Public Construction

Public construction — the building, replacement, and maintenance of government-owned infrastructure — has become dramatically more expensive and slower in the United States over the past several decades relative to historical benchmarks.

James Surowiecki crystallized the scope of the problem in a 2022 tweet: NYC was replacing eight escalators and upgrading fire alarms at a cost of $62 million — approximately 1/13 of what the entire Hoover Dam cost in today’s dollars. The project was scheduled to take as long as it took to build the Empire State Building. Eight escalators, Empire State Building timelines.

The contrast to earlier eras is the point. The US built extraordinary infrastructure in the 20th century — the interstate highway system, the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building — at timescales and cost ratios that modern public construction cannot approach. The dysfunction is an institutional and regulatory story, not a materials or labor story.

InfraSquad AI is a company working on the technology layer of construction project management. The Axis of Building is Kyle’s broader framework for why construction and manufacturing capacity is a prerequisite for national power.

Where this appears

• NYC is Replacing Eight Escalators… (tweet)