# When did US civil engineering reach "peak efficiency" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 23, 2017, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314 "2017-05-23T22:55:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/21 "2017-05-24T15:41:37Z")
> [@joema](#): > > E.g, the US interstate highway system went from zero to 50% complete (20,000 miles) in only nine years – 1956 to 1965. But the project cost $511 billion in 2015 dollars. It was built in a less populated era and largely in rural settings. It was 90% funded by the federal government. That’s a pretty good example of my point in the OP. 500 billion, 20000 miles of it complete in 9 years. That seems pretty damn efficient to me for the entire interstate system of the country . e.g. Big Dig in Boston alone (about 3.5 miles of tunnels) took 15 years and cost 22 billion. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/22 "2017-05-24T16:26:17Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > That’s a pretty good example of my point in the OP. 500 billion, 20000 miles of it complete in 9 years. That seems pretty damn efficient to me for the entire interstate system of the country . e.g. Big Dig in Boston alone (about 3.5 miles of tunnels) took 15 years and cost 22 billion. You really don’t understand why it’s cheaper to build a new road in a wide-open countryside than it is to build tunnels underneath one of the oldest and densest cities in the country and underneath parts of the adjacent ocean (while keeping traffic flowing on the existing roads) ? If you really don’t understand that, then I’m afraid you need more help than we can give you. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/23 "2017-05-24T16:37:37Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > You really don’t understand why it’s cheaper to build a new road in a wide-open countryside than it is to build tunnels underneath one of the oldest and densest cities in the country and underneath parts of the adjacent ocean (while keeping traffic flowing on the existing roads) ? > > If you really don’t understand that, then I’m afraid you need more help than we can give you. And if you think that the US interstate system only goes through “wide-open countryside” then I am not sure you’ve ever actually traveled on it. ---
**Author:** ![Surreal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eada6e/32.png) [@Surreal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Surreal)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/24 "2017-05-24T16:51:02Z")
Steve Sailer offers some reasons for why major construction projects take so much longer these days here: > **[Print - Taki's Magazine](https://www.takimag.com/article/grandfather-clause/print/)** > > Takimag is a Libertarian webzine. We believe the best stories are smart, cheeky, and culturally relevant. We take our politics like we take life - lightly. > [@](#): > > Ironically, I live a few blocks from the huge water main that William Mulholland, portrayed in Chinatown as Hollis Mulwray, the honest civil engineer, laid across the Valley in 1914 to bring Owens Valley water. Mulholland got it built in about a year using mules and men swinging picks. It has worked quite well, but in this century the pipe intermittently springs geysers and likely wouldn’t survive the next major earthquake. > > So the Department of Water and Power has been laying a replacement water main in parallel to Mulholland’s. Yet despite a profusion of immense earthmoving machines, they’ve been puttering away on the project since 2008. > > How did Mulholland get vast projects built so fast a century ago? ---
**Author:** ![Dorjan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dorjan/32/12440_2.png) [@Dorjan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorjan)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/25 "2017-05-24T17:20:03Z")
> [@joema](#): > > If you funded a $511 billion rural superhighway project today with priority on rapid completion it could be done pretty fast. Somehow I doubt this. This is not a reflection on current civil engineering capability, but on environmental, political, legal, and eminent domain issues. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/26 "2017-05-24T17:48:10Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > That’s a pretty good example of my point in the OP. 500 billion, 20000 miles of it complete in 9 years. That seems pretty damn efficient to me for the entire interstate system of the country . e.g. Big Dig in Boston alone (about 3.5 miles of tunnels) took 15 years and cost 22 billion. Most of the 20,000 miles completed in the first nine years were exactly the sort of rural highways you handwaved away in your next post - and any project looks like a success if you only count the easy bits. It’s like saying Concorde was a success because the [HP.115 testbed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handley_Page_HP.115) was completed early and under budget. The first state to complete its planned interstates was Nebraska, and that didn’t happen until 1974. In populated areas, the Interstate Highway System also co-opted lots of existing roads, so nothing was actually built. For example, I-70 and I-76 were originally the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which existed long before the Federal Aid Highway Act. The originally planned highway network wasn’t complete until 1992, and even then it didn’t include about 25% of the planned routes. As a whole, the original interstate system was 23 years overdue and almost 400% over budget. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/27 "2017-05-24T18:12:14Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Most of the 20,000 miles completed in the first nine years were exactly the sort of rural highways you handwaved away in your next post - and any project looks like a success if you only count the easy bits. It’s like saying Concorde was a success because the [HP.115 testbed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handley_Page_HP.115) was completed early and under budget. The $511 billion figure isn’t for the first 20k miles, it is for the [entire system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System). So totally the Big Dig comparison is completely valid as a really obvious example of what I meant by the OP. The Big Dig cost only one order of magnitude less ($22bn vs 511bn) than the entire US interstate system!. While it’s probably true to that no individual 4 mile section of the US interstate system was as complicated as the Big Dig, there were some pretty complicated projects included in it, and it include 10s of thousands of miles of highway (and thousands of bridges and tunnels). As a project, the entire US interstate highway system is undeniably many many orders of magnitude larger, than Big Dig. ---
**Author:** ![joema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9adbd/32.png) [@joema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joema)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/28 "2017-05-24T18:20:09Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > …500 billion, 20000 miles of it complete in 9 years. That seems pretty damn efficient to me for the entire interstate system of the country . e.g. Big Dig in Boston alone (about 3.5 miles of tunnels) took 15 years and cost 22 billion. If the “Big Dig” was attempted by the allegedly more “efficient” civil engineering of past eras, it would have either totally failed or been vastly more expensive. It was only possible because of then-new gigantic tunnel boring machines. They also had to use huge refrigeration units to freeze the ground to stabilize it for work below, and computerized data acquisition to monitor geologic shifts. Those technologies didn’t exist previously. Today tunnel boring machines are more efficient and reliable, and if the Big Dig was done today it would likely be less expensive. ---
**Author:** ![joema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9adbd/32.png) [@joema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joema)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/29 "2017-05-24T18:49:48Z")
> [@Snarky\_Kong](#): > > …Older bridges are often stronger than newer bridges because they had to make up for what they lacked in analytical capabilities… An example of this was the Brooklyn Bridge. Due to the inability to model expected loads, it was constructed with a 600% design margin on the suspension cables. This in turn greatly increased the cost – in fact it took 14 years to build and the financiers almost went bankrupt due to the inefficient use of materials. At least 24 people died during the construction. By contrast modern suspension bridges use a structural safety margin of 220% to 250%, which is much more efficient, e.g, the Verrazano–Narrows Bridge only took five years to build and consumed far less raw materials. Only three people died during construction. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/30 "2017-05-24T19:06:44Z")
> [@joema](#): > > By contrast modern suspension bridges use a structural safety margin of 220% to 250%, which is much more efficient, e.g, the Verrazano–Narrows Bridge only took five years to build and consumed far less raw materials. Only three people died during construction. This is exactly what I was describing. So I’d say the period of it’s completion (mid-1960s) would be a good candidate for the date I was looking for. Advances in technology meant that Verrazano–Narrows Bridge was significantly more efficient in it’s construction than previous bridges, and this showed in the time and money required to complete it. By contrast the on going [project to rework it](http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2015/10/decades_of_necessary_construct.html) is expected to take decades and cost $1.5 billion, despite being far smaller in scope than the original construction. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/31 "2017-05-24T19:13:02Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > This is exactly what I was describing. So I’d say the period of it’s completion (mid-1960s) would be a good candidate for the date I was looking for. > > Advances in technology meant that Verrazano–Narrows Bridge was significantly more efficient in it’s construction than previous bridges, and this showed in the time and money required to complete it. By contrast the on going [project to rework it](http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2015/10/decades_of_necessary_construct.html) is expected to take decades and cost $1.5 billion, despite being far smaller in scope than the original construction. One deck of the bridge will remain open while the other is being reconstructed. Was the bridge in use when it was first being constructed? I think not. ---
**Author:** ![Surreal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eada6e/32.png) [@Surreal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Surreal)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/32 "2017-05-24T19:26:57Z")
Scott Alexander shows that _costs_ of major projects in the US have also climbed considerably, but the same is not true for other developed nations: > **[Considerations On Cost Disease](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/)** > > I. Tyler Cowen writes about cost disease. I’d previously heard the term used to refer only to a specific theory of why costs are increasing, involving labor becoming more efficient in some ar… > [@](#): > > Fourth, we se similar effects in infrastructure. The first New York City subway opened around 1900. Various sources list lengths from 10 to 20 miles and costs from $30 million to $60 million dollars – I think my sources are capturing it at different stages of construction with different numbers of extensions. In any case, it suggests costs of between $1.5 million to $6 million dollars/mile = $1-4 million per kilometer. That looks like it’s about the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $100 million/kilometer today, though I’m very uncertain about that estimate. In contrast, **Vox notes that a new New York subway line being opened this year costs about $2.2 billion per kilometer, suggesting a cost increase of twenty times** – although I’m very uncertain about this estimate. > > Things become clearer when you compare them country-by-country. **The same Vox article notes that Paris, Berlin, and Copenhagen subways cost about $250 million per kilometer, almost 90% less**. Yet even those European subways are overpriced compared to Korea, where a kilometer of subway in Seoul costs $40 million/km (another Korean subway project cost $80 million/km). This is a difference of 50x between Seoul and New York for apparently comparable services. It suggests that the 1900s New York estimate above may have been roughly accurate if their efficiency was roughly in line with that of modern Europe and Korea. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/33 "2017-05-24T19:29:57Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > One deck of the bridge will remain open while the other is being reconstructed. Was the bridge in use when it was first being constructed? I think not. That is cool for the commuters of NY, doesn’t change the the fact replacing the roadways is far smaller engineering project than building the entire bridge from scratch. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/34 "2017-05-24T19:46:05Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > That is cool for the commuters of NY, doesn’t change the the fact replacing the roadways is far smaller engineering project than building the entire bridge from scratch. On what basis? When that bridge was built they were probably allowed to drop crap into the Narrows as they were building, they won’t be allowed to do that now. They didn’t have to worry about the load of the traffic using the bridge on one of the decks either, not to mention the dangers of a deck full of cars falling if anything goes wrong. Plenty of other new regulations are involved now also. You’re comparing apples and pomegranates. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/35 "2017-05-24T19:57:24Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > On what basis? When that bridge was built they were probably allowed to drop crap into the Narrows as they were building, they won’t be allowed to do that now. They didn’t have to worry about the load of the traffic using the bridge on one of the decks either, not to mention the dangers of a deck full of cars falling if anything goes wrong. Plenty of other new regulations are involved now also. You’re comparing apples and pomegranates. I agree with this. No way can you compare older projects built on a clear field, with minimal safety and environmental concerns, with modern projects built to allow the continuation of all current services as much of the time as possible. Engineering was a tiny fraction as advanced 100 or even 50 years ago as it is today. Computer aids make far more complex designs possible, with better materials and better construction. You might as well argue that hospitals were more efficient 100 years ago because fewer people died in them. That’s only because most people never went to hospitals, knowing that they couldn’t be helped. ---
**Author:** ![Tranquilis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tranquilis/32/3639_2.png) [@Tranquilis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tranquilis)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/36 "2017-05-24T20:41:59Z")
> [@joema](#): > > If the “Big Dig” was attempted by the allegedly more “efficient” civil engineering of past eras, it would have either totally failed or been vastly more expensive. It was only possible because of then-new gigantic tunnel boring machines. They also had to use huge refrigeration units to freeze the ground to stabilize it for work below, and computerized data acquisition to monitor geologic shifts. Those technologies didn’t exist previously. Today tunnel boring machines are more efficient and reliable, and if the Big Dig was done today it would likely be less expensive. They did some serious civil-engineering sorcery with the Big Dig - No way in hell it could’ve been done even 20 years sooner. I seem to recall a number - One life per million dollars - quoted with the early-to-mid-20th century civil engineering projects. Can anyone tell me if that was an accurate assessment? Or did I hallucinate that number (I recall it being in some “mega project” documentary)? ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/37 "2017-05-24T20:44:45Z")
Take the recent I-85 “bridge” collapse in [Atlanta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_85_bridge_collapse). Projected to take many months to replace, etc. It’s 3 sections of 6 lanes in each direction of a raised portion of the freeway. Finished in less than a month and a half for under $20 million including a $3 million bonus early completion bonus to the contractor. (Well worth it, IMHO. The economic impact of this was significant.) I don’t see people from 20 years ago doing such an emergency job (including clearing a _lot_ of rubble) in so short of time for so little money. ---
**Author:** ![Tranquilis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tranquilis/32/3639_2.png) [@Tranquilis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tranquilis)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/38 "2017-05-24T20:50:38Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > I don’t see people from 20 years ago doing such an emergency job (including clearing a _lot_ of rubble) in so short of time for so little money. I wonder if civil engineers don’t have “canned projects” such as this sitting in a filing cabinet, just waiting for the specific details to be filled in. Seems to me, like war plans, having ‘canned jobs’ gamed-out in advance would save a LOT of planning time (Item one: Replace major bridge span. Item two: Resurface one mile of major highway, Item three: replace washed out culvert, Item four… ). Just plug the umbers in and you’ve got a decent estimate of materials, manpower, cost, and time. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/39 "2017-05-24T21:01:30Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Take the recent I-85 “bridge” collapse in [Atlanta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_85_bridge_collapse). Projected to take many months to replace, etc. > > It’s 3 sections of 6 lanes in each direction of a raised portion of the freeway. > > Finished in less than a month and a half for under $20 million including a $3 million bonus early completion bonus to the contractor. (Well worth it, IMHO. The economic impact of this was significant.) > > I don’t see people from 20 years ago doing such an emergency job (including clearing a _lot_ of rubble) in so short of time for so little money. Also consider the clearing the rubble at Ground Zero. Done without following environmental and safety regulations a $625 million award is expected to be paid to those affected with a variety of illnesses. Given enough machines and people an equivalent project could have been performed just as quickly in the past. It was an only the emergency situation that allowed that project to be executed that way, and with a good number of people saying it was a mistake to do so. Try to build the Hoover Dam now and it would certainly cost more after adjusting for the value of the dollar, but all again because of regulations involved, and it probably wouldn’t be allowed at all because of the environmental impact. If there’s inefficiency here it’s not in the engineering. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314/40 "2017-05-24T21:20:57Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > . You’re comparing apples and pomegranates. Its building all the components a bridge, completely​ from scratch. Including installing two massive towers in a major water way, and the cables that hold them, and road ways that connect them. With JUST replacing the roadways on that bridge. It’s the SAME bridge. I am comparing a massive engineering project with a subset of that same project (with complications, granted but still a small subset) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-us-civil-engineering-reach-peak-efficiency/787314.md?page=3)