"When a problem is genuinely very severe, the upside to solving it is large. And when the upside to finding solutions is large, it should be possible to align incentives."
Thank you for describing the US Constitution! So would you make the argument that it's possible to "align incentives" regarding the rewriting country's governing document?
I've seen many situations where ADA has led to some strange outcomes due to the "adversarial legalism" discussed here. Take handicapped parking spaces at hiking trails, for instance. What's supposed to be accommodations for the disabled effectively amounts to a perk given to spouses or parents of the disabled, where if they want to go hiking at a popular trailhead, they don't need to leave as early as everybody else to find parking. Of all the ways government can help the disabled, this type of perk feels exceedingly strange. Yet, it's commonplace, perhaps because the trailhead restroom is technically considered a "public building" in the eyes of the law, never mind that it's always dirty and smelly, and handicapped people driving by have much better places to stop in and use the bathroom.
The transit system is another example. In the aftermath of the 2008 recession, a transit agency near me removed all Sunday service for several years; they justified it by the fact that it was operationally efficient; not running regular buses on Sunday meant the feds would allow them to not run paratransit on Sunday either. Under the law, running regular buses without special ADA paratransit buses is considered a big no-no, but not running any buses at all, so that all transit riders have to suffer together, the law says that's ok. In fact, there even exists some exurban/rural transit systems where ADA paratransit is their *only* service, and your ability to ride the bus anywhere at all requires being disabled. Again, this is what happens when well-meaning laws come with twisted incentive structures. If the federal government really wants transit to be accessible to the disabled, they should provide money to help pay for it (carrots), rather than arbitrary rules that force small agencies to cut all other service to accommodate it (sticks).
One relatively controversial NPI that is very effective is paid sick leave. And it's useful for other infectious diseases, not to mention people with conditions that aren't infectious -- it's nice to have paid sick leave if you pulled a muscle in your back over the weekend. I don't think I will ever understand why so many public health academics and activists who spent enormous amounts of effort promoting restrictions to control Covid just ignored paid sick leave. Maybe they already had paid sick leave so it didn't affect them.
Perhaps because paid sick leave would get much more pushback from employers who don't want to take on the extra cost. Plus you'd have the eternal debate over whether the employee is really sick or just playing hooky.
Yeah, that's a good point. I'm of the opinion that paid sick leave is important enough that the government should be paying for it, but that runs into opposition from Republicans who don't want more government programs and some elements on the left who want employers to pay for it more than they want people to have paid sick leave.
I don't know how you get around the "you're not really sick" or even "come in anyway".
"Something that a lot of people who I like and respect are probably too good at is explaining why this or that problem can’t be solved because of dysfunctional contracting relationships or bad labor unions or whatever.
What I always want to say in response is that while of course these problems would’ve been solved already if they were easy to solve, I reject the idea that they are genuinely unsolvable."
I cannot endorse this statement and subsequent follow up enough. It might be at the core as to why I consider myself a left of center person. Namely, problems, no matter how intractable, can be solved and solutions often involve some sort of government action, even if that action is literally removing government from the equation (i.e. zoning reform).
I give this anecdote a lot, but it really speaks to my worldview (and the sentiments above). My mother told me back in 2008 there was three things she was 100% sure would not happen in her lifetime when I was born in 1983; fall of the Berlin wall, peace in Northern Ireland and election of a black President. In retrospect, these events may not look that shocking when we look back at some basic facts of recent history (the economic structure of the Soviet Union was doomed to fail once oil prices fell, Americans views on race have slowly but surely become more accepting over time since the 60s etc.). But in 1983, you could have won a lot of money betting on one of these three things happening let alone all three.
My point is, I just fundamentally reject the idea that problems can't solved. As sort of of a coda to this sentiment, I remember thinking maybe 6 months ago why is that of all the people on twitter, why is it Megan McCardle boils my blood the most. There are certainly countless number of people way more terrible or odious in about a thousand different ways on twitter. But I realized its because she more than anyone I can think of (with exception of maybe certain very lefty environmentalists), is a complete cynic about the ability of anything to change for the better and most especially that government can be an agent of change for the better. And I just fundamentally reject that premise.
Do you believe there are categories of problems that government cannot solve? Do you believe there are categories of problems that other entities can better solve than government can?
Odd, one of the reasons why I've really enjoyed Megan McArdle's work over the years is very much pointing out the daunting challenges of solving problems. Reading her work in isolation (like anyone else) isn't good, but when read in conjunction with others I've found her work quite useful.
There a number of people I don't read precisely because they are charlatans/cranks/or lunatics. My point is I read Megan, because she is not that and does make some reasonable points about as you say "the daunting challenges of solving problems". I think for me the more I read her, the more I realized that this is her default viewpoint on...everything. It's a form of extreme cynicism and what I call "the politics of giving up". Again, I noted there is a similar strain on the environmental left. But it became exhausting to me to realize she takes these not as challenges to overcome, but impenetrable barriers.
I should also say, I got especially annoyed at her higher education musings. With a last name of "Chaudhuri" you can imagine I've taken a bit of a personal interest in these battles about school admissions/Affirmative Action/Higher education affordability. She basically defended "legacy" admissions by saying this is the way smart working and middle class people should get jobs. And then she basically off handedly noted that she had terrible grades but good test scores and got into Penn because of the scores. Given the time period she went to college, it seems extremely clear to me she's leaving out a key part of the story; namely she likely had family help getting in. My point, it's easy to be an extreme cynic of changing the status quo when you've benefitted tremendously from the status quo. I dunno, the whole thing just really rubbed me the wrong way and colored my opinion of her writing.
The answer to all of these questions is money. The government is punting vaccine development to the private sector now that the pandemic is “over.” Amtrak, even with all of the Biden funding, will be operating on tight margins and forced to make tough business decisions. We, as a country, need to agree on what are top priorities are and focus on them like we do our national defense. Then use what’s left for secondary priorities. Unfortunately, we seem to have this backwards.
A large chunk of this post is about what's known as the "curb cut effect" - a lot of the time, when you design for people with disabilities, you make things better for everyone (or, at least, for an awful lot of other people without disabilities).
Level boarding, elevator access, curb cuts - also things like closed captions (very popular, especially with the currently fashionable mushy sound on TV and film) - all of these benefit a lot of users who aren't in any normal sense disabled. Audiobooks used to be something that existed only for a small number of blind readers: now we have a cheap distribution system and they are popular with all sorts of people.
This is totally true, which makes Matt’s title and initial section that takes a tone suggesting a critical view of the ADA incredibly puzzling.
Halfway through the piece he abandons it completely and reveals that the basic problem is contracting barriers for public projects and the ADA is completely irrelevant to his thesis. Absent the ADA Amtrak would have exactly the same crappy facilities and would also not feel obligated to help parents of young children or people in wheelchairs, who presumably would simply not ride trains in most cases. Why spend the first paragraphs punching down?
The communication and teaching strategies required to teach neurodiverse kids are just good practice and would benefit anybody. My kid is neurodiverse (slight ASD, heavy ADHD) and I've completely changed my parenting approach. It's helped me take care of other kids with ease and even translated into better, more constructive relationships at work.
Is it possible that many (though not all) of these problems are downstream of the fact that we have an astoundingly slow legal system? How much of an outlier are we in that regard?
Can someone get me up to speed about the challenges of Amtrak implementing level boarding?
I assume both the platforms need to be higher and the rolling stock needs to be modified to fill in the stairwells with a level floor.
My understanding is that high platforms can potentially interfere with freight cars, and since the overwhelming majority of Amtrak’s stations currently have freight trains passing through them, most of their stations will need to have low platforms for the foreseeable future. And shutting down an entire line while all of the platforms are raised doesn’t seem ideal.
I’ve seen at least Muni trains that can change their entry steps into level boarding mode (as they move from street running to metro mode). Is that the main missing piece of equipment here?
First, you make the platforms higher. Then three possible choices: you bring the platform closer to the train so there isn't a gap to fill, you make the train wider, or you have a gap-filler.
Making the train wider means it has to fit through all the other infrastructure, which usually creates more problems than it solves.
Bringing the platform closer is the right answer for commuter-heavy lines where you can be confident about the platform and track positions (ie your maintenance is good enough that the trains won't scrape the platform) and where you either don't have to worry about freight, or you can impose tight enough standards on the freight that it's OK.
Most US freight won't comply with these standards, so you either set the platforms back, or have separate freight and passenger routes (or even just tracks - many stations have a center track between two platform tracks; the center track is for freight).
You can have gap-fillers that come out of the platforms, but that means that the trains have to stop with very good alignment with the platform and the door positions are fixed - they are usually done in combination with platform edge doors.
The normal answer is to have a gap-filler on the train - a sill that slides out from the bottom of the door when the door opens. This can either come out a measured distance to the platform, or can have a sensor and stop when it touches the platform. For trains that stop at stations with both level and low platforms, they need to switch between the sill and steps as appropriate. If you can raise the platforms on all stations (this should, for instance, be possible on LIRR, where NYA can be forced to have freight cars compliant with high platforms), then you can have a mechanical safety interlock between the doors and the sill so the doors can't open unless the sill has popped out - this minimises the risk of passengers falling into the gap between train and platform, which is a traditional problem with high-platform trains, hence the iconic London announcement of "Mind The Gap".
Freight cars shouldn't be passing through big-city stations--there should be enough separate tracks in places like that to keep passenger and freight separate. In rural areas, everything is at ground level so there would have to be structures to allow passenger boarding that could also accommodate passing of freight trains, but I would think size requirements (width) of rolling stock would be the solution to that issue.
In more intermediate (I'd say "suburban", if that didn't have a more specific meaning than I intend) areas, you put a third track through the middle of the station so the freight trains can pass through without any risk of a platform strike.
For these sorts of stations, two side platforms with the tracks in the middle can often be better than a central island platform which can only be accessed by crossing the tracks.
You still need a track crossing, presumably a footbridge, but you can access the station on both sides and you only need two elevators/staircases. The central platform needs three, one at ground level either side of the station and one for the central platform.
Single-track in really rural areas is completely different as you can have a single platform with the track on one side, the public access on the other and no track crossing at all.
When I think of ADA, the first thing that comes to mind is a sleazy lawyer shaking down a small business because the bathroom grab handle is located two inches too low.
And it's been interesting to see the backlash to similar (albeit more extreme) "vigilante justice" solutions employed with abortion. The right learned from the left and then accelerated. It changed my view on this kind of approach in general.
That would only work if someone asked the business to raise the grab handle two inches and the business refused. If they just raised the grab handle then a judge would throw out the case.
Not exactly. The way it works is that the lawyer can make the request, but the request can be dealt with by paying a settlement, no fixing anything required. That's the "sleazy" part.
.... and that's a classic example of why adversarial legalism is a problem. If it was a normal inspection-and-regulation system, then the inspector would say "grab handle's too low, move it up two inches", you'd get a contractor in, move the handle, and that would be the end of it.
But then you'd have to hire and pay an army of inspectors--the reason we prefer leaving it up to the lawyers is that we don't have to pay them, they take their pound of flesh from the defendant when they win a case/settlement.
Indeed, and while lawyers may take a pound of flesh, they do it only occasionally. While inspectors would take an ounce hundred times for each pound that a lawyer would take.
Interesting article. Thanks for sharing. I'm still not sure that the current costs are as high as it would be to have a legion of inspectors going around issuing fines and such, but much less certain of that than I was.
These adversarial “solutions” often produce things that technically make it usable, but only in an emergency. Like a pedestrian bridge over the freeway that you have to go up three floors of ramps for, or a multi-elevator trip to the subway station through unventilated elevators filled with a combination of urine and cleaning product fumes, or a bus system that technically gets within a couple blocks of every point in town but only once an hour and on winding routes.
In all these cases, if access had been built in from the start, I’m sure a much better solution could have been arrived at, but it would require some sort of serious change to the project itself. Instead they just throw millions of dollars at it.
I think about this a lot when I see those little curb cut ramps off the sidewalk into a crosswalk: sued into existence for wheelchair users, but really so nice for strollers, the elderly, or when you’re pulling a suitcase...
Here in the UK, you get them a lot for people's drives - my parents, for instance, have a drive that ends at the pavement (sidewalk), and there's a curb cut on the other side of the pavement where it joins the roadway, so they don't have to climb the curb to park.
There's a good 99% Invisible about the curb cut effect - mostly about how that all came into being, but also about how many other things this is true of, when there are lots of other people that benefit.
It’s frustrating how many sidewalks don’t have them! If sidewalks were built by cities, they would be able to be rolled out in a generation as sidewalks are repaired. But with the system we have where each stretch of sidewalk has a different owner, and it takes lawsuits to force an owner to come up to code, we end up with an unusable mishmash in many smaller towns. (And parts of big cities, like Los Angeles.)
I can't speak for any other city, but in Denver curb cuts *are* put into existing sidewalks by the city because it's responsible for maintaining curbs; property owners are just responsible for sidewalks.
> But with the system we have where each stretch of sidewalk has a different owner,
My "favorite" consequence of this are all the sidewalks to nowhere. Each new subdivision that gets built adds a little stretch of sidewalk on the main road, but then none of them are connected!
I also see a lot of sidewalks to nowhere within subdivisions. The street has no sidewalk, except for in front of one isolated house, where it does.
Still, these sidewalks to nowhere are not completely useless. If you're walking down the street and happen to be walking by one when a car comes up, they give you space to pull off the road and let the car go by. I suppose that's something.
Oh, is *that* why the sidewalks are such a mess in the US? Here, the pavement is part of the right of way, which means it gets repaired or changed or whatever by the council.
Legally, in the UK, in some streets the homeowner's property comes to the centreline of the road and in others it stops at the boundary between their property (ie their drive / front garden) and the pavement (and the local council owns the road and pavement), but that is only relevant if the right of way ceases to be adopted by the council; for as long as it is adopted, the council is responsible for maintaining and cleaning it, but also has the right to change the layout (e.g. putting in a cycle or bus lane) and never needs to refer to the landowner for permission.
If it's unadopted, then the landowner is legally responsible for the maintenance of the entire right of way (both the roadway and the pavement). This is expensive, so new developments have to make sure the council will adopt the new roads - sometimes this involves a substantial payment to the council in exchange for adoption.
It varies a lot by locality, and also individual lots within, in the US. In my own city, some sidewalks are in the public right of way and some aren't. Some that aren't are deliberately designed as such--often an easement will be agreed upon so that the general public can use it for its intended purpose, but the private owners can use trespassing law to prevent vagrancy there.
This, of course, can go bad. As a cyclist, it always frustrates me when new developments regularly cede public corridors for motorist traffic, but not for non-motorist corridors, which often end up as HOA property. Some HOAs are cool with non-resident traffic coming through (or again, they agree to an easement for that purpose), but some gate those off, leaving non-motorists to fend for themselves on the motorist corridors.
If the sidewalk isn't in the public right of way, then what stops the homeowner from removing it entirely?
Ah, the easement, I see. In the UK you can't do that: by law, any such easement would create a public right of way, though not an adopted one (once there is a public right of way, you can't block it, though you're not obliged to maintain the surface unless it's adopted).
If the easement is limited to certain persons, that's different, but one that grants the general public the right to cross the land *is* a public right of way, though the highways authority (the council) would only be obliged to maintain it if it is adopted.
The UK has a four-way distinction:
Private land that people can't travel on (except via the right to roam, which is a whole other subject, but basically means that open land that isn't planted with crops can be crossed by the public; this doesn't create a right of way because there isn't a specific route)
Permissive route, ie the landowner permits access but reserves the right to take it away again. This must be clearly signed or it becomes a public right of way.
Public right of way, if unadopted the landowner must keep it cleared (cannot obstruct or damage, has to remove a tree if it falls across the route) but is not obliged to maintain it.
Adopted public right of way, the highways authority (local council) is obliged to maintain.
Pavements (sidewalks) are always adopted if the roadway is adopted.
But there may be a certain amount of confusion; hunting here means "on horseback following dogs".
Stalking (hunting land animals with a gun) is legal with the landowner's permission, provided the animal is not protected, but only with the owner's permission; you can't just go along a public right of way or use right to roam.
Shooting (birds) is the same as stalking.
Public lands it is impossible to get landowner's permission; stalking and shooting are only legal on private estates, generally only ones specifically set up for the purpose.
Farmers will shoot pest animals on their own land, but they generally don't allow people to do so for pleasure.
In some protected public lands, the park rangers may shoot and kill animals or birds to control populations, but they never issue hunting licences for this purpose.
That makes a lot more sense. Every time there's a snowstorm in a major US city, I see friends on Facebook talking about shoveling out their sidewalk. It seems weird to me that the street is done by the city, while the sidewalk is done by the property owners. The only justification I can see is that the city has big street-sized sweepers that can do the streets, while sidewalks are done with shovels, and shoveling work is more efficient when it is done in a distributed way by many individuals. But that just raises the question, why doesn't the city have sidewalk-sized sweepers?!
I can't begin to wrap my head around what the expense would be to make snow clearance on sidewalks a municipal responsibility! (In Denver, the city doesn't even plow most *streets* except when there's been a really huge snow storm and it isn't expected to melt quickly enough.)
If the city doesn't plow the street, then why should anyone clear the sidewalk? If they do plow the street, then they can plow the sidewalk at the same time.
"If the city doesn't plow the street, then why should anyone clear the sidewalk?"
I'm assuming you're trolling at this point, but:
(1) so you can walk on the sidewalk yourself without trudging through snow;
(2) so you don't get sued by someone else who slips and falls on your uncleared walk;
(3) in many municipalities, you can theoretically be ticketed if you don't clear your sidewalk within a certain time of snowfall ending (typically 24 hours). That's rarely enforced, but still is an extra motivator.
"If they do plow the street, then they can plow the sidewalk at the same time."
Um, no? Cleaning sidewalks would take dramatically more manpower than cleaning streets -- a single truck with a plow can go down a street at probably 10 to 25 MPH depending on traffic, width, and speed limits; there's no way a small plow going down a sidewalk is going to be able to get anywhere near that speed.
Many US cities do have sidewalk snow plows. I reckon the common imposition of sidewalk snow-removal obligations on property owners is a mixture of path dependence (these ordinances have been on the books a long time, and there's no compelling reason to remove them), practicality (it helps get sidewalks cleared more quickly) and budgetary (the sidewalk plowing budget doesn't need to be so large).
There's a Law Review article idea I've had kicking around in my head for a while about how sidewalk-clearing obligations probably have a lot of practical utility but nevertheless seem conceptually like 13th amendment violations. I just have a hard time distinguishing them from something like the corvee system in principle even though obviously there's a big gulf in practice.
There's not really a meaningful sense in which an urban sidewalk is anything but public property that private owners are forced to provide upkeep for.
I don't see how they would be a 13th Amendment violation: you're not required to clean the sidewalk yourself, just to make sure it's been cleared. (I'm not an expert on 13th Amendment law, but my very strong impression is that if you can pay a third party to perform the task for you, it's not going to be considered a 13th Amendment violation.)
On the subject of accommodations, I’m not usually a ‘government waste’ guy, but shouldn’t the feds do some serious soul searching about this insane Havana Syndrome fiasco?
At a minimum it seems highly inappropriate that we gave hundreds of thousands to individuals on the basis of a conspiracy theory. More narrowly, it seems like there need to be some real changes at the CIA. Now only were their own personnel among the “victims” of Havana Syndrome, the Agency validated the theory! It’s even more ludicrous (though more anodyne) than Hussein’s WMDs!
Somehow (I think because of the parallels to Long COVID or some Trump drama), Havana syndrome got left-right coded, but it really shouldn’t be. It’s worth getting to the bottom of how the entire foreign policy wing of the government lost their minds on this.
The first is that it's mainly affecting people who are smart and think of themselves as smart. People who are smart often think they're immune to motivated reasoning/falling for conspiracy theories and others think they're immune to that kind of thinking, so there's a tendency to decide they must be right.
Secondly, it's considered bad form to doubt people in national security positions when it comes to things like this. We can say they got it all wrong when it came to Saddam Hussein's alleged WMDs, but doubting what they're saying about what caused their symptoms is in poor taste.
Finally, psychogenic conditions are stereotyped as feminine. They are more common in women but men can get them too. They're also regarded as something that people with poor mental health get Havana Syndrome is happening to the kind o people who are stereotyped as tough and manly so there is going to be a ton of pushback against the idea that people in national security are suffering from psychogenic illness because that's something teenage girls get. The mental health aspect is also important because having a mental health condition can endanger your security clearance.
It's probably easier to go along with the sonic weapon explanation rather than suggesting that it's psychogenic.
Which side did it get left-right coded on? I’ve seen both sides of the claim in my media diet, which is pretty left, and have no idea how it’s discussed on the right.
There are plenty of syndromes that we are supposed to pay attention to though there are no organic medical ways of confirming them. Havana Syndrome is just one more added to a list of Chronic Fatige, chronic Lyme, fibromyalgia, probably long COVID.....
I suspect that all of these are different names for essentially the same thing. I've seen enough reasonably well-adapted physically fit people go into severe declines with something like this not to believe there is something to it, though whether that something is a physical disease or a psychological condition is one that I'm not qualified to answer (and, even if it is psychological, that doesn't mean you don't need to treat it physically).
Yes, but I’d like to see Matt run this back to how the incentives for government projects and administration can be changed. With poorly designed incentives, you get the wrong skills and do the wrong things and you do those wrong things badly.
The idea that it would be condescending to offer to help is completely alien to me. It just boggles the mind. What world is this?
"When a problem is genuinely very severe, the upside to solving it is large. And when the upside to finding solutions is large, it should be possible to align incentives."
Thank you for describing the US Constitution! So would you make the argument that it's possible to "align incentives" regarding the rewriting country's governing document?
I've seen many situations where ADA has led to some strange outcomes due to the "adversarial legalism" discussed here. Take handicapped parking spaces at hiking trails, for instance. What's supposed to be accommodations for the disabled effectively amounts to a perk given to spouses or parents of the disabled, where if they want to go hiking at a popular trailhead, they don't need to leave as early as everybody else to find parking. Of all the ways government can help the disabled, this type of perk feels exceedingly strange. Yet, it's commonplace, perhaps because the trailhead restroom is technically considered a "public building" in the eyes of the law, never mind that it's always dirty and smelly, and handicapped people driving by have much better places to stop in and use the bathroom.
The transit system is another example. In the aftermath of the 2008 recession, a transit agency near me removed all Sunday service for several years; they justified it by the fact that it was operationally efficient; not running regular buses on Sunday meant the feds would allow them to not run paratransit on Sunday either. Under the law, running regular buses without special ADA paratransit buses is considered a big no-no, but not running any buses at all, so that all transit riders have to suffer together, the law says that's ok. In fact, there even exists some exurban/rural transit systems where ADA paratransit is their *only* service, and your ability to ride the bus anywhere at all requires being disabled. Again, this is what happens when well-meaning laws come with twisted incentive structures. If the federal government really wants transit to be accessible to the disabled, they should provide money to help pay for it (carrots), rather than arbitrary rules that force small agencies to cut all other service to accommodate it (sticks).
One relatively controversial NPI that is very effective is paid sick leave. And it's useful for other infectious diseases, not to mention people with conditions that aren't infectious -- it's nice to have paid sick leave if you pulled a muscle in your back over the weekend. I don't think I will ever understand why so many public health academics and activists who spent enormous amounts of effort promoting restrictions to control Covid just ignored paid sick leave. Maybe they already had paid sick leave so it didn't affect them.
Perhaps because paid sick leave would get much more pushback from employers who don't want to take on the extra cost. Plus you'd have the eternal debate over whether the employee is really sick or just playing hooky.
Yeah, that's a good point. I'm of the opinion that paid sick leave is important enough that the government should be paying for it, but that runs into opposition from Republicans who don't want more government programs and some elements on the left who want employers to pay for it more than they want people to have paid sick leave.
I don't know how you get around the "you're not really sick" or even "come in anyway".
"Something that a lot of people who I like and respect are probably too good at is explaining why this or that problem can’t be solved because of dysfunctional contracting relationships or bad labor unions or whatever.
What I always want to say in response is that while of course these problems would’ve been solved already if they were easy to solve, I reject the idea that they are genuinely unsolvable."
I cannot endorse this statement and subsequent follow up enough. It might be at the core as to why I consider myself a left of center person. Namely, problems, no matter how intractable, can be solved and solutions often involve some sort of government action, even if that action is literally removing government from the equation (i.e. zoning reform).
I give this anecdote a lot, but it really speaks to my worldview (and the sentiments above). My mother told me back in 2008 there was three things she was 100% sure would not happen in her lifetime when I was born in 1983; fall of the Berlin wall, peace in Northern Ireland and election of a black President. In retrospect, these events may not look that shocking when we look back at some basic facts of recent history (the economic structure of the Soviet Union was doomed to fail once oil prices fell, Americans views on race have slowly but surely become more accepting over time since the 60s etc.). But in 1983, you could have won a lot of money betting on one of these three things happening let alone all three.
My point is, I just fundamentally reject the idea that problems can't solved. As sort of of a coda to this sentiment, I remember thinking maybe 6 months ago why is that of all the people on twitter, why is it Megan McCardle boils my blood the most. There are certainly countless number of people way more terrible or odious in about a thousand different ways on twitter. But I realized its because she more than anyone I can think of (with exception of maybe certain very lefty environmentalists), is a complete cynic about the ability of anything to change for the better and most especially that government can be an agent of change for the better. And I just fundamentally reject that premise.
Do you believe there are categories of problems that government cannot solve? Do you believe there are categories of problems that other entities can better solve than government can?
Odd, one of the reasons why I've really enjoyed Megan McArdle's work over the years is very much pointing out the daunting challenges of solving problems. Reading her work in isolation (like anyone else) isn't good, but when read in conjunction with others I've found her work quite useful.
There a number of people I don't read precisely because they are charlatans/cranks/or lunatics. My point is I read Megan, because she is not that and does make some reasonable points about as you say "the daunting challenges of solving problems". I think for me the more I read her, the more I realized that this is her default viewpoint on...everything. It's a form of extreme cynicism and what I call "the politics of giving up". Again, I noted there is a similar strain on the environmental left. But it became exhausting to me to realize she takes these not as challenges to overcome, but impenetrable barriers.
I should also say, I got especially annoyed at her higher education musings. With a last name of "Chaudhuri" you can imagine I've taken a bit of a personal interest in these battles about school admissions/Affirmative Action/Higher education affordability. She basically defended "legacy" admissions by saying this is the way smart working and middle class people should get jobs. And then she basically off handedly noted that she had terrible grades but good test scores and got into Penn because of the scores. Given the time period she went to college, it seems extremely clear to me she's leaving out a key part of the story; namely she likely had family help getting in. My point, it's easy to be an extreme cynic of changing the status quo when you've benefitted tremendously from the status quo. I dunno, the whole thing just really rubbed me the wrong way and colored my opinion of her writing.
> If my glasses slipped off my face while I was boarding the train and fell onto the tracks, my whole trip would be ruined
This the reason I always carry a second pair whenever I'm on a long enough trip where going back home is sufficiently burdensome.
The answer to all of these questions is money. The government is punting vaccine development to the private sector now that the pandemic is “over.” Amtrak, even with all of the Biden funding, will be operating on tight margins and forced to make tough business decisions. We, as a country, need to agree on what are top priorities are and focus on them like we do our national defense. Then use what’s left for secondary priorities. Unfortunately, we seem to have this backwards.
Love this piece. Thank you.
A large chunk of this post is about what's known as the "curb cut effect" - a lot of the time, when you design for people with disabilities, you make things better for everyone (or, at least, for an awful lot of other people without disabilities).
Level boarding, elevator access, curb cuts - also things like closed captions (very popular, especially with the currently fashionable mushy sound on TV and film) - all of these benefit a lot of users who aren't in any normal sense disabled. Audiobooks used to be something that existed only for a small number of blind readers: now we have a cheap distribution system and they are popular with all sorts of people.
This is totally true, which makes Matt’s title and initial section that takes a tone suggesting a critical view of the ADA incredibly puzzling.
Halfway through the piece he abandons it completely and reveals that the basic problem is contracting barriers for public projects and the ADA is completely irrelevant to his thesis. Absent the ADA Amtrak would have exactly the same crappy facilities and would also not feel obligated to help parents of young children or people in wheelchairs, who presumably would simply not ride trains in most cases. Why spend the first paragraphs punching down?
The communication and teaching strategies required to teach neurodiverse kids are just good practice and would benefit anybody. My kid is neurodiverse (slight ASD, heavy ADHD) and I've completely changed my parenting approach. It's helped me take care of other kids with ease and even translated into better, more constructive relationships at work.
Is it possible that many (though not all) of these problems are downstream of the fact that we have an astoundingly slow legal system? How much of an outlier are we in that regard?
Can someone get me up to speed about the challenges of Amtrak implementing level boarding?
I assume both the platforms need to be higher and the rolling stock needs to be modified to fill in the stairwells with a level floor.
My understanding is that high platforms can potentially interfere with freight cars, and since the overwhelming majority of Amtrak’s stations currently have freight trains passing through them, most of their stations will need to have low platforms for the foreseeable future. And shutting down an entire line while all of the platforms are raised doesn’t seem ideal.
I’ve seen at least Muni trains that can change their entry steps into level boarding mode (as they move from street running to metro mode). Is that the main missing piece of equipment here?
First, you make the platforms higher. Then three possible choices: you bring the platform closer to the train so there isn't a gap to fill, you make the train wider, or you have a gap-filler.
Making the train wider means it has to fit through all the other infrastructure, which usually creates more problems than it solves.
Bringing the platform closer is the right answer for commuter-heavy lines where you can be confident about the platform and track positions (ie your maintenance is good enough that the trains won't scrape the platform) and where you either don't have to worry about freight, or you can impose tight enough standards on the freight that it's OK.
Most US freight won't comply with these standards, so you either set the platforms back, or have separate freight and passenger routes (or even just tracks - many stations have a center track between two platform tracks; the center track is for freight).
You can have gap-fillers that come out of the platforms, but that means that the trains have to stop with very good alignment with the platform and the door positions are fixed - they are usually done in combination with platform edge doors.
The normal answer is to have a gap-filler on the train - a sill that slides out from the bottom of the door when the door opens. This can either come out a measured distance to the platform, or can have a sensor and stop when it touches the platform. For trains that stop at stations with both level and low platforms, they need to switch between the sill and steps as appropriate. If you can raise the platforms on all stations (this should, for instance, be possible on LIRR, where NYA can be forced to have freight cars compliant with high platforms), then you can have a mechanical safety interlock between the doors and the sill so the doors can't open unless the sill has popped out - this minimises the risk of passengers falling into the gap between train and platform, which is a traditional problem with high-platform trains, hence the iconic London announcement of "Mind The Gap".
Freight cars shouldn't be passing through big-city stations--there should be enough separate tracks in places like that to keep passenger and freight separate. In rural areas, everything is at ground level so there would have to be structures to allow passenger boarding that could also accommodate passing of freight trains, but I would think size requirements (width) of rolling stock would be the solution to that issue.
In more intermediate (I'd say "suburban", if that didn't have a more specific meaning than I intend) areas, you put a third track through the middle of the station so the freight trains can pass through without any risk of a platform strike.
For these sorts of stations, two side platforms with the tracks in the middle can often be better than a central island platform which can only be accessed by crossing the tracks.
You still need a track crossing, presumably a footbridge, but you can access the station on both sides and you only need two elevators/staircases. The central platform needs three, one at ground level either side of the station and one for the central platform.
Single-track in really rural areas is completely different as you can have a single platform with the track on one side, the public access on the other and no track crossing at all.
When I think of ADA, the first thing that comes to mind is a sleazy lawyer shaking down a small business because the bathroom grab handle is located two inches too low.
And it's been interesting to see the backlash to similar (albeit more extreme) "vigilante justice" solutions employed with abortion. The right learned from the left and then accelerated. It changed my view on this kind of approach in general.
That would only work if someone asked the business to raise the grab handle two inches and the business refused. If they just raised the grab handle then a judge would throw out the case.
Not exactly. The way it works is that the lawyer can make the request, but the request can be dealt with by paying a settlement, no fixing anything required. That's the "sleazy" part.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/magazine/americans-with-disabilities-act.html
.... and that's a classic example of why adversarial legalism is a problem. If it was a normal inspection-and-regulation system, then the inspector would say "grab handle's too low, move it up two inches", you'd get a contractor in, move the handle, and that would be the end of it.
But then you'd have to hire and pay an army of inspectors--the reason we prefer leaving it up to the lawyers is that we don't have to pay them, they take their pound of flesh from the defendant when they win a case/settlement.
Indeed, and while lawyers may take a pound of flesh, they do it only occasionally. While inspectors would take an ounce hundred times for each pound that a lawyer would take.
> Indeed, and while lawyers may take a pound of flesh, they do it only occasionally.
That is explicitly not the case with the ADA. There are lawyers who make a living just suing everyone they can for violations https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/magazine/americans-with-disabilities-act.html
You're not required to prove you actually encountered any of these violations, just that they exist, so it's turned out to be pretty lucrative.
Interesting article. Thanks for sharing. I'm still not sure that the current costs are as high as it would be to have a legion of inspectors going around issuing fines and such, but much less certain of that than I was.
These adversarial “solutions” often produce things that technically make it usable, but only in an emergency. Like a pedestrian bridge over the freeway that you have to go up three floors of ramps for, or a multi-elevator trip to the subway station through unventilated elevators filled with a combination of urine and cleaning product fumes, or a bus system that technically gets within a couple blocks of every point in town but only once an hour and on winding routes.
In all these cases, if access had been built in from the start, I’m sure a much better solution could have been arrived at, but it would require some sort of serious change to the project itself. Instead they just throw millions of dollars at it.
I think about this a lot when I see those little curb cut ramps off the sidewalk into a crosswalk: sued into existence for wheelchair users, but really so nice for strollers, the elderly, or when you’re pulling a suitcase...
Really nice for cyclists and other micromobilists too when entering or existing a place to park. (Yes, of course always yield to pedestrians first!)
Here in the UK, you get them a lot for people's drives - my parents, for instance, have a drive that ends at the pavement (sidewalk), and there's a curb cut on the other side of the pavement where it joins the roadway, so they don't have to climb the curb to park.
There's a good 99% Invisible about the curb cut effect - mostly about how that all came into being, but also about how many other things this is true of, when there are lots of other people that benefit.
It’s frustrating how many sidewalks don’t have them! If sidewalks were built by cities, they would be able to be rolled out in a generation as sidewalks are repaired. But with the system we have where each stretch of sidewalk has a different owner, and it takes lawsuits to force an owner to come up to code, we end up with an unusable mishmash in many smaller towns. (And parts of big cities, like Los Angeles.)
I can't speak for any other city, but in Denver curb cuts *are* put into existing sidewalks by the city because it's responsible for maintaining curbs; property owners are just responsible for sidewalks.
See the "Curbs and Gutters" dropdown here: https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Department-of-Transportation-and-Infrastructure/Programs-Services/Street-Maintenance
And "Pedestrian Ramps" here: https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Department-of-Transportation-and-Infrastructure/Programs-Services/Street-Maintenance/Ramps-Curbs-Gutters
> But with the system we have where each stretch of sidewalk has a different owner,
My "favorite" consequence of this are all the sidewalks to nowhere. Each new subdivision that gets built adds a little stretch of sidewalk on the main road, but then none of them are connected!
I also see a lot of sidewalks to nowhere within subdivisions. The street has no sidewalk, except for in front of one isolated house, where it does.
Still, these sidewalks to nowhere are not completely useless. If you're walking down the street and happen to be walking by one when a car comes up, they give you space to pull off the road and let the car go by. I suppose that's something.
Oh, is *that* why the sidewalks are such a mess in the US? Here, the pavement is part of the right of way, which means it gets repaired or changed or whatever by the council.
Legally, in the UK, in some streets the homeowner's property comes to the centreline of the road and in others it stops at the boundary between their property (ie their drive / front garden) and the pavement (and the local council owns the road and pavement), but that is only relevant if the right of way ceases to be adopted by the council; for as long as it is adopted, the council is responsible for maintaining and cleaning it, but also has the right to change the layout (e.g. putting in a cycle or bus lane) and never needs to refer to the landowner for permission.
If it's unadopted, then the landowner is legally responsible for the maintenance of the entire right of way (both the roadway and the pavement). This is expensive, so new developments have to make sure the council will adopt the new roads - sometimes this involves a substantial payment to the council in exchange for adoption.
It varies a lot by locality, and also individual lots within, in the US. In my own city, some sidewalks are in the public right of way and some aren't. Some that aren't are deliberately designed as such--often an easement will be agreed upon so that the general public can use it for its intended purpose, but the private owners can use trespassing law to prevent vagrancy there.
This, of course, can go bad. As a cyclist, it always frustrates me when new developments regularly cede public corridors for motorist traffic, but not for non-motorist corridors, which often end up as HOA property. Some HOAs are cool with non-resident traffic coming through (or again, they agree to an easement for that purpose), but some gate those off, leaving non-motorists to fend for themselves on the motorist corridors.
If the sidewalk isn't in the public right of way, then what stops the homeowner from removing it entirely?
Ah, the easement, I see. In the UK you can't do that: by law, any such easement would create a public right of way, though not an adopted one (once there is a public right of way, you can't block it, though you're not obliged to maintain the surface unless it's adopted).
If the easement is limited to certain persons, that's different, but one that grants the general public the right to cross the land *is* a public right of way, though the highways authority (the council) would only be obliged to maintain it if it is adopted.
The UK has a four-way distinction:
Private land that people can't travel on (except via the right to roam, which is a whole other subject, but basically means that open land that isn't planted with crops can be crossed by the public; this doesn't create a right of way because there isn't a specific route)
Permissive route, ie the landowner permits access but reserves the right to take it away again. This must be clearly signed or it becomes a public right of way.
Public right of way, if unadopted the landowner must keep it cleared (cannot obstruct or damage, has to remove a tree if it falls across the route) but is not obliged to maintain it.
Adopted public right of way, the highways authority (local council) is obliged to maintain.
Pavements (sidewalks) are always adopted if the roadway is adopted.
What about hunting?
Hunting is illegal in the UK.
But there may be a certain amount of confusion; hunting here means "on horseback following dogs".
Stalking (hunting land animals with a gun) is legal with the landowner's permission, provided the animal is not protected, but only with the owner's permission; you can't just go along a public right of way or use right to roam.
Shooting (birds) is the same as stalking.
Public lands it is impossible to get landowner's permission; stalking and shooting are only legal on private estates, generally only ones specifically set up for the purpose.
Farmers will shoot pest animals on their own land, but they generally don't allow people to do so for pleasure.
In some protected public lands, the park rangers may shoot and kill animals or birds to control populations, but they never issue hunting licences for this purpose.
That makes a lot more sense. Every time there's a snowstorm in a major US city, I see friends on Facebook talking about shoveling out their sidewalk. It seems weird to me that the street is done by the city, while the sidewalk is done by the property owners. The only justification I can see is that the city has big street-sized sweepers that can do the streets, while sidewalks are done with shovels, and shoveling work is more efficient when it is done in a distributed way by many individuals. But that just raises the question, why doesn't the city have sidewalk-sized sweepers?!
I can't begin to wrap my head around what the expense would be to make snow clearance on sidewalks a municipal responsibility! (In Denver, the city doesn't even plow most *streets* except when there's been a really huge snow storm and it isn't expected to melt quickly enough.)
If the city doesn't plow the street, then why should anyone clear the sidewalk? If they do plow the street, then they can plow the sidewalk at the same time.
"If the city doesn't plow the street, then why should anyone clear the sidewalk?"
I'm assuming you're trolling at this point, but:
(1) so you can walk on the sidewalk yourself without trudging through snow;
(2) so you don't get sued by someone else who slips and falls on your uncleared walk;
(3) in many municipalities, you can theoretically be ticketed if you don't clear your sidewalk within a certain time of snowfall ending (typically 24 hours). That's rarely enforced, but still is an extra motivator.
"If they do plow the street, then they can plow the sidewalk at the same time."
Um, no? Cleaning sidewalks would take dramatically more manpower than cleaning streets -- a single truck with a plow can go down a street at probably 10 to 25 MPH depending on traffic, width, and speed limits; there's no way a small plow going down a sidewalk is going to be able to get anywhere near that speed.
Sweepers?!
Many US cities do have sidewalk snow plows. I reckon the common imposition of sidewalk snow-removal obligations on property owners is a mixture of path dependence (these ordinances have been on the books a long time, and there's no compelling reason to remove them), practicality (it helps get sidewalks cleared more quickly) and budgetary (the sidewalk plowing budget doesn't need to be so large).
There's a Law Review article idea I've had kicking around in my head for a while about how sidewalk-clearing obligations probably have a lot of practical utility but nevertheless seem conceptually like 13th amendment violations. I just have a hard time distinguishing them from something like the corvee system in principle even though obviously there's a big gulf in practice.
There's not really a meaningful sense in which an urban sidewalk is anything but public property that private owners are forced to provide upkeep for.
I don't see how they would be a 13th Amendment violation: you're not required to clean the sidewalk yourself, just to make sure it's been cleared. (I'm not an expert on 13th Amendment law, but my very strong impression is that if you can pay a third party to perform the task for you, it's not going to be considered a 13th Amendment violation.)
On the subject of accommodations, I’m not usually a ‘government waste’ guy, but shouldn’t the feds do some serious soul searching about this insane Havana Syndrome fiasco?
At a minimum it seems highly inappropriate that we gave hundreds of thousands to individuals on the basis of a conspiracy theory. More narrowly, it seems like there need to be some real changes at the CIA. Now only were their own personnel among the “victims” of Havana Syndrome, the Agency validated the theory! It’s even more ludicrous (though more anodyne) than Hussein’s WMDs!
Somehow (I think because of the parallels to Long COVID or some Trump drama), Havana syndrome got left-right coded, but it really shouldn’t be. It’s worth getting to the bottom of how the entire foreign policy wing of the government lost their minds on this.
I think there are several things going on.
The first is that it's mainly affecting people who are smart and think of themselves as smart. People who are smart often think they're immune to motivated reasoning/falling for conspiracy theories and others think they're immune to that kind of thinking, so there's a tendency to decide they must be right.
Secondly, it's considered bad form to doubt people in national security positions when it comes to things like this. We can say they got it all wrong when it came to Saddam Hussein's alleged WMDs, but doubting what they're saying about what caused their symptoms is in poor taste.
Finally, psychogenic conditions are stereotyped as feminine. They are more common in women but men can get them too. They're also regarded as something that people with poor mental health get Havana Syndrome is happening to the kind o people who are stereotyped as tough and manly so there is going to be a ton of pushback against the idea that people in national security are suffering from psychogenic illness because that's something teenage girls get. The mental health aspect is also important because having a mental health condition can endanger your security clearance.
It's probably easier to go along with the sonic weapon explanation rather than suggesting that it's psychogenic.
Which side did it get left-right coded on? I’ve seen both sides of the claim in my media diet, which is pretty left, and have no idea how it’s discussed on the right.
I think the correct axis of comparison is pro vs. anti natsec establishment rather than left vs. right
There are plenty of syndromes that we are supposed to pay attention to though there are no organic medical ways of confirming them. Havana Syndrome is just one more added to a list of Chronic Fatige, chronic Lyme, fibromyalgia, probably long COVID.....
I suspect that all of these are different names for essentially the same thing. I've seen enough reasonably well-adapted physically fit people go into severe declines with something like this not to believe there is something to it, though whether that something is a physical disease or a psychological condition is one that I'm not qualified to answer (and, even if it is psychological, that doesn't mean you don't need to treat it physically).
Well yes, for instance people with pseudoseizures don't necessarily know they have them.
Too many lawyers and not enough engineers going into politics?
Do you have a plan to implement a national curriculum for public speaking in engineering schools?
Yes, but I’d like to see Matt run this back to how the incentives for government projects and administration can be changed. With poorly designed incentives, you get the wrong skills and do the wrong things and you do those wrong things badly.
That’s my answer, 100%