Why California's Infrastructure is Failing 

Good video buddy 😁

Can you make a video about Vatican City and it's building and stuff. Btw good video bro

Bro btw if you divide parts in between like 'what California could do in this situation' 'what's the problem' etc. It will be more focused but still this was a good video and this was a long video so good job

Hi arkive i am ur biggest fan. Im 10 foot

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Yes

Yes, but Southern California and the Central Valley are built around driving. So unless we demolish like 70% of those areas, we're gonna have to densify them and put policies that make it easier to get around without a car and even discourage car use/ownership.

This would be the ideal solution, yes. It can start by changing the zoning laws in cities and its suburbs.

@@portibolivia this is what’s so strong, so many issues can be solved without spending a dime but yet we resort to just throwing cash in the automobile toilet

Yes. LA has been trying for decades to build out its rail system and has more recently started trying to reform its zoning laws precisely to this end. But along the way they’ve had to fight NIMBY after NIMBY group and deal with the extremely limited amount of federal money available for public transit projects. So it’s not all LA’s fault

Yes

Texas didn't get the memo, they're like California on steroids.

@@night6724 Yes.

@@night6724 Yes

@@night6724 Why not? Are you against the idea that no matter your income or financial situation that people have access to all the same kinds or high quality transit in a small walking distance and one that's not car dependent? Public transportation will always be cheaper than Car

Yes? You think they can solve those problems for free? Lol

@@infinitedeathloop5517 i think the issue is that they're still just throwing money at the wrong things. The plan does not really attempt to fix the issues, just put a bandage over them

@@infinitedeathloop5517 The video didn't say what the problem was though, it literally said that the money was wasted and then proceeded to suggest that a lack of funding was the issue all along

The most American solution

@@rcm926 cause the money went into corrupt politicans' pockets.

Honestly up to this point in my 1 hr 40 min commute experience I would even settle for the train taking the same amount of time. I would love to take the train, sadly Cali hasn't done enough in that regard.

Adding roadway capacity doesn't improve traffic. It gives something called "induced demand" which is the opposite problem. More lanes attracts more traffic. While also taking thousands of acres of taxable land off the books.

Any "Cities Skylines" player can tell you that you need to use all forms of public transit to fix traffix. (The game has limitations that make its traffic worse and better, no car accidents is good, idiot drivers is bad) Cali needs to build enough transit capacity (walking and biking are included in this) to soak up all of the "latent demand" that would fill up any spaces opened on the highway as people start to take the train, and only then will the traffic get noticably better. And ignoring traffic concerns, transit is way more compact and efficient so its also better for the environment and land use efficiency. (Also safety, by alot)

California is known for having the highest taxes with the taxpayers seeing no benefits from it. Incompetent and corrupt government has lead to the exodus.

Plus the drought has takin its toll on California for several years now

radical environmentalists have infiltrated our institutes of higher learning, civil engineering studies included

I tottally agree with you. Just look at London. Driving there is a nightmare so I take the train.

@@Juan-hv9bi no they just don’t have any other option

True..

Same thing for New Jersey...

100%. It's a simple mathematical impossibility suburbanites can't seem to grasp. If the average cost of infrastructure per person exceeds the average productivity per person (that's being generous cause obviously most of a person's productivity needs to go to other things) then you're in the negative. But the only options are stop funding the overbuilt infrastructure which is politically untenable or massively urbanise enough of the population in net positive communities that the country is in the positive on average. But that wouldn't really solve the problem entirely, cause it's still a massive drag for urban economies to spend a huge chunk of their output subsidising unproductive ones, and any gain in productivity would likely be swallowed by parasitic suburban electorates. The US is lucky to have mass immigration and relatively high birthrates cause even then it might only narrowly escape an eternal decline.

@@Freshbott2 Part of that is the fault of cities. There are cities in the USA that REQUIRE/MANDATE that the people use city water services and city sewage services even when some folks already have their own wells or their own septic systems and they live further away from the city center. If they just let the folks further away have the wells and septic systems, then the city wouldn't have to subsidize building the lines out so far. It's not like the folks living further away want to pay for the city services anyhow. Those services are more costly. A city nearby mine sued homeowners who had their own septic systems because they wanted to force them onto city sewage because they extended the lines out to them but the people there didn't want to hook up. The city didn't even ask the homeowners if they wanted to be on city sewage. The homeowners lost and were forced onto the city sewage.

@@laurie7689 how far out are you talking? Past a certain point in number and density bores allow exploitation of the shared water table, and too many sceptics in an area cna poison the water table. For rural/semi rural areas I totally agree. But that’s not 80% of the population and it’s not 99.9% of the inhabited land area. I agree with you in principle, and I reckon the same about roads. When you ask people to pay for their own roads and car parks it’s funny how quickly they don’t. But the public nature of roads and how everyone should put into more of them at all costs is a staple of most left leaning communities and all right leaning ones. It’s beyond criticism. Meanwhile driving in the US is the most subsidised activity in all of history. Charles Marohn calculated up the cost/benefit of urban interstate systems in the US and found if you avoid all the lies firms and politicians use to justify benefit, the US would be better off having a hurricane Katrina and hurricane Irma every year instead.

@@Freshbott2 The area that was sued and lost was semi-rural.

@@laurie7689 lol well short of this one semi rural area that lost in this one case about septic tanks the point still stands that suburbanites have stretched their cities too thin and no amount of nostalgia or blame or anxious hate for their own neighbours which they dress up s as patriotism, can change the financial reality. If you spend more than you make, you go broke. That’s the fault of people who destroy cities.

Right on, exactly. Your point is very well taken.

Public transit has the same issue as well. The issue is too much infrastructure, not enough. Infrastructure needs to be right sized to reflect that supportable by the locality. Infrastructure proposals needs to conduct a total ROI analysis that reflects its total maintenance/replacement cost. If it doesn't generate sufficient revenue to maintain/replace it, then it shouldn't get approved.

@@taoliu3949 Honestly, no matter how many classes I have taken or articles read I have never been able to comprehend economic issues very well, at all. For me, understanding the cost benefit (ROI) analysis of infrastructure is more difficult than getting my head around cosmology or philosophy. However, transportation of goods and people is a huge economic driver. Without which society stagnates. We all want improvements but at what cost and who bares the burden. An example could be private vehicular transportation vs. public trains. Perhaps technology will result in more remote working and less commuting and thus reduce certain future infrastructure needs. Rarely can public transportation directly pay for itself otherwise it would be private. This is an interesting topic, isn't it?

@@davidjackson7281 But is the growth in economy sufficient to cover the costs of the improved infrastructure? If the cost of building/maintaining the improvement exceeds the economic benefits, then society just gets poorer as a result. In other words, it would be better to simply not build the improvements. And yes, you can build infrastructure that is sustainable. That's literally how major infrastructure projects in the US used to be built. Governments and private companies would sell bonds to build a road, rail tracks, bridge etc and pay off the bonds over time. Revenue would either be raised via tolls and/or supplementated with secondary revenue streams such as taxes or rent. The issue with major infrastructure projects in the US today is that there's no check on basically what seems to be limitless Federal funding unlike in the old days local governments had to be very cognicent of how much debt they can take on to fund a project. As a result states and local governments keep putting themselves in debt so they can get "free" money from the Federal government. The checks aren't there to prevent this, and incentives aren't properly aligned to discourage it. And yes, public transit can be profitable. Historically it was all "private" and was profitable until the government started building a bunch of roads making them unable to compete.

@@taoliu3949 Excellent point, very well taken. Have a nice week.

Well in the UK our infrastructure projects move fairly slow as well; but road widening is definitely not the answer to traffic problems! Our cities function fine without massive highways crisscrossing the landscape.

@@unblubby7139 Agreed. How many lanes can you really add to the M25? lol

Another lane will fix it, for real. Just add one more lane

6 lanes as in 3 each way? Thats standard for any urban highway, shocking it took so long!

In fact it’s optimal, 4 lanes for any more than easing exits and entries is excess. Cleaning up gridlock prone intersections and planning highway exits so as to avoid backing up goes way farther than adding a 4th lane.

In combination with the hard times ahead, this will be hell

It has already played out in Michigan, and in Detroit in particular.

It’s most California problem.

At one time we had a great public transportation. When you bored do a deep dive on the Red and Yellow Car

I really wish we had a nationwide high speed train system like Japan

@@squidwardo7074 I think we're just too big of a country that have a nationwide high-speed be feasible. I'm not really a fan of the California High-Speed rail that's been a financial disaster. Only because they could have done it for cheaper with existing tech and track probably would already been done by now

Too bad NIMBYs are constantly preventing infrastructure improvement

@@dougc190 "Nationwide" does not mean "coast to coast". "Nationwide" really just mean interstate. You're not taking the train from NYC to California, but you could take it from NYC to DC which people already do. California HSR is a fine project. It's main issue is the lack of a dedicated revenue stream so it has to find separate funding for different segments. The issue with using existing tracks is that it wouldn't have met the requirements set by Proposition 1A. The only way to meet the speed requirements is by constructing dedicated tracks. You can still add service to existing tracks as supplementary service however.

Few issues with your points: Firstly, american tax rates are some of the lowest among OECD countries, the US is the second most economically competitive country on earth, and disposable income is the highest on earth. Secondly, developed countries in general have much larger tertiary sectors than manufacturing sectors, and most if not all high income, developed countries, have outsourced manufacturing to less developed nations like China. It's basic economics. Thirdly, the homicide and crime rate in the US has been decreasing continuously for the past 3 decades. Lastly, the median family income in 2019 was 1.59 times greater than the income needed to purchase a single family home.

The big military is something that might be reduced in the future, though that will come as a detriment to the world economy at large. There's a reason why there's almost no pirates today. And it is because more then half of the worlds aircraft carriers are owned by an empire that dedicated itself to enable free trade globally. When this is going to change we will experience rising costs of living and more power play by other upcoming powers like india, china, South africa and so on and so on.

Not happy and need a real change. I am going into urban planning and trust me we have a lot of catching up to do.

The U.S has been invaded by Japan (Pearl Harbor)

@@Adumzzinthehouse Pearl Harbor is not on us mainland . And Pearl Harbor was an offense launched during ww2 . Invasion is different, its what we did in Afghanistan and iraq for the past 10+ years .

Not in my 66 years of living here.

As an American state, no, as a former mexican territory, yes.

@@DeuzFazbear you're telling me California become instantly in the most populated state when the US took it ? nah man, that should've taken a lot of time

not immediately, but since it was the United States that found gold in California

@@DeuzFazbear so as an American state it was or wasnt? Your comments are going against eachother

NOO not the ls😞😞

@@skip7992 😔

I feel so much safer driving when I moved out of california

@@soupdrinker yeah when me and my family went to Arizona, it was way less packed and just so fun and easy to drive.

Thats because at a certain capacity/demand threshold its time to get higher orders of transit. (A road is the lowest capacity in terms of max people per hour per lane, busses are 20-30 times better than a car and can share its infrastructure, and a train/rail is just insane in terms of capacity per 1 way rail line) walking/biking is the king of short distance transit. I despise driving on the interstate, its either mind numbing or a near death experience, but crossing the Addirondacks on low roads is genuinely enjoyable and significantly safer. (Unless its winter, then black ice or regular ice and hills is a big concern)

Coming from someone who lives in California and has traveled nationwide, California actually has it WAY better in terms of infrastructure

Oh for sure

@@ragglefraggle9111 100% if you wanna see bad infracsture take a drive through Louisiana lol

@@ragglefraggle9111 It's still not as good as North Eastern states, Southern states for sure have garbage infrastructure because they're still stuck in the car mind

@@squidwardo7074 pshttt, Mississippi I went to college there, it's beyond rough...

ok thanks. this explains why san diego has good infrastructure, but when you drive north to anything between LA and Santa Barbra, everything is litterly falling apart, and completely filled with traffic.

@@projection-75-emulation it's weird because I lived in the are you are talking about. they have improved some spots in said area. but also neglected parts on other areas within that location. I guess it just depends on the neighborhood you are in?

True

Ok but thats no excuse for a state like California to have that bad infrastructure. For the richest and most populated state in USA it should not be like that

@@newdogmodel3893 yeah I agree. But it persists

ehhhh.... depends where you live. in good infastructure cities like san diego, yes. in less good infastructure cities like anything between LA and Santa Barbra, heck no.

I can say there are improvements in many places and development, but really there is also decay happening as fast as improvement no matter the case.

@@projection-75-emulation the Bay Area including San Francisco have undergone a lot of infrastructure repairs. An entire section of I-80 in SF was removed and replaced with a new one.

@@projection-75-emulation Have you even seen the Sierras or the Central Valley?? SB-1 rescued the 99 and many other state highways that were crumbling. If anything there's more rural projects than urban

No.

. People aren't really understanding the numbers that need to be used to get us good infrastructure. It cost over one billion dollars to repave Interstate 80 between Sacramento and Reno. That was just 1 project that needed to be done.

If you’re not in prison then you’re not forced to live there

Then leave my guy

@@AlexCab_49 Never. I don't want to leave behind basic human rights and I know that most other states also have failing infrastructure.

@@DucklingGaming Ever heard about its expensive to move?

@@Mgameing123 I’d rather move to a better place and be broke than have money and live in hell

Because of demand. What's the point in having a brand new transport system that nobody will use. Then, you have the high cost of building said transport sustem. Trams and highspeed rail are very expensive, the bus is the less costly but then again, buses are part of car suburbia too.

@@alfredo12345neo that wouldn't have been the case if the govt wasn't sold out to auto giants from the beginning

@@sumit55468 They sold to car companies because of the high demand for vehicles. You have to take into account that 'we the people' are part of the problem too. In my city there is a bus transportation system that is free and nobody uses. People prefer to pay an uber to get to their destination rather than using the bus.

Because, public transport has been destroyed and so limited or absent it has became frowned upon in the US. Taking a bus, train, tram or bike, or even walking, makes people think that a person is a bum who can't afford a car. It's a status symbol now. Can you believe it?

California is the place where the tech heads would rather build an app that tracks human waste on the streets instead of getting rid of NIMBY laws and build denser neighborhoods so that people would have houses with toilets to shit in.

Don’t pay taxes then lol

How’s this relevant to the video…..

@@Juanesai0210 The gas taxes were supposed to help

Gas prices and gouging is occurring rn w inflation on a national level and the discourse behind that does not pertain to taxes towards infrastructure projects????

@@Juanesai0210 The SW US saw a larger gap grow in March of 2022

See my comment above

New York has just has horrid infrastructure. It just has less people then California that’s all.

New york is great and better than California, but still has issues and should build more housing, especially denser housing in the suburbs and improve public transportation.

@@greenmachine5600 there’s no means of measuring how much greater one is over the other. This is América it all sucks lol

What’s Ohio

@@DucklingGaming a state in the Midwest of the United States

@@thegrumpydragon7601 Ohio deez nuts

being an ohioan, our roads are shit but still better than indiana, michigan and pennsylvania

@@UserName-ts3sp ❤️

Same with me. I came from a small Native village in Alaska. You can get to anywhere just by walking. But, in Cincinnati, I literally have to get in the car, because if I want to drive to downtown, it would take me the whole day to get there.

Belgium infrastructure 💀

Louisiana roads too

@@edwardmiessner6502 never been to Louisiana

With the traffic manager mod and traffic despawning off for max realism. You learn real quick that transit and walk/bike path shortcuts fix so much traffic because its basic geometry. (A bus takes up the space of 3 cars and holds 60 people vs the 3 in those cars, ≈80% of cars are single occupancy. A walker takes up like 4sqft total and has no pollution impact, and noise impact is a per person issue. A train takes up roughly the space of a road but is massively more efficient in all regards and quieter.)

How would you get everything to a store. Virtually everything you touch, or buy is moved by trucks.

@@Rhaspun freight trains would be a viable alternative. Than you would just need smaller vehicles for that last mile from the depot to the store.

@@gabriell.4440 Stores aren't concentrated into one area. I don't think people would want to listen to trains running at night through a neighborhood. I don't know if you've ever been around trains, but they use their horns a lot, Each intersection they will be using their horns at required.

we have the worst system: high density and car dependent

Thank big oil and the auto industry for that.

CA has highly urbanized spots but most of the state is actually rural. Between LA and SF, there's a lot of empty space and farmland. However, you are right about it being too car-dependent. Cities here, especially in Socal just aren't built right. I live in San Diego and for me to take public transportation to the next freeway exit one mile away takes an hour and a half due to the way the routes go. Because of the way the roads are, walking to that street one mile away isn't possible.

San Francisco has good public transportation idk what you people are talking about.

Cities like SF do have great transit though, just not outside the city, which is car depend, and in defense of that, nobody is willing to take a bus and be in it for hours to nowhere

it won't be a problem unless our economy dwindles.

They're slowly tearing it down, just as Rochester, they turned their car dependent inner city into a nice walkable, bikable place

@@Racko. And there's nothing wrong with that. Foot traffic is becoming more important then car traffic.

@@seanbrummfield448 That's what im saying, Im not saying it's wrong, its the right way forward, ppl are sick of giant roads with noise and car dependency is what im saying, Amsterdam is what comes to mind when it think of one of the best urban area, it's insanely well done

@@alfredo12345neo That's what I think too. America makes a lot of money and feels like it can afford to ignore its problems at times. The most change occurs when something really bad happens if you're not proactive enough so the economy will have to take a hit caused by car infrastructure before people really start to question it.

That's even more expensive than our already expensive car suburbia. The most affordable is buses and just like cars requieres the current infrastructure.

@@alfredo12345neo the infrastructure is failing because it’s overused. Motor vehicles destroy their infrastructure fastest than any other mode of transport. And we no shortage of motor vehicles. Rail is expensive up front, but cars cost a lot more longer term than many realize. It’s a lot more evident when it’s time to rebuild or repave. But if we keep using that excuse it’ll never get built, and people will continue to be stuck in traffic in their cars on the dilapidated freeway.

@@alfredo12345neo Its more expensive at first but in the long run it is typically better. I'm an American and I know this.

But, so many people are fixed that the car is the best. Because of the status symbol.

@@seanbrummfield448 no its not... just simply building trains isnt going to solve the problem...the trains have to be financially profitable and maintainable over the long term...the geography and density and demographics are totally different in LA compared to european countries....AND not everyone wants to live in a tiny apartment

Hit the nail on the head! Just like all the $ that California spends on the homeless yet the problem just keeps worsening.

Too much corruption in the system , too much money get funneled to individual of dubious nature. Over spending or magically go over budget.

Thanks. I have seen reports indicating that California's population has been declining but the population projections in this video were from official news reports, and were not my personal opinion ;)

@@ArkiveYT that may be, but several reports also show the opposite. I guess its a who do you believe more.

Yeah exactly. I just believe that whether the population increases or decreases in the next few years, the infrastructure should still be fixed.

@@ArkiveYT Wow. Your topic has sure garnered a lot of response. Thanks.

Yup!!

We are 13th on quality of infrastructure out of 100 studied countries by statista. I think we are exagerating a tiny bit.

and yet half of those problems would be less or solved if only there are less roads to maintain as roads take up so much space because of cars. and the revenue you love so much could be spent on other infrastructure instead, the same way car owners could spend their money more on other things other than gas/cars

@@user-op4mc1cu3o So you're suggesting we fund infrastructure projects meant to reduce car traffic using revenue from car usage? Do you seriously not see the problem with this? The car industry as a whole is an economic powerhouse to any country that has a decent one. That's true for America, but also China, India, Germany, or France. I'm not sure people buying even more bullshit from Asia will be able to replace that. And before you tell me it's unethical to say people should empty their wallets on their cars, don't forget that the market is meant to trick people into spending every cent they have regardless of what they buy : be it their car, bike, phone, or kitchen appliances. This is exactly why for many people, bad things always come up when they manage to put a little money on the side.

@@saltyalex2035 The thing that people don’t seem to understand is that you can have both. If you lived in a walkable area you can still have a car. But the key is to have options, in the United States there is no option the majority of the cases than to own a car. Look at Japan, they’re the biggest car manufacturers in the world yet their infrastructure in terms of walkability is so much better than the US. Its not like the auto industry disappears because there is infrastructure better suiting for walking. Things need to change, whether it be through funding infrastructure projects or changing zoning. You have to realize things need to change.

​@@andrewgonzales5363 Japanese car manufacturers are among the biggest because the vast majority of their sales and profits are made outside of Japan. Most notably... the United States. It's a terrible example. No you can't have both. Either people use their cars and spend money on them, or they don't. The car industry is a whole lot more than just the manufacture and sale of new vehicles, that's just the tip of the iceberg and it's a common mistake to forget that: insurance, road maintenance, fuel manufacture, gas stations, mechanic shops, parts manufacturers, parts sellers, used cars sellers, car washes, accessories, racing, media, specialized journalists, ... all these things represent the majority of the car industry and completely depend on people driving their cars. I'm not even getting into all the unrelated jobs induced by these activities. In France, direct, indirect, and induced jobs from the car industry represent 9% of the entire workforce. I'm not against giving people options, and I 100% agree that american urban design is not sustainable (though I personally like it but that's another story). What I can't stand is amateur "urbanists" using every chance they get to blame everything on cars, and oversimplistic dumbasses thinking all our problems would disappear if people just went to work by bike and transit. There is no such thing as a simple solution when it comes to such complex issues.

@@saltyalex2035 Insurance, fuel, maintenance, and car payments are all cost burdens on those who own cars. The vast majority of Americans would be much better off if they had $600 to spend on other living expenses, it's not like that money would disappear from the economy it'd still go somewhere. You mention in France the auto industry represents 9% of their workforce. That's proof that you CAN have both good urbanism and booming auto industry. France's urban development is much more walkable-oriented than the US, yet the percentage of Americans with jobs in the auto industry is less than 9%. You can like the design of the suburbs, that's fine. But it's not like they will suddenly disappear because there are zoning changes and infrastructure to accommodate those that aren't driving. We need to enact these changes now so the country would be better off in 30 years when you can actually see these changes. And yeah, the short-handed thinking that some people have when they think a bike lane will solve everything is annoying, but they're on the right path of thinking. As you said it's a complex issue, and it won't be solved immediately. I'm glad more and more people are starting to see how fucked up America was built, though.