Thanks! Thoughtful article. Unfortunately, the people who need to read that kind of thing won't, because 1) the source is considered "left wing"; and 2) it says things they don't want to hear.

A key point buried in the text is that agencies need to bring a lot of functions in-house; one of the key problems IMO is that there isn't a steady stream of work allowing agencies (transit, highway, or other infrastructure) to fund staff and retain expertise over the long term. Everything has devolved into A Big Project followed by nothing for some years. The result is that the expertise has moved to the consultants, who by definition cost more and don't really have the agencies' (nore the public's) interests truly at heart. If we were building transit all the time, a little at a time perhaps, a body of knowledge (and perhaps a deadening of interest by some opponents who are mainly exerting power) could build up and things could be standardized. We don't do that now. The days when Caltrans was a roadbuilding behemoth, for instance, was when they actually did all but construction itself in-house, and maintained a staff with expertise in how to do that.

Of course, the US approach to nearly everything has always been a search for a silver bullet. Anything new has to completely replace what went before (which of course it never does), and must have every new, flashy thing. A lot of that is (or should be) marketing, of course; remember when the annual model change in cars was fins and chrome and colors, but the actual car stayed the same for 10 years or more? Some of that still happens in the car business (and the freight locomotive business), but if it's passenger trains every job requires new, custom development. It's not until track is actually laid that things become standardized. So sorry, we're doing it to ourselves (as the article was forced to admit in spots).

The power to tell somebody "No, you can't do that" without offering any reasonable alternative is the ultimate power in the US. Unfortunately, we've become a society that dotes on that and has structured everything around it. The power to DO something has become very difficult and expensive to wield.