>the main barrier to good US infrastructure construction, or at least one of the main barriers, is personal incompetence on behalf of decisionmakers. Those decisionmakers can be elected officials
The real message here is that this guy thinks he is too good for democracy and has found a better way. That scares me more than our infrastructure problems (which are pretty terrifying)
You cutoff the end of a sentence to make it sound like the opposite of what the author wrote. WTF?
> Those decisionmakers can be elected officials, with levels of authority ranging from governors down to individual city council members; political appointees of said officials; quasi-elected power brokers who sit on boards and are seen as representative of some local interest group; public-sector planners; or consultants, usually ones who are viewed as an extension of the public sector and may be run by retired civil servants who get a private-sector salary and a public-sector pension. In this post I’d like to zoom in on the managers more than on the politicians,
Those other actors all seem like direct reports of the democratically elected leadership. You don't elect people to literally pick up shovels and build infrastructure. You elect them to delegate.
And? He's "zooming in on the managers more than the politicians" because they can be easily replaced by any politician who gives a damn about infrastructure, and the whole point of the project is to give an idea of cost so politicians who give a damn can determine when a manager is bad.
He's not trying to address what to do if a politician doesn't care about infrastructure.
Democratically elected leadership can be replaced democratically. Appointed leadership can be replaced with public pressure on democratically elected leadership.
The real message here is that this guy thinks he is too good for democracy and has found a better way. That scares me more than our infrastructure problems (which are pretty terrifying)