindset.
It sounds like the residents are opposed to, well, anything.
And you can go back to 2007 to see the old highway, https://maps.app.goo.gl/Qd9evKz7vUnxt1FQ6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhododendron
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Sure was.