Warning to any socialist or otherwise Big Government advocates: the following information may disrupt your worldview.  Unless, of course, you’re impervious to facts, in which case you may feel little to no discomfort at all.  From Hot Air:
In t…

Anyway, the private contracts for repairing the bridges in the LA area were a master-stroke. It saved Los Angelenos and their neighbors untold millions of dollars in wasted commute time alone.

The moral of these stories is, “If you have a problem then make it worth the while of someone in the private sector to fix it. Then stay out of their way except to perform normal inspections during construction.”

{^_^}

Their heads might implode from the thought that they might be doing anything like those “bible thumpin, gun totin’, doublewide with an El Camino up on blocks in the front yard livin’ ignorant racist redneck morons” in Texas.

However, MNDOT does an absolutely pitiful and woefully inadequate job of road maintenance. I’ve seen large cracks in concrete pavement on a major highway sit untouched for 5 to 10 years – meanwhile the usual MN freeze-that cycles damage the pavement further, resulting in a more expensive repair later (assuming they ever do make the repair). Basically, there is zero preventive maintenance of road surfaces.

What MNDOT should do is outsource road maintenance and repair, like they do with building bridges and offer incentives based on a) improving quality of the driving surface, b) doing preventive maintenance and c) quickness in responding to fixing problems when they first occur.

MNDOT also needs to strengthen the contruction standards for new roads they build. Some of the roads built in the last 20 years that are not lasting the supposed 30 year life span the standards call for. I’ve seen some have major deficiencies in less than 10 years.

The result? The contractor restored the roads and bridges in months instead of years, and at a fraction of the cost that Caltrans would have incurred.

And I’ll bet in Mn. just like in Ca. a number of “prominent” people will cry and moan and sue because they are just too short sighted to see or appreciate the huge amount of money and time (which represents more money) saved by offering incentives and getting over it from paying them.

Agree with Wanderlust… wasn’t Boston’s “Big Dig” handled by private contractors as well?

Skywise on May 4, 2008 at 1:25 PM

Yes, and that project was a perfect case for the argument I made above. Bottom line regarding the Big Dig’s financial and engineering woes was that the State of MA sloughed off its responsibility to manage the project in terms of it being the customer – it pushed this responsibility off to the contractor (Bechtel/Parsons Brinkerhoff JV) as its agent, and failed to include in the scope of the agency arrangement all the things that the State would hold responsibility and liability over, post project handover.

Then MA changed the rules several times, including the scope of construction that led to the woman getting killed by a falling bolt in the Ted Williams tunnel, after the plans had been written to incorporate a different design type.

Also (anecdotally, via Bruce at MassBackwards blog; Google is your friend), MA allegedly imposed “diversity” hiring targets on the JV that elevated certain kinds of statistics (e.g., race and gender) over that of experience and qualifications. If this allegation is true, it would have significantly impacted the project schedule.

Ed, a good read about lessons learned from that project can be found at this link at City Journal. Regarding scope creep, here’s the money quote:

In 1994, two years into construction, Bechtel and Parsons officials compiled convincing evidence that the Big Dig would cost nearly $14 billion in completion-year dollars—far more than public officials were disclosing—and took their findings to the state, says former state inspector general Bob Cerasoli, who supervised a 2001 report on the Big Dig’s finances. But the state didn’t tell the public, so alarming Bechtel that its president flew to Boston to see then-governor William Weld. Afterward, according to Cerasoli’s report, “state managers directed state and [Bechtel and Parsons] staff to . . . maintain the fiction of an . . . $8 billion project. . . . They did so by applying a largely semantic series of exclusions, deductions, and accounting assumptions that covered up the $6 billion difference,” often with the knowledge of federal highway officials.

In the end, MA extorted (my words) approx $500M out of the JV to cover project overrun costs and liabilities out of accidents and repairs.

Food for thought.

Google “Private Finance Initiatives” in the UK for some prime examples of this. There are a number of UK companies who are going to make an absolute killing out of UK PFI deals at the taxpayer’s expense because of the incompetence of the government functionaries who negotiated the deals…

You can always find examples both ways but overall it is obvious that the private sector generally does a much better and more efficient job.
duff65 on May 4, 2008 at 2:04 PM

Good point.

I think that was the Captain’s main point.

Indeed, there may be “exceptions” or individual cases that may raise “red flags” to embracing some versions of Libertarianism that deny any governmental activity of any sort.

Thanks for your posts and the link. Quality stuff.

RushBaby on May 4, 2008 at 2:07 PM

Thank you. I have enjoyed reading your comments in the past.

As the whole area of the highway was under construction, they diverted materials and resources from other projects and had a new bridge up in days.

I recommend this website to my HA friends. The articles on economics and Statism are pretty good.

ColtsFan on May 4, 2008 at 1:08 PM

Thanks for your posts and the link. Quality stuff.

Install and operate cameras and then issue tickets for running red lights.

California passed a state law pre-empting some shenanigans the private contractor was using to enhance revenue in So-Cal. Short timing the yellow light was a favorite.

Ten years ago, I’d have been dead set against these things, but red-light running got so blatant here in the north state that something needed to be done. It’s rude and dangerous, and if it takes a $300 ticket to get their attention, then I’m all for it. It beats raising taxes, and violators can watch the digital videos of themselves with a password on the web. A police officer reviews each violation before a ticket is issued, so iffy cases can be tossed.

The private sector installs and the city monitors and collects — from the people who most deserve it.

I just hope Flatiron shares some of that incentive with the workers. They made it happen too!

Especially when courts are generally wary of suits against police (except those involving brutality or loss of life), but far less so against private companies?

I’m not saying I like the light cameras – I understand why they use them, but I’ve never trusted them, especially since I’m always seeing them going off on empty intersections and people still run reds like crazy.

Install and operate cameras and then issue tickets for running red lights.

Perhaps at some point, people will learn to harness the power of the private sector more completely for future public efforts as well.

I have a real problem with some applications of this theory. For example, police departments that allow private companies install, operate, and issue tickets for running red lights. You simply can’t hold a contractor to the same level of accountability as you do a public official.