How Much Community Outreach Does the Urban Institute Think Italy and Turkey Do?
The Urban Institute just published a brief about community outreach for public transportation construction projects. The authors are Yonah Freemark, Gabe Samuels, and Christina Plerhoples Stacy; I don’t know the latter two but I know Yonah well and respect him and his expertise and global curiosity. So I honestly don’t understand why the brief concludes that the US’s problem is “inefficient community engagement” and the solution is to do more community engagement early in the process. Worse, the brief for some reason cites Italy and Turkey, via our transit costs reports, as places that do earlier, more effective community engagement, rather than as places with rather top-down decisionmaking and limited citizen voice. It’s sad, because the brief does go over the problems of the American process but can’t bring itself to the right conclusion, namely that community engagement should be curtailed; its only response to the problems of engagement are to suggest earlier engagement rather than less of it.
The brief is, well, brief. I recommend people read it in full. It quickly goes over the usual critiques of the American community engagement process: it is skewed toward higher-income residents, who are likelier to own a car; public meetings attract people with the leisure to attend during business hours; it leads to defensive design such as the reluctance to engage in surface disruption when building subway stations. All of these are real problems. But the brief tries to rescue the idea that public engagement should inform decisions, by criticizing the “decide, announce, defend” mentality of infrastructure project managers and by demanding early engagement.
Then the solutions proposed are a mixed bag. Some are good, and are lumped in with community outreach even when they’re not about any such thing. The invocation of our Italy and Turkey cases is about the public itemization of costs for infrastructure contracts, but this is not about any outreach but rather about contracting transparency for anti-corruption purposes, and the database is not easily legible to the general public. The same is true of in-house expertise, of simplifying project homologation, and of limiting contingencies; unfortunately, the brief frames the latter in the language of “create contingency budget limits” rather than stating the real problem, which is that federal regulations in the last decade began requiring much higher contingency than is normal, 40% rather than the 20% used in Turkey, and these are mirrored in the UK as an ersatz attempt to deal with cost overruns without addressing the underlying cost problems.
In contrast, the invocation of early and representative community engagement is awkward on the same list. The list tries to coast on the reputation of Italy and Turkey among parts of American transit advocacy for low-cost construction in order to justify more involved outreach laws. But neither Italy nor Turkey is a state with strong civil society empowerment in community engagement. Italian infrastructure construction heavily involves different administrative bureaucracies, for protection of labor, the environment, and historical monuments, but not the community. The community does not have the expertise to judge whether some construction technique is a risk to a Renaissance cathedral. Among our low-cost cases, Sweden has higher citizen voice empowerment and even permits some litigation, but far less than the United States or, as of late, the United Kingdom; it too relies extensively on bureaucratic legalism, and the outreach there tends to be done to large collective groups, for example umbrella unions on matters of labor, or a feminist bureaucracy on matters of gender equality.
What makes me bitter about this entire concept is that the good proposals the brief is trying to wed to outreach are about empowering bureaucrats, not civil society. Civil society does not build infrastructure. The administrative state does. Civil society extracts money and betterments from the administrative state whenever it is empowered to do so, because budgets that are third-order for the state are massive wins for petty actors. But 10 third-order items are a second-order item and 10 second-order items are a first-order one, and the costs of veto points and community actors mount. The solution isn’t to involve any such groups early; it is to not involve them at all.
Pedestrian Observations 
I think this is funny. Let’s make sure to get engagement to make important decisions, but weight that based on demographic data. Instead of just using demographic data to make the decisions in the first place.
experts often are not experts in a neighborhood. So we should get input from the experts who live there. However they need to lose input before we make any decisions that are hard to change. If your map is more than crayons on a napkin it is too late for changes.
On the other hand people tend to think they are more different than they really are. Most weird things about your neighborhood are the same as every other one.
Mostly agree. Certainly I first order agree.
But I do think also even if a complaint comes in late you have to work out if there’s anything you can do to fix it that isn’t too expensive. Perhaps you could plant more mature trees to block out noise or whatever – and maybe as a quid-pro-quo the community has to organise watering them.
Agree, but of course the countryside is meaningfully different from the big city.
Input needs to stop at the point where a design goes from “crayons” to real design. Different changes reach that at different times. You can’t change the route once you have have contracts on any of the land (contract means you haven’t bought it, but you have agreed to buy it and are only checking the paperwork – contracts sometimes allow backing out for reasons – like if you discover an endangered species meaning building isn’t allowed – but in general once you have the contract only major things allow changes, and a route change shouldn’t be reason to back out even though you don’t legally own the land yet). Paint color can be changed until the minute the painters buy the paint – which is often after the primer layer is on (paint is also cheap to change latter, but no longer free and should be considered locked in for 10 years)
In my opinion even if you do your community outreach on a CAD system you should use the “joke” plugin that prints this out as if a kid drew it with crayons. Crayons like drawings tell the community how locked in you are to the design, and in turn frames what people will talk about. In all stages of community outreach you should know what parts are open to change and those should be presented as if done with crayons. Any change that is expensive needs to be discussed earlier in the process and anytime someone brings it up latter shut that down: “that was decided [date]. and is not up for discussion”.
Remember Alon’s point: the people are who show up for community outreach meetings are “busy bodies” who don’t have other things to do with their time. They do not represent the population, not even the population of people who care. They can still be useful tools, but they do not represent the population, if you need population input then it needs to be on the ballot where we survey the population. (in some cases you can use various statistical methods as well – community outreach is not a valid way to see what people think since it excludes too many people who care but also care about other things)
If you made a meaningful number of people happy by changing the paint colour a week before the trains start running it’s probably still worth it.
And yes, that is probably implausible.
But it might well be plausible that there was community demand to plant some large plants a week before the train line opens to absorb noise – and that’s probably going to be a £10k ish project depending on how many plants you need and including watering equipment.
Plus people who care about the community who often in my experience want to get stuff done.
I have been to council meetings where they are keen to encourage comments as even if you aren’t fully supportive you are going to be more constructive than the “busy bodies”.
Speaking to the elite in a given area at least means you are talking to people who live in the community. If you want to gather feedback going door-to-door isn’t terrible although it does have its biases as well (as you have to be in).
What I think is silly, is not using local/expert opinions at all, but attempting to reverse engineer demographic data using only the most vocal examples of each demographic basically.
Yes, I think residential/job density, built environment (e.g. bike lanes, bus lanes, stroads), wealth, and other factors can do quite a good job of determining transit needs and wants. Community feedback can potentially help surfacing those needs and wants, but in practice I suspect it is usually a mechanism for building anti-transit or petty corruption narratives. I wonder if community feedback might be better applied to metrics used to determine transit, for instance how much priority to place on carbon emissions. But that starts to get into territory better handled by voting.
I don’t think it is quite that simple. But it does mean those people feel listened to which is also important.
I think it’s probably mostly people being concerned about their homes being worth less.
But also probably there is an issue with people who never use the train being more concerned. That probably at least in part explains why these things are such a big deal in the US.
> I think residential/job density, built environment (e.g. bike lanes, bus lanes, stroads), wealth, and other factors can do quite a good job of determining transit needs and wants
Be careful about that. They are useful indicators, but they show what things are like today. Most people cannot look at a change and see how they would use it, unless the change is trivial. I can see how I can use a new lane pass other cars. If your new road doesn’t go obviously more directly where I want to go I can’t see how it will help others get out of “my land” and so help me. If I’m driving I can’t see how a transit system would help me. (it takes several years before people who a new transit mode is objectively better for switch to it)
However what we currently have is useful data. Where people are coming from or going to will not change much in the next 5 years, so that is your first target. Even there though, people are not going to change the office or church they go to (two examples of fixed places people go, there are more), but they will change which stores they shop at if you make a different mall easier to get to – but only if you otherwise change their habits to use your new mode.
Agree, I do think there is quite a bit of evidence that selling the most straightforward improvements is easier than the more complicated ones. E.g. selling the Chiltern mainline upgrades was easier than selling Oxford Parkway to the people of North Oxford as the latter involved a behaviour change.
Hi
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I apologize for not being 100% relevant since I’m not living in the US, but I feel like the brief is not as far as you might think it is.
AFAIU, I mostly share your analysis about kind of a “too much community involvement” thing that doesn’t preserve projects (from NIMBY lobbies, for instance), but I’m not sure it’s easy to set apart such groups, and it seems the Urban Institute take this into account by calling for representative and efficient community engagement, implicitly highlighting such groups aren’t 😉
Are you arguing for top-down imposition of infrastructure projects (which at least in some areas would violate at least one UN resolution)?
Alon’s authoritarian streak rears it’s ugly head frequently, as in
Ignore the peons and they will get out the pitchforks and torches. At the very least lean on their legislators and withhold funding.
Your idea of benevolent dictator can be radically different than what other people imagine. It’s quite easy to imagine one that thinks Real Australians(tm) like Real Americans(tm) drive everywhere and trains are a communist plot.
I think “technocratic” would be a better word, as “authoritarian” is often used to mean “bigoted” (eg Bob Altemeyer’s “Right Wing Authoritarianism”) and Alon certainly isn’t that.
Competent technocrats realize they aren’t omniscient. And consider the advice of the local yokels. Sometimes they can point things out.
Alon doesn’t like democracy in general. Authoritarian.
Which UN resolution(s)?
J.G, there are more serious issues in the Middle East but the UN Human Rights Council said that a Jerusalem Light Rail project serving controversial settlements was illegal. The Board of directors for the tram manufacturer CAF is currently under investigation by the Spanish Prosecutor’s office. Alstom quit the project in 2021 under pressure from pension funds.
If you look at the UNHRC resolution, it is the fact that the tramway was to an illegal (under international law) settlement that was condemned. Nothing to do with lack of civilian consultation AFAIK, otherwise the UNHRC would be be filing transit related resolutions every couple months on some country or another. IANAL.
https://digitallibrary.un.org/nanna/record/680837/files/A_HRC_RES_13_7-EN.pdf?withWatermark=0&withMetadata=0®isterDownload=1&version=1
UNDRIP, which demands complete consent and by implication no eminent domain.
So you’ve chosen to interpret a UNGA resolution on the rights of indigenous peoples for self-determination – which does not compel a member state to do anything – as demanding complete consent of all peoples on infrastructure projects and then “imply” that that fully abnegates eminent domain. Interesting choice.
Here in the real world, the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause of the United States Constitution gives the United States government (and, affirmed by case law, state governments) the right to seize private property for public use and compensate the owner. The owners may express their displeasure at the ballot box.
I suggest you look up the concept of “free, prior, and informed consent”. And the US is not the only country in the world!
I suggest you look up how General Assembly resolutions work. I’ll save you the time: They do not have the force of law unless the member state passes enabling legislation making it so.
I suggest you recognize that a declaration or concept pertaining to the rights of indigenous peoples is not relevant to this conversation.
I suggest you realize the original post talks about American public engagement in particular and its citation as an obstacle to project delivery. I suggest you connect the dots to why I cite the Constitution alone, specifically to address your so-called implication of a powerless piece of paper supposedly prohibiting eminent domain.
I made no comment on whether UN resolutions have the force of law, I disagree strongly that the rights of indigenous peoples are inherently unrelated to infrastructure projects, and the original post is making international comparisons of public engagement.
“UN, SchmUN.” -David Ben-Gurion.
More seriously: UN-style governance has always aimed to destroy the state and replace it with NGOs, on the theory that NGOs are better for human rights. In practice, armed groups freely coerce them and commandeer their resources, and NGO-scale governance doesn’t ever work for infrastructure, only health and education, which don’t have economies of scale. The anti-state mentality in development is the flip side of the neoliberal attempt to destroy state planning in developed countries and replace it with private consultants supervising other consultants, which process made countries like the UK completely incapable of building infrastructure, independently of any civil society empowerment or excessive NIMBYism, which issues only started binding around the 2010s and are not why Crossrail was so expensive (HS2, yes, but not Crossrail).
For the same reason, the UNESCO process is a fundamentally NIMBY one, which views building more housing as a luxury and keeping often low-conservation value places for tourists as a human right.
The Elizabeth line benefitted local people along the line. HS2 didn’t. That’s the big difference with regards to “NIMBYs”.
That has not stopped NIMBY opponents of urban rail lines, even metros with shorter interstations than Crossrail, from threatening lawsuits. The LIRR Third Track project faced NIMBYs who objected to the increased traffic (on commuter trains than they can ride). Brussels Metro Line 3 is facing immense community opposition by the sort of people who think urban growth is icky. The Tel Aviv Metro project is facing NIMBY opposition from Ra’anana, which the system is planned to serve with multiple stops.
The people of Buckinghamshire didn’t object to the Evergreen upgrades for the Chiltern mainline.
There were objections to the electrification at Goring and the Chiltern upgrade at north Oxford, but in the former case I don’t think they pointed out that the electric trains would be quieter and in the latter case the community engagement was poor – which they were much better at with the Reading station upgrade.
And I suspect with Goring they also didn’t mention the quicker acceleration of EMUs.
By the way, the three comments you wrote that got hit by the spamfilter look like you’ve rewritten to get past the filter – do you still need me to rescue them?
No, I assumed it was some sort of login issue.
Which is how things work in a democracy. Pesky First Amendment. Allowing people to speak freely about petitioning the government for redress. Pesky.
Lawn Guyland is epitome of railroad suburb. I’m sure some of the people who bought the cheap real estate with the LIRR in the backyard did it so they could cosplay being a Real American(tm) and drive everywhere. And lead full lives without changing trains in Jamaica. Or going into Queens at all.
Billable hours to check on other people’s billable hours!! It likely involves lots of typing too. What’s not to like? I’m sure there are other consultants charging billable hour to audit how you are checking on the original billable hours. And profits!! because the stalwart captains of private industry will do such and efficient job it will be cheaper than civil servants and there will be profits!!! To pay CEOs and CFOs and CIOs and all sorts of other hangers on who don’t type much or have many billable hours. What’s not to like?
The problem is that people with veto power are the ones who value community outreach and want their opinions incorporated into the project. This must be overcome before you completely ditch community outreach to civil society.
You must do some diligence to make people think their voice is heard without actually spending more money or succumbing to offering them surplus.
And yet somehow Italy, Turkey and France etc managed to benefit the communities the high speed train lines pass through. I presume they do that by doing some level of community engagement – maybe it’s talking to the commune/neighbourhood/parish leaders, maybe it’s just talking to the province/department/district/county (mid level division) leaders and that is sufficient.
But it will be legible to the transport staff in the province/department/district/county, and likely at least a few people lower down.
I going to make this in bold because I have made this point before and you still seem to be struggling with it.
If you don’t do the public consultations then the active political party members/small business owners/political donors etc will have even more power because they will be informally consulted anyway.
The big reason it works better outside the United States is that a majority of those people are retired, and where the public transport is functional they will use it as opposed to driving longer distances.
https://www.ligne-montpellier-perpignan.com/comprendre-la-concertation
Looks like there is extensive consultation for LGVs. It seems the most effective way is to have outreach initially, and once the decision is made, it is implemented decisively with an empowered organisation. I think small concessions can be made but communities shouldn’t be allowed to derail the project.
Once the DUP is declared a project is essentially unstoppable. That perception of democratic consultation having been done, in general it is widely accepted. However:
What Alon is proposing is a technocracy. France is in fact a version of exactly that, within a modern democracy. It seems to work quite well. But it has what the Anglosphere has either never had or has deliberately destroyed: a competent administrative state staffed by highly and appropriately trained people. And which is largely uncorrupt and is respected by the politicians who come and go over the course of really big projects; look at GPX, kicked off by Sarkozy and to be completed 4 presidents later. The criticism above is unavoidable because one can hardly seriously consider a big project if real experts have not first assessed it.
The UK is crippled by many things including their awful class system (because the Lords and their ilk still ultimately still control things). As Borners has described, there is far too much discretionary power up and down the UK system, and it is deliberate so that the aristocracy ultimately control things at least to the extent they can destroy or endlessly delay projects. The British aversion to forward planning is largely based on this elite’s aversion to spending money by the state and for people who don’t exist yet (the future). Unless there is private profit to be made they don’t do infrastructure until it is absolutely required, hence all the constant catching up (Crossrail was designed in the 1930s; HS1 took 13 years to build after Eurostar began operation and the first attempt was a PPP intended to make masses of money by property interests–it failed, was bailed out by the state and eventually the public built it; Heathrow airport, Thames Supersewer, etc). Oh, and public enquiries without end, with no fucking end, and no real conclusion, evah! The last completed nuclear power generator was Sizewell-B in 1995 after 14 years of inquiries. Hinkley C was first proposed in 1981 …
Technocrats come in many varieties. Technocracy only works out if the technocrats are the kind of technocrats you want.
We tried that, the archetype is Robert Moses, and decided we don’t like it. Robert Moses is not the kind of technocrat Alon has in mind.
That’s a feature not a bug. Think of all the billable hours. Sweet sweet billable hours. Delay it long enough you can delay it again by claiming conditions have changed enough that the environmental review is obsolete and everything has to start all over again.
45 years ago. Somebody somewhere has made a whole career out of it. An undocumented feature, not a bug.
Insert an innocent look here. How many gigawatts of solar panels were installed in the U.K. last year?
adirondacker, I agree with all of that and actually it was implicit in my post.
Robert Moses is the technocrat (an Oxford educated one at that!) they get if they are lucky. At least he knew how to implement & complete large projects at fair costs. Democracy still stopped him in his tracks when he went too far, ie. in Manhattan. Of course not so much in the Bronx. Or the bias against transit.
Of course in the UK a public enquiry is a well-known feature of obstruction or delay. Even the billable hours, though not to industry types but almost always his Lordships and retired Law Lords etc, and they do charge eye-popping fees and for enquiries that take their sweet time (another feature of course) to achieve √SFA. And often Clayton enquiries (political imperative: don’t see up an enquiry without knowing the outcome).
The problem is that it doesn’t matter how many gigawatts of solar, or wind, the UK has, there will be times in that dreary rainy grey place that there isn’t enough. Then, paradoxically, in future scorching summers, when the air is very still but the demand for air-con is through the roof (sic!) it also falls short. They could possibly get away with some big PHES but they don’t seem to be doing anything about that; probably need to set up an enquiry!
I meant to add this, which I saw recently:
Oxford and Cambridge have been serious places of learning for a long time now, they weren’t in the 19th century – but they are now.
I know it can be difficult to keep track of other people’s FUD. They stop working every day. At sundown. How much does a nuclear plant replace when 8 gigawatts of Dogger Bank goes still? Insert an innocent look here. It’s sunny and windy in Morocco when it’s cold and gray in the U.K. The geothermal and hydro in Iceland is hot or behind a dam allll the time. A usual week’s of driving in the car you can charge the car few days from now. And if it’s serious use the car instead of the grid.
…. People with access to detailed information and the super computer to digest it say the naysayers are spreading FUD.
The two EPRs at Hinkley Point will have about 3.5GW (that’s nameplate, about 3.2GWe from memory) so the answer is very close to 100%, or more, of that nameplate 8GW wind power which at best would deliver ≈3GWe (more like 2.4GWe on average conditions).
Anyway, I don’t disagree. But with solar and wind the grid does need backup and my preference is for storage rather than nuclear. Though the UK can and does import power from France’s nuclear excess.
And I don’t mean chemical batteries but PHES. For whatever reasons (hmm, lack of people who understand these things?) they seem to be ignoring PHES. I did hear some nincompoop say that England doesn’t have any mountains as if they are required …
……………
Australia is currently building a 2GW PHES (called Snowy2.0) for this exact purpose, ie. backing up solar and wind. With its water storage it can provide that 2GW continuously for 7 days. This in a country with the world’s highest insolation and excellent wind resources, that are even more robust by being spread geographically over a very large area. The UK, nor most of Northern Europe, doesn’t have that luxury.
Will. Someday. In the future. Perhaps. There is electricity flowing from the North Sea now. Some of it from hydro plants in Norway and some of it from windmills in the sea.
The U.K. has pumped storage. It came in handy when “TV pickup” was a problem. Doesn’t happen now that there are more than two channels of television – that people put the kettle on when the program ends. You need a high place and a low place for it to work. It doesn’t have to be mountains but there has to be a high place and a low place.
When the commitment to build it was made there were accusations that it was to greenwash coal. . Any pumped hydro can be used to stabilize wind and solar. Even if they were built to …. leverage.. off peak coal or nuclear. Australians also installed 6 gigawatts of residential scale battery last year.
None of us live in Hawaii where a cold day is a bit lower than room temperature and a hot day is a bit warmer than room temperature. You have to work with local conditions. Like HVDC cables from Norway. The next step can be HVDC cables from Iceland or Morocco.
I’m not going to be heating anything in Germany or cooling anything in Spain. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory took decades of weather information and modeled putting wind where it was likely to be built. The East Coast has 300 percent of of demand. All demand, not just recent electricity demand. It would need lots of transmission. Add some solar and the transmission needs go down. Add some storage and the transmission goes down to what we might propose for reliability. That was years ago and the storage is a lot cheaper these days.
….. how much of the concern about dunkelflaute is FUD?
Dunkelflaute is indeed overblown, but only because China continues to cut costs of solar, wind, and batteries at an absurd rate. Even 5 years ago there was a good argument to be made for it, and it still is important if one is avoiding Chinese green tech (as EU and US currently are).
HVDC to North Africa and Norway are good ideas, but IMO not really that necessary. HVDC to Aus from Singapore and to NYC from Québec however, are probably necessary given space and grid congestion issues for both.
Costs don’t change the weather. If the NREL ran it’s East Coast model again it would still come up there being 300 percent of demand. I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that we aren’t going to build much more than 100 percent of demand. Batteries, transmission and demand management – putting off charging the car for a few days – will avoid dunkelflaute. On the East Coast. Heating in Berlin or air conditioning in Madrid aren’t problems I’m going to face.
Hasn’t been commissioned yet. It should be soon. It’s shorter than the one from Norway to the U.K. Which is in service. Since the one from Quebec was proposed they’ve added battery storage at the NYC end. Mostly to replace gas fired peaker plant capacity. The problem then shifts from transmission from Quebec to Queens to transmission from Queens to Manhattan.
It’s shorter than the one from Norway and both of them are shorter than the one connecting Columbia RIver hydroelectric plants to Southern California which is shorter than ones Brazil or China have built. Dunkelflaute is avoidable.
Certainly not, but they do change the costs of accessing power generated by the weather. That said, AFAIK East Coast wind power has a lot of problems other than turbine cost (governmental such as revisions by states, ship availability, and so on).
The transmission costs are the same whether I’m using electricity from a nuclear plant in Western New York, hydro or pumped storage from Niagara Falls or a wind farm on the shores of Lake Erie. The weather will remain the same. Transmission costs from the PV on my roof to the batteries in former boiler room in the basement are much lower. The study evaluated transmission and came up with it not being a problem with some PV and storage. Prices are lower than they were when the study was done. Which makes more batteries attractive. Not a nuclear plant.
Michael there are “real experts” in Network rail and the wider rail industry in Britain. The challenge is that a lot of those people think HS2 costing as much as it does is fine.
At least we are honest about having a class system! The French absolutely have the same thing around the Grande écoles – expect that people are more in denial about it than they are in Britain.
Worth noting that there are quite a few experts in the House of Lords [the Crossbenchers] – and the Labour peers certainly haven’t all had money for generations either. The ones who really are the elite of the elite are the hereditary peers who are now going, and are much fewer in number since Blair culled them.
Never said there weren’t. I was talking of the administrative state. I have posted here that BR management lamented the short-sightedness of their political masters when compared with the French.
This is an utterly false comparison, and reveals just who is kidding themselves. The UK class system is not merit-based, including where it sometimes claims it is (ie. appointment of worthies to the HoL). Which is probably mostly irrelevant because one so clearly can see that those so-appointed are rapidly subverted by the system and its clubbiness. By comparison appointment to the civil service in France is dominated by being merit-based, sometimes to an extreme (IMO not always the best thing) which is why grads of the Grand Ecoles are so prominent. Ditto, for admission to the Grand Ecoles.
Further these are not inherited positions or permanent privileges, and also depend on continued deliverance in the job.
Then there is the preference in the UK for classically educated nincompoops, who sometimes rise to the very top like Boris. Don’t take my word for it. Here is a (former) Conservative politician:
Did you see this pic (link below) in today’s paper? Says it all. One disgraced (former) Prince and the Prince of Darkness, Lord Mandelson (Mandy) palling around with Jeffrey Epstein.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/21/hundred-years-birth-queen-elizabeth-ii-monarchy-illusions#img-2
[You do know I spent 6y at U Oxford? But appropriately treated as mere “trade” by virtue of being a scientist. Not to mention a colonial; and not even a rower/boxer/cricketer etc]
Firstly the geographic spread of the Grand Ecoles of which the top 10% are in Paris is much worse than the Russell Group who are pretty fairly spread around the country.
Secondly the very top three schools are all in Paris, whereas Oxford and Cambridge are at the very edge of the London commuter belt.
In terms of social mobility it looks to me from the evidence that the top Grand Ecoles are significantly more elitist than Oxford and Cambridge – although making a direct comparison is hard for sure.
I am sure this sort of thing happens in France too – it’s just the newspapers are less likely to cover it.
Matthew, Alon is right about Italy. The Alta Velocità program was voted during an emergency Christmas congress session without any community input. The emergency regarded the financing of Italy’s political parties. The collapse of the Soviet Union had cut the financing of the PCI by the Russians, and of the DC by the CIA. Starting January 1st, 1992, the EU law mandating open tendering of public works open to EU construction companies threatened alternate financing options. The contracts were divided between the usual Italian suspects two days before the deadline. Officially, the AV program was going to cost 26180 billion liras (about 14 billion Euros, interest expenses included) with 60% financed by the private sector through a PPP. This was fiction. There was no attempt at a private sector financing, and in 1998 the updated cost was already 140 000 billion liras or 72.3 billion Euros. A 2007 parliamentary study of the Italian AV high costs estimated that the lack of tendering had increased costs by 4 to 6 million Euros/km.
The first segment was the Firenze-Bologna crossing of the Apennine Mountains (78.5 km of which 73 in tunnel). The monotube tunnels were built without consultation with the local Vigili del Fuoco, and in infraction with the law 191 from 1974 as well as more recent EU emergency exit requirements. Despite the firemen protests they were certified as safe by the Italian government in 2005.
The last segments of the 1991 AV program are still being built. Apparently no consultant was willing to put his name on a business case for the third tunnel below the Giovi pass between Genoa and the Po basin. It was written by the builder which argued that the wider tunnel will carry containers towards Northern Europe although the Port authorities had declared that their hinterland is limited, best served by trucks and that they had no intention of putting back the railroad tracks in service.
Besides the 1991 contracts, Italy inaugurated additional AV segments like Napoli-Salerno and is working on more. The Italian public appears largely favorable. The only controversial ones are the Mont d’Ambin base tunnel which elicited a long standing and at times violent NoTAV protest, and counter gatherings in its favor, and the road and rail bridge to Sicily.
Maybe Wikipedia is wrong but it looks like there was a long multi-year design phase both before and after that date where there undoubtedly would have been an opportunity for the upper classes and local government to provide feedback informally.
Political parties were created in opposition to the utterly corrupt Italian political class. Umberto Bossi’s Eurosceptic Lega Nord argued for autonomy or, at times, independence from “Roma Ladrona”. The Movimento 5 Stelle led by a Genoa comedian argued for direct democracy, two term limits for politicians, and interruption of the works on the Torino-Lyon and 3rd Valico AV lines. The Lega Nord participated in Berlusconi’s governments starting in 1994. It turned out to be as corrupt as the other parties. In 2011, it was revealed that millions had been diverted from the party’s coffers towards the Bossi family and close allies. A younger generation took over, left the indebted Lega Nord fade, and replaced it by the “Lega per Salvini Premier”.
M5S gained the largest share (32.68%) of the 2018 vote and the LpSP did well at 17.35%. They formed the “yellow-green” government. Note that the green color historically chosen by the Lega Nord doesn’t imply any ideological alignment with the Green parties of Northern Europe. A M5S member, Danilo Toninelli, became Transport minister on May 31, 2018. He quickly turned away from campaign promises, approving the continuation of the 3rd Valico works in December 2018.
Matteo Salvini is currently vice Prime Minister and Transport Minister in the Meloni government. He supports large infrastructure investments like the Torino-Lione and Roma-Bari AV and the bridge over the Messina straight. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…
Do not also forget that the Lyon-Turin high speed line doesn’t really benefit the locals
Especially on the Italian side.
Matthew, high speed trains traveling at 220 km/h will save about 55 minutes once the base tunnel opens. You are right that this will not benefit the locals. They will instead experience some inconvenience during the construction phase and could later benefit from the base tunnel taking traffic away from the valley. Currently, over 82% of freight traffic between France and Italy is by truck. Rail has a better market share between Italy and Switzerland (70%) and on the Brenner axis (25.6%) where another base tunnel is being dug without significant protests. The 2.6% climb towards the 1871 Fréjus tunnel, its restricted gauge and non-compliance with modern safety standards prevent modal shift. How successful will the base tunnel be is uncertain. Experts have been all over the place. Marco Ponti, the expert commissioned by the Cinque Stelle government, wrote a solid benefit-cost analysis demonstrating a negative rate of return. His own consultancy had produced a favorable analysis for a previous Italian government who used it to obtain inclusion of the project in the EU priority list.
By and large, the locals are not the ones protesting. The No TAV movement settled in the Suse valley attracts disaffected Italians who want to have their intifada against “the system”. On the French side, similar movements can occasionally and through social media organize a protest in the Maurienne Valley but it is a traveling circus feared by the locals not a lasting phenomenon.
@dralaindumas, I support the Lyon-Turin high speed line as it joins two high speed systems together and should do pretty well.
But the valley particularly on the Italian side does see weaker benefits as the current fast services don’t really interfere with the regional trains.
That one is between the South Tyrol and the North Tyrol – both German speaking – and there’s a motorway over the top as well rather than 1 lane per direction.
HS2 is expensive because the people in the rail industry who don’t understand/care about cost had too much power and there weren’t enough benefits for the people affected by the construction.
The cynic in me says that the reason “why the [urban Institute] brief concludes that the US’s problem is ‘inefficient community engagement’ and the solution is to do more community engagement early in the process” is because that is what the UI is studying and they want readers to donate, as indicated by the DONATE button.
I do not agree with the UI brief, but I do not agree with Alon either–in two respects. First, community engagement has worked, for example, in the Interborough Express project in NYC. Several improvements have been made, which I attribute to community input. In my view, what the transit agency is doing should be more open; however, I agree that there should be a time limit on community obstacles, such as endless environmental reviews. Second, community engagement gives people an opportunity to be heard, which is important, as I know from experience as a lawyer, arbitrator and mediator.
Is a circle jerk for transit advocates. it starts carrying much more freight or there is gridlock. Or you have to double deck the Cross Bronx Expressway and the Long Island Expressway. And make the George Washington Bridge HOV-4 so the trucks can make it to Manhattan.
I suspect the reason the authors wrote what they did is because they acknowledge a political reality in the United States that mechanisms for community input won’t go away. So instead of potentially pissing off donors and readers by advocating for empowerment of bureaucrats and the “deep state” for transportation projects – anathema to conservatives, distasteful to many on the left as well because of the history of transportation projects flattening disadvantaged neighborhoods, or disfavored across the political spectrum because it would remove the opportunity for rent-seeking, pork, graft, and other odious endeavors – they backed into half-measure advocacy of earlier engagement and, as you pointed out, attributed cost growth to drivers not supported by the evidence.
That being said, even if the authors believe community engagement is necessary, the article does not get into why the current mechanisms are an inaccurate way of measuring opinion. A meeting isn’t a poll with a representative sample or proper survey design. Time-phasing the meetings earlier and scoping them narrowly doesn’t fix that problem.
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For those unfamiliar with American community outreach. The video linked below is not a documentary, but it might as well be.
It’s not that bad in Britain but some of the people can be pretty fussy.
That said the options are that or to just consult the great and the good which has its own flaws.
At least it’s possible for somewhat normal people to participate in public consultations – and they probably have a fair amount of influence over the decision makers as they don’t come across as unhinged.
The real question here which is broader than infrastructure is “What kind of democracy do we want?” And the answer to that question has to be reflected not just in laws but in regulations promulgated by the administrative state; and that answer has to be broadly reflective of the societal ethics of that nation and its people.
Direct democracy is not, inherently, preferable to representative democracy. There are many types of representative government and all have their advantages and disadvantages for how a people choose to govern themselves. There is a case to be made that if the people express their preferences through voting on representation in the legislative branch, subsequent policy decisions, if made lawfully by the executive branch, are the consequence of that. Limits on citizen engagement with the executive branch may be wholly consistent with the type of representative government chosen by the people.
I think infrastructure wants direct democracy because once the project is agreed you don’t want a different party to win an election and cancel it.
The more political a project is, the more expensive it tends to be. Compare the extremely politicised HS2 versus the much less politicised rolling programs the Spanish and Chinese have got going, with France in the middle.
I am not sure what you mean by politicised.
Hard disagree. There is nothing preventing direct democracy from upending in-progress public works either. Florida Man voted to construct an intercity railway system connecting five cities in 2000, with construction supposed to start by 2003, then voted to defund this mode in 2004. In November 2012, Virginia Tidewater voters expressed their support for an extension of The Tide, a small light rail line, from Norfolk to Virginia Beach in a nonbinding referendum, then voted against using city funds to help pay for the line, halting the project.
There is a reason direct democratic participation is constrained in the American political system. And right or wrong, that is the way we are structured here. The disease of costs and competence that ails us is not Constitutional in nature.
If the goal is to empower the bureaucracy to build public works quickly and affordably and to good specifications, early public input is not the way to get there. If the goal is to reflect citizens’ opinions on public projects, the current structure of public engagement is not the way to get there, either.
I do think if you’re going to do direct democracy you have to have one vote that includes raising the money and then get on and do it and declare further votes to be against the will of the people.
By politicised, I mean how involved the public and politicians are in a project. The lower extreme would be an almost completely technocratic set of rolling programs, where local governments may agitate to some degree for stations etc. The upper extreme involves things like building a low-utility line in order to show progress (e.g. CA HSR), politicians pushing lots of change orders (e.g. HS2), gold plating (e.g. NYC 2nd Avenue), poor route choice, and so on.
Completely agree for the US.
“get on and do it” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Consider Los Angeles’ transit expansion; there was a ballot proposal which got approved, but AFAIK processes still have to be followed which are causing delays and budget overruns.
I don’t think there’s much evidence of this – except as a reaction to high costs caused by gold plating and the lack of intermediate stops.
Fascinating. I followed the Public Debate for RFI’s SA RC AV extension into Campania/Reggio Calabria relatively close – I asked ChatGPT for a case summary:
Case study: Italy’s Dibattito Pubblico (Salerno–Reggio Calabria AV)
If cited as a “model”— the official report tells a more constrained story:
Bottom line:
It’s a structured, transparent consultation—but it doesn’t give civic engagement the ability to steer the project.
See full summary report in Italian here: https://tinyurl.com/SARCDP
That ChatGPT says something does not at all mean it’s correct, and if you’re at the point that you’re asking ChatGPT then you don’t have enough domain knowledge to be able to tell whether and where there are errors.
I’ll be candid—I’m surprised by the tone of your dismissal, especially since the case study I shared appears to support your argument.
The data comes directly from the official Dibattito Pubblico report which I retrieved from the Trenitalia project website and uploaded (and provided a link): ~13 meetings, ~300 participants, and a process that occurs after key decisions are already set, with success defined as surfacing issues rather than changing outcomes. ChatGPT was used to translate and assist in summarization – not as a primary source.
If there’s a flaw in that reading, I’m open correction.
But dismissing me because a tool was used sidesteps the evidence I shared which I believed supported your point.
I am comfortable reading or hearing Italian. I read the Battiplaglia-Romagnano AV Dibattito Pubblico and think its Chat-GPT summary is accurate.
Unlike Alon, the RFI representatives were not dismissive. Working from official documents, they had missed one building, presumably illegal as is common over there, that would need to be destroyed and were open to some form of compensation. They were otherwise well-prepared when discussing issues.
A good part of the debate was indeed about alternate routes. The necessity of faster connections to Rome, Northern Italy and Europe was universally accepted. The region inhabitants often think they are left behind and not without reason. The direct connection between Cosenza and Rome, a distance of 511 km, was by a night train with the first segment behind a steam locomotive until May 31, 1987, 27 years after a steam engine pulled the last regular passenger train in the US.
As wrote in a recent post, the Italian AV program was launched without public debate in an emergency parliamentary session in order to beat the January 1st, 1992 EU deadline requiring open tendering. This region benefited from the effort with Roma-Napoli AV opening in 2005, followed by Napoli-Salerno/Battipaglia in 2008. This project extends the AV by 35 km, including 18 in tunnel, in a mountainous region. Ironically, Italy was again facing another EU deadline. The 2021 post-Covid Next Generation EU instrument was well endowed but projects had to be delivered (or pretend to be deliverable) by 2026. Significant changes would mean losing EU financing. By all means, Italy’s efforts were successful. Its public enquiries and cost-benefit analyses checked all the boxes. While the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility grants and loans equaled 5.2% of EU’s 2019 GDP, Italy’s share represents 10.8% of its GDP.
Yeah but even if they formally didn’t do a public consultation it doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t speak to local people informally – even if all they did was speak to local elites (who to be fair are probably experts in their local area).
Observation from the “citizen” side of the community outreach.
I understand a project needs, at some point, to be set on stone, so things can be organized, tendered, contracted, etc. If you have a system that allows for litigation everywhere in the process, you need huge contingency.
But on the other side, if at no point in the process you allow for community input, it may be very justified to litigate. Either because your project causes some illegal impact that you didn’t account for (because of lack of detailed local knowledge), or because the situation is borderline and people are trying to see what they can extract.
I’m guessing that, if you do the early community outreach, you can get the information on who can come bite you later and how to prevent it? And, if they try to come at a point that would bring too much rework, you can say “we gave the chance to say this before, now it’s too late”. You want to make sure that the rules are clear when the wheels are set in motion.
Let’s say that, the same way you do geological tests on the terrain early in the project, it’s also useful to do “sociological tests” on the terrain?
Very good question, Jordi.
I suspect no one has a good or practical answer presently for the American political system. Even if you impose a limit on public notice and comment, the people have a habit of disregarding those limits, and the system incentivizes self-defeating, selfish, destructive, rent-seeking behavior.
Despite that, I firmly believe there’s room for improvement. If you make the assumption that community input isn’t going away, perhaps there is a way to turn it to the executive branch’s advantage and use it as a conduit to build trust. Because that’s one of the most fundamental issues with American infrastructure projects: the government is not trusted to build those projects on time and affordably, then proceeds to prove it, over and over again.