I have to admit this essay struck me as sort of strange. On the one hand, the EV charging station seems like something fairly straightforward, that should be approved and built fairly quickly. On the other hand, it's just an EV charging station, and without knowing anything more about it, I am just as inclined to believe that this is some small pet project of interest to the author, who no one else really cares about, and he's invoking some grand criticism of government writ large as a way of bringing urgency and grandeur his idiosyncratic interest that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
EV sales are in the middle of a nationwide decline, especially for one of the major manufacturers. I doubt it has anything to do with the 8-space parking lot in Seattle in particular. Add to this stories about charging station compatibility, and I'm not surprised there isn't a greater sense of urgency from the city.
I have my pet projects I'd like to see finished as well, but I don't blame my municipality for not prioritizing them. They have a lot on their plate. It has nothing to do with capture or overregulation, but priorities with constrained staff, budget, and time. People change their minds and city priorities change with popular sentiment.
In some ways, this is a good example of why some prudence is warranted, and maybe you should get the other side of the story. The essay neglects to mention that four of the eight charging stations would be owned by Tesla for example — something that if you're not opposed to, you might at least admit is reasonable for the city to reevaluate — and there is apparently contaminated soil at least nearby the site.
I'm generally in favor of reregulation or deregulation, but I generally feel like land use, environmental, and public space or resources are something where there should be a lot of scrutiny and layers of approval. Once it's gone, it's hard to reclaim and expensive to clean up. I also feel like many examples of complaints in this area and mention of things like Abundance are just like this — someone complains their personal project of interest isn't done fast enough, criticizing the government for being cumbersome and overwrought, while neglecting to mention all the reasons why people might not prioritize their pet project, or why their pet project might reasonably be seen as requiring safeguards or approval processes. The reason why the government is slow with your pet project is because not everyone agrees with you, and there is a commons issue involved.
Meanwhile, discussion about deregulation of things that actually involve personal choice, with little or no public commons issues involved, like medical care, go by the wayside and are never mentioned, or are even hyperregulated.
>In some ways, this is a good example of why some prudence is warranted, and maybe you should get the other side of the story. The essay neglects to mention that four of the eight charging stations would be owned by Tesla for example — something that if you're not opposed to, you might at least admit is reasonable for the city to reevaluate — and there is apparently contaminated soil at least nearby the site.
No, I think the "other side of the story" here is laughably weak. Four measly charging stations in the whole city of Seattle owned by Tesla? That barely warrants a comment on Hacker News, much less a town hall.
And "contaminated land"? How contaminated are we talking about here? It's crippling to any hope of widespread brownfield redevelopment that something so minimally invasive could be shut down by nebulous, ill-defined contamination. Perhaps we need a standard grading system for land contamination instead of just lumping gasoline and arsenic in the same category.
>I am just as inclined to believe that this is some small pet project of interest to the author, who no one else really cares about, and he's invoking some grand criticism of government writ large as a way of bringing urgency and grandeur his idiosyncratic interest that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
I am inclined to think that this argument could be used to shut down any case study used to critique the bureaucracy. The idea that eight city-owned parking spaces are somehow personally important to anyone is weird enough to demand at least a little evidence.
> That barely warrants a comment on Hacker News, much less a town hall.
I think that's maybe what I'm saying? Or the other side of the coin? I personally don't think there's some compelling harm being done by the government in this case.
Maybe some general discussion of neglect in the use of the land might be more compelling to me, but I'm not sure that delays in allocating it to charging stations in particular seems like a grand failure of governance. The soil is contaminated and the government wants to clean it up while they're tearing it up? Next to a planned park apparently? And this is causing harm by... holding up EV charging stations? Not a light rail hub, or walking trails connecting neighborhoods, or cycling infrastructure, or a clinic, but EV charging stations?
> I am inclined to think that this argument could be used to shut down any case study used to critique the bureaucracy.
I guess another way of phrasing my reaction is that I don't find this particular example very compelling in critiquing bureaucracy. Maybe more to my point, the fact that the author presents it as urgent to me sort of ironically underscores the problems with the argument they advance. It's an urgent need to them, but maybe not to the public at large?
It's also maybe worth pointing out the converse is true: the argument in Abundance could be used to shut down any case study used to support the government in being prudent or thorough?
> And "contaminated land"? How contaminated are we talking about here? It's crippling to any hope of widespread brownfield redevelopment that something so minimally invasive could be shut down by nebulous, ill-defined contamination. Perhaps we need a standard grading system for land contamination instead of just lumping gasoline and arsenic in the same category.
If the article is accurate, the cleanup was completed by January 2024, and first phase of work started September 2022. So who knows how long cleanup took, long enough to mention, but less than 1.5 years. The city website about the project [1] says the contamination was removed in 2022, so maybe not very long at all. The site's former use was as an electrical substation, so I'd expect soil contamination from spilled transformer oil, and similar things; some nasty stuff, but usually not a lot of it.
Sounds like the root cause of delays is availability of appropriate chargers, and probably a lack of priority. Also, 8 EV chargers doesn't sound like much, but if they're level 3 chargers, that's a lot of power if 8 cars plug in at the same time, which necessitates a bit of engineering and oversight. If it were 8 level 2 ev chargers, that would probably be a quick and easy install.
[1] https://www.seattle.gov/city-light/in-the-community/current-...
>who no one else really cares about, and he's invoking some grand criticism of government writ large as a way of bringing urgency and grandeur his idiosyncratic interest that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Everyone with a pet interest levies just about the same criticism at government and it paints a pretty consistent picture.
Whether you wanna develop EV chargers, buy discounted office space and turn it into residential, open a coffee shop, etc, etc, the same stupid government red tape born at the behest of generations of stupid voters who couldn't think a step ahead or about the big picture stand in your way.
>I'm generally in favor of deregulation or deregulation, but I generally feel <bunch of text>
Sounds like "believe in deregulation" only to the extent that you can lie to yourself and say that you do. You really believe in high regulation, but deep down you know that's a bad thing to believe in so you reframe it so you can sleep at night. You are a worse person than one who believes in regulation and is honest with themselves about the tradeoffs of it and has made some assessment that it is still worth it.
If you wanna prevent bad outcomes then make people liable for bad outcomes. The current status quo where all the cost of litigating a bad outcome must be born by every single party up front in the form of surveys, studies, impact assessments, etc, etc, steals money from literally all of us in one way or another, puts some in the pocket of government and puts orders of magnitude more in the pockets of well positioned private parties who government essentially makes work for is beyond insane and anyone who supports it is of bad character.